To have device and other restrictions for a 13 year old

[Doobedobe]

What rules and restrictions do you have for your 13 year old, just turned.. so we are just heading into teenage years.
Ours is a boy.
We have:

• mobile but not allowed past ten pm
• not allowed on trains or buses, this may change during the next year.
• can ride bike to friends or in the woods nearby
• location tracker on at all times
• can play any age game on the ps but he hates gore and horror so he mostly plays roblox and minecraft
• can stay home alone for a few hours but not overnight
• must tell us where he is going and with who
• not allowed to go into the town centre and 'hang around'

This is so much stricter than when I was 13. And I got into all sorts of scrapes.
We also live near a major city.

AIBU - this is way to strict
IANU - I am not unreasonable- this is fine or I would be stricter

Trying to work out the right level for safety and control of tech, devices, social life, freedoms etc.

I would be more strict.

Some seem strict to me - I have a 13yo ds also a major city here and for comparison:

• mobile but not allowed past ten pm - same here, also time limits on some apps

• not allowed on trains or buses, this may change during the next year - this seems strict to me but mine goes to school on train. His friends will get trains and other public transport to go shopping on a weekend

• can ride bike to friends or in the woods nearby - same
• location tracker on at all times - same
• can play any age game on the ps but he hates gore and horror so he mostly plays roblox and minecraft - he's never asked to play a game much beyond his age but I'd probably restrict him to pegi 15, would depend on the game
• can stay home alone for a few hours but not overnight - same
• must tell us where he is going and with who - same, broadly..I don't know all his school friends by name so I just need an idea of which ones and maybe one name that I know so have a way to contact other parents if need be.
• not allowed to go into the town centre and 'hang around' - mine wouldn't really want to hang about in shops etc - he mainly goes to park or sport grounds to hang around. But I'd be happy with him going with mates to nearby shop/cafe type places, subject to him letting me know what was happening

Can I ask why no trains and why no hanging about?

Ah very similar then.
No trains or buses, seems to be a lot of weird characters on trains and buses near us, a few stories of kids getting robbed getting on and off near us by other kids and ours isnt very streetwise. Personally I think buses would be fine, but DH prefers not to risk it as we can just give him a lift. He can also walk to school in less than 10 minutes too.
Hanging around, actually we do let him hang around in the park in daylight hours, but the shopping centre area, he hasnt got any real reason to go there and there are a lot of burly older kids, older nephew has been dragged down side roads there at least three times by gangs trying to rob their phones, has got away thankfully.

Dd had strong device parental controls, sourced via the school. Devices removed at 8.30 on school nights. A bit later in weekends and holidays. We had problems in Yr 9 and would have to remove all devices and put them in a locked box and hide the key. By term 4 of year 9, she had learnt to self regulate (as shown over the holidays) so we relaxed.

We never allowed interactive games like Roblox. The form teacher even told us we should think about that. The next year, the school banned/blocked them all (phones in the day already banned). She survived.

She took two busses to school. She had to be home by the time the sun went down - not Uk so not quite so early as some places in winter and not as late in summer. She could stay home on her own for a few hours. Shopping centre on the way was quite safe. So she had a fair bit of autonomy in the day.

Going to parties. The school got Paul Dillon darta.net.au in every year to talk to the kids about alcohol , drugs etc. They also put on a parent lecture. His advice was

• all children could stay out to their school year. Year 10’s to ten o’clock etc.
• Parent doing drop off must go in and meet the hosting parents and be happy with supervision arrangements.

We lived by this and it worked well. All the kids got the same information, Dd could always say “thank you for the invitation. I would like to come. I will be collected at x o’clock as that’s what Paul Dillon says and my parents live by that”. It was surprising, once she said that, how many of her friends said “I’ll do that, too”.

My son is 14 and I some of those rules in place. At the wknd I completely relax screen time. He uses trains to travel into city centre to go for food with his friends downtowns. I don’t like it and bauojed at the idea at first, he doesn’t go often but when he does yes I worry as I live in a major city. I think you may be wrong on the train and bus thing unless you live in central London. Just my thoughts OP