WiFi off at 9.30 pm. Worst parent ever?

[Notsureabouthis]

Because my children think I am! 🤨

They are 17,14 and 13. Glued to their phones.

Trying to get a bit of balance/a better nighttime regime. They have books/audio books... also fairly generous data so the eldest can still Snapchat etc...just not stream YouTube.

He looked at me like he really hated me tonight.😞

AIBU? Apparently no one else’s parents limit WiFi?!

Actually the lines you have so maturely crossed out are how those mollycoddled kids behave because they are used to mummy doing everything for them

Telling 18 yos to go to bed at a specific time is quite frankly bizarre. No wifi is not a right, it is however, for many parents, a way to control their adult children clearly. An 18 yo, if been brought up well, should be able to decide when they need to go to bed, when they need to study and when they can use their devices. Will they miraculously next year at Uni be completely self sufficient.

It's all process, DS13 goes to bed when he feels it appropriate. The other night he decided 830 as he was tired but last night it was 1030/11. He is relaxing in his room though from 9ish at the latest. Currently we wake him up for school but we have told him from next week he will have to set his own alarm to get up.

Obviously at first we will wake him if he sleeps through it etc but eventually we wont and if hes not up he will have to walk to 40 mins to school and potentially be late. He has to learn as I will be at work when he will need to go to college given that most of our local ones now start at 10 so won't be getting him up.

If I'm honest I think I should have done this earlier with him but judging by these responses I maybe shouldn't bother.

I'm the one who'll be held responsible if there's problems at school etc. So I am helping my child to manage his screen time by not putting the temptation there for streaming films late at night when he should be asleep before an 8 hour school day. He is not even slightly "molly-coddled"

Terfin You are mollycoddling, and you are raising children who will not be able to moderate and self regulate themselves as adults.

You need to give them a chance to learn these skills in a safe environment, while under your roof. You are drastically failing your children by not doing so.

Oh and OP, as above PP said, you feel that removing the WiFi will remove the ‘temptation’ of going online

It will actually do the exact opposite, and make your children more determined to find a way to get online; probably leading to your 17 just taking out their own phone contact with data

I think it’s fine for the younger two but a bit far fetched for the 17 year old. I lived alone at 17 so I consider 17 pretty much an adult, too old to be mollycoddled by parents anyway.

@Drizzzle it's not about having an issue restricting phones etc sometimes it may be a necessity for younger kids of course, it's about a level of trust and maturity you should be able to expect from your adult or nearly adult children.

It starts really young I believe, when the DCs were young they were allowed treats regularly along with healthg food obviously. When they went to kids parties they would pick a normal plate of food with sandwiches, cucumber etc but will 1 cake or biscuit as it was normal to them. There were other parents laughing at their kids as they restricted any sweet stuff any other time they had a plate of 10 jaffcakes and 4 cupcakes. Not only is this crap for them it is bloody rude. It is the same with these restrictions, if you insist it's off at 930, as soon as they have freedom they will be falling asleep on their phones at 4am.

There will of course be exceptions before anyone says that!

When I was 17, at 9:30 I'd not be home from work for another hour! And yes, I was doing my 'A' Levels at the time. I agree with your principle OP, but you are being completely unreasonable restricting someone's WIFI who is old enough to:

Drive
Get married
Joined the armed forces
Have voted in the Scottish Indy Ref.
Work
Pay tax

I can see why you are doing this, and I know your intentions are good, but in my opinion you have this wrong.

If your 17 year old isn't happy, they had better work out how to earn some money and pay for their own data

My 17 year old has a job and she isn't even home from it a 9:30. Does it a couple of nights a week plus a Saturday or Sunday. So 2 days a week she leaves home at 8 am and goes to college then straight to work getting home around 10:30 pm. Still gets up for college the next day and catches up on her sleep the next evening. Like most people of her age she has learned how much sleep she needs and can manage that without Mummy needing to reinforce it.

At 17 I was working 12 hr shifts at a factory 6-6 at weekends. Used to go get in from a night out, shower, get changed and go straight to work. Was at college also doing A levels. As an almost adult I was quite capable of sorting my life out, I wasnt perfect of course but I made it to college, worked, got high grades and ended up in a professional job.

Both my parents worked full time so I had to look after myself. We are a really close family, they treated me with respect and trust and gave me the guidance I needed in order to manage an adult life. Except with regards to ironing, I am 40 and my mum still does it

17yo is big enough to understand, that Wifi needs to be turned off for younger siblings. If its for the phone, he should pay for his own data package.
That said, i don't turn my wifi off, because i like to binge-watch films and tv shows until small hours.

Well, some 17 year olds had a house and wife and went down the mines daily at their age don’t you know op 😂
Perfectly reasonable to turn the wifi off and enforce rules on a 17 yo who is presumably still at school full time and also lives in your house! He is still a child. Even if he wasn’t, I’d still expect rules! That’s perfectly normal. And healthy!

Haha! Some of these replies make me laugh The judgements people make without knowing anything at all about a person or family or circumstances!! You need to be writing Daily Mail articles

If my DS were married or in the army or at uni, he wouldn't be living at home and doing his A levels and living with the rules that he's quite happy with and understands completely. So that's a really silly argument that several people have made.

It's only Wi-fi. He has masses of data. I'm not talking his phone off him. Without Wi-fi he doesn't watch Netflix/Prime. Those are what keep him awake and not sleeping. He appreciates that I prevent him from being tempted to watch a film starting at 11pm. I wish someone would stop me doing that sometimes!!

