To take my 12 year old daughter's phone away at bedtime

[AlltheGs123]

I am battling with my 12 yo who is demanding to keep her phone in her bedroom overnight. I am saying that she needs to hand over the phone at 9.30 and it'll go on to charge until morning. All hell is breaking loose - apparently none of her friends parents do this and she sees it as controlling behaviour (!). Am I eroding her trust or am I doing the right thing?

It’s tricky at that age. At 12 we had eldest phone downstairs but it has got younger with each DC (partly because most of DCs friends are the youngest sibling and we have all caved in over the years). Youngest is Y8 and I still check their phone.

My teen has Family Link parental controls on their phone- I control how many hours per day they have it and it switches to downtime (fully locked) at 9pm. You make the rules, you are the parent. I actually think parental controls should be the law on all phones for under 18s.

All phones downstairs overnight. And that applies to us too. Much easier to get teens to agree if you practise what you preach.

Absolutely no way allow it in her bedroom. Look at us adults, we can’t control our addiction, it’s not reasonable to expect our children to.

we charge phones in kitchen overnight, no exceptions.

There is a lot of evidence out there about the harms of having devices in bedrooms, especially for children. They need a physical and mental break from screens and constant connectivity. Devices in rooms disrupt sleep and make it much more likely they will engage in risky and harmful behaviour when their inhibitions are lowered and the impulse to act is high. Every adolescent I know who has been the victim of ‘sextortion’ or online bullying has mostly been targeted at night when they have been allowed unfettered internet access in their rooms while the rest of the house sleeps.

Of course your daughter will protest. That is her job. She doesn’t have to like it, but you can explain that it’s for her safety and well being and that it‘s a condition of having the phone that presumably you pay for.

You aren’t parenting her friends, you're parenting her. Some parents are fucking useless, or at best, naive. You can choose whether or not to be one of them. What good, realistically, can come from her having a phone in her room at night? And what potential harm?

I think 9.30pm is late for a 12 year old. My 16 year old hands his phone over at 9.45pm.

12 year old's phone hits downtime at 9pm and then doesn't come back on until 7.30am, as a general rule. Or it locks if she has used up all her screen time. I'll tweak as needed, ie. If she is on a sleepover and they are messing around making videos or if she is away and video calling us, but otherwise those are the default

I never took my kids phone’s but they got up for school no issue and got top grades, very self disciplined. Depends on the child I think.

15 and 13 year olds. Phones on charge downstairs overnight. I don't care what their friends do.

I used to do it with 17 year old dd as phones are addictive. It’s incredibly hard on the adolescent brain to put them down.

all parents should be doing this.

No upstairs or in bathrooms in our house, it’s a hard rule and it’s in place for their safety. I’m a lot less strict than most of my kids’s friends parents when it comes to screens, but I won’t budge on this one till they’re 16 and have sat their GCSEs.

Phones are downstairs at 2130. Kids are 12 & 15.

My 13 year old only has a dumb phone - for emergencies when he is commuting on his own, and no screens between 8pm and 8am.

www.anxiousgeneration.com/

I don't think children should have phones at all end of. Tell her it could be worse, she could have a mum like me.

The Internet is an adult environment, children shouldn't be on it unsupervised.

You aren't controlling, you're being a good parent.

I agree. My niece is nearly 11. She has a phone and WhatsApp and a channel on it.

She encourages the link to be sent round to the world and his wife because she is desperate for followers. I don't know what her parents are doing.Or why they're allowing it but it's not for me to interfere in

Allowing a child of that age, a whatsapp channel where the entire world could follow it.If they wanted, isn't asking for trouble.

My 12 year olds phone locks down at 8.30pm so that if we forget to take it off him at bedtime he can't use it anyway.

Ah, the old ‘ but all my friends’… ignore her pleas!
Our 13 & 15 year old still leave their phones and any other devices downstairs to charge and on school nights they shut off at 9pm and 9.30pm respectively anyway.
They have daily time limits for usage. Oh, and they have Snap but no other Social Media.
They are both active, happy kids, with hobbies and good friends and social lives…

stay firm. This is a key time to put rules and habits in place that you stick with. As they get older they need more down time and non-screen time as the demands of school work increase.

She can demand all she likes. If she carried on with that attitude in my house she would lose the phone permanently.
My 13 year olds phone is set to lock at 9.30pm but he doesn't take it to bed anyway.

I recently did some policy work
on the area of smartphones and teens, and had to read things that would give any parent nightmares. No child under 16, at minimum, should be having unsupervised phone access/a phone in their room at night. You’re doing the right thing.

My 12 year old brings their phone and tablet into my room at 9:30pm and then they read (or go to sleep) until 10pm. Different during weekends or school holidays. But they have no issue with it as it has always been the case and they are used to the routine. And they are always up as soon as their alarm goes off. They had asked a couple of times in the past to have their phone in their room and I just asked them why they wanted it if they’re just going to sleep - they couldn’t give me a good enough argument for it so the phone stays with me at night.

i watched educating Yorkshire recently and there were girls who are on their phones until 2am on TikTok every night and they were zombies at school. One even fell asleep during their exam, I think?

Same here

Mine is 17 and it's still no phones overnight! He just does it now out of habit

YABU for even questioning if you should do this or not.

Of course a child shouldn’t have a phone in their room over night.

Stop being scared to parent your child.

No phones on bedrooms over night. Not a chance.

and like others have said - no arguing just this is the rule!
also if you haven’t already get some restrictions on it. My sons goes into downtime at 9pm so he couldn’t use it even if he had it. And then she can’t download social media either because that’s another nightmare to deal with.

Ignore your DD protestations that no other parent does this.

With every single one of my rules I am apparently the first and only parent to ever implement them according to my DD 🙄