That's all very well but how would your 'child' regulate yourself if you weren't there if at 18 they need you to remove temptation. It's completely bizarre.

Each to their own I guess

I'm judging based on what you've told me here. That you trust Precious with a car, which could have serious consequences, but not the bloody Wi-Fi. It's illogical,

I wish someone would stop me doing that sometimes!!

So you can't self regulate either? Does everyone in your family need someone to wipe their arse for them? Is no one capable of making decisions for themselves and taking action?

Terfin It’s not “only WiFi”; it’s indicative of your failure to parent a child into a fully functioning adult who can moderate and regulate themselves.

You can find it as funny as you like, but your child won’t when they’re struggling to cope and you’re not there to mollycoddle them anymore.

Nor will their boss, work colleagues or friends, who will find them frustrating and inadequate, and nor will you when you eventually realise how much you’ve failed them. If you’re happy raising that kind of person, crack on doing exactly what you’re doing.

I'm the worst parent in the world too then, its 10pm here for 13 yo. I do think the 17 yo needs a bit of a break in your case OP as PP said, I was working and contributing to the household bills.

I have tried to teach self regulate he won’t do it!

Better he fails to do it now, and suffers the consequences in his grades, than fails to self-regulate at university and fails his first year leaving with nothing but £15k of debt.

Does no one on this thread realise how sneaky teenagers are. I’m 22 so at 17 I had an iPhone with WiFi at home. If I was one of your dcs I would get sneaky, I would download what ever programmes (Netflix) I wanted to watch before the WiFi went off and then just watch them saying it was an audiobook until whatever time I wanted (earphones means you can’t hear it if your downstairs or asleep) I’d also download a game or two. Also do you have an iPhone? I would connect myself to your data at some point and continue use snapchat etc through your phones data saving any I had for school etc. So really taking their phones off them is the only real way to stop them using them at night.

@Terfin

It's only Wi-fi. He has masses of data. I'm not talking his phone off him. Without Wi-fi he doesn't watch Netflix/Prime. Those are what keep him awake and not sleeping. He appreciates that I prevent him from being tempted to watch a film starting at 11pm. I wish someone would stop me doing that sometimes!!

In a few months (I'd imagine) your son will be going off to university and unable to have you to help him 'resisting temptation.
How will he cope then? Shouldn't you be doing all you can to help him self-regulate to make sure when he is at university he doesn't get into these habits?

I think it's easier to take the devices out of their rooms, to be honest. That way the 17yo can still have access (and you? Don't you use it?) and the younger ones can go to bed and go to sleep at the right time.

My DSS had to leave his phone downstairs when he was in high school, but now he's in 6th form he's been told he can go to bed when he wants so long as he gets up for the bus, and tbh he's in bed at 11 at the latest, usually earlier. He's a young one so 16 still until the summer.

I havent read all of the comments but have you thought about an app on the younger twos phones that you can essentially lock the phones at a pre programmed time from your phone and then with the WiFi you could turn it off when you go to bed say 11/12 ISH and then the 17 year old gets a bit more freedom to discover that a lack of sleep ain't that much fun 🤷🤷

Some of these posts are hilarious. I had a bedtime (10.30) in my a-level year and no phone allowed upstairs. I was supposed to be studying and sleeping! I was still in full time education. I then moved 2 hours away to university and shock horror managed to look after myself and didn’t sit up all night on my phone because I didn’t understand how to take care of myself. I actually did keep my parents rules for exams and would always be in bed at 10.30 the night before an exam.

I also unbelievably went abroad for a year in my 3rd year of university - again in spite of my having no phone and a bedtime when I was 17/18. I managed to live abroad all my myself and again didn’t sit up all night because I had a set time to go to sleep at 17.

It’s amazing isn’t it! I’m such a success story given all the posters saying here that if a person has rules or guidelines in the family home they will leave with no ability to manage themselves.

@Hopein2020

Out of interest, did you have 'temptation' like the previous posters son to watch Netflix or Amazon Prime?

Or was it just that you knew how to self regulate yourself without needing your Mum to take away things you know would tempt you into staying up late?

@TheTruthAboutLove as I've pointed out several times, when he's at uni he can do as he likes. While he's under my roof, expected me to support him financially and emotionally and educationally, he play by my rules. That's it.
And no he doesn't use my data or my hotspot. He has 20gb a month that he pays for. He doesn't bother downloading films or sneak around because there's no need. He has a huge amount of freedom, much more than many I know, and he's learned to use it responsibly. His Wi-fi goes off at 10 and that's that. He absolutely isn't bothered about it.
Last night he fell asleep listening to jazz on AirPods. If he'd been watching a film on his laptop on bed, he would have ended up lying on it, potentially causing damage of overheating. My way is what's right for us. Other parenting strategies and priorities are available

@thetruthaboutlove we weren’t allowed to watch things on laptop/separate tv’s. We had one tv in the house and watched programs on that together. It sounds awful to write it down like that but we did a lot of extra curricular activities which meant that during the week it was home from school, homework, activity , reading in bed then bed. Tv at weekends. No devices allowed in bedrooms in evenings. I didn’t watch any of the shows my friends did.

I've worked in higher education (support, not academics) for years and I've seen some fairly incapable and ignorant young adults due to parenting styles both end of the spectrum (strict / babying or allowing too much freedom). There is definitely a balance, but in this case I do think not allowing a 17 year old internet access after 9.30pm is a little over the top. I personally would sit down with them to discuss how to move forward (after all, they are pretty much a young adult with their own cognisant reasoning). You don't have to say yes to anything, but learn to compromise and let your nearly adult children learn from their mistakes.