AIBU to refuse a Year 9 staying up for the 1am match?

[BlackTulipss]

Is this unreasonable?
Apparently "every other mum" is letting their school year 9 kid watch the 1am match tonight and phone in sick to school tomorrow morning then go in at lunch.
I've said no to staying up to watch it. Starts at 1am, it will go on till 3:30am, or later if extra time!
DS has to get up at 6:30 for school.
DH says let him, keeps going on about once every 4 years experience, it's only 1 night, etc. And he says it will be the final England match - they'll be knocked out by Mexico tonight so there will be no other England games to watch after tonight.
DS badly needs his sleep and at 14 he still needs a solid 11 hours to function.
Is anyone else letting their DC watch it live tonight?
AIBU?

My son is yr 9 and will be staying up and missing school if he’s too tired. It’s the end of the year they aren’t doing anything at school, they finished exam week last week, it’s all quizzes and alternative learning.

Those saying it’s every 4 years are wrong. This is literally a one off in our kids lifetime of being a kid, this is the only 1am Ko, if they get through the next games are earlier, the next World Cup is in Europe so the Ko times will be more respectable, 8 years time is Saudi by then my 14 yr old will prob be there in person!

Red Bull on the way to school

record it and ds get up at 5 to watch

Its being reshown in full at 7-10 am on BBC2

No need to call someone a nutter. Your son might be fine but 10-11 hours sleep every night is unusual for a teenager.

Anyway, you don't even seem open to feedback.
Why exactly is one night of disrupted sleep going to be so detrimental to your DS, especially when he's so healthy and happy?

It's in once in a lifetime event, let him have this.

Are you trying to say that just because some activity groups run late in to the evening there cant be children/teens who go to bed early to get enough sleep?

Yes, it does suck when you need more sleep than majority of other people and cant do things because of that.

I'd use it as a means of getting other behaviour benefits if he wants it.

So he needs to tidy his room this morning, spend the afternoon without screens, and try and have a sleep say from 8pm until midnight.
Then tomorrow when he comes home he needs to do his homework and again be in bed by 8pm to try and catch up on sleep.

Growing up we watched very little TV. We had one TV, a black and white tiny one with 3 volumes (off, intermittent and far too loud) and had to be tuned turning the knob and moving the aerial. Far too much hassle to do! I had understanding friends, and kind of carved a niche for myself as the one who would listen to people raving about TV programmes without having seen it.
My siblings, who struggled far more socially found it a huge barrier.

I'd have told ds that he needed to tidy his room, and make sure all his homework was done and have a shower before the match - and keep the noise down when watching so he didn't wake anyone else.

Thing is, the poster specifically placed it in the context of others having mentioned one offs. So if someone wants to make the point in the way you do here, it needs to be done without making it about what other people meant when they used a term that could be more widely defined.

And I don't think the importance of it to many teenagers can be stripped from the hype either. The hype is part of the reason they care, it's the context that exists and that OP can't opt him out of.

He won't be the only one who doesn't watch it, but it's quite conceivable he'll be the only one who wanted to watch it and wasn't allowed to. Not least because a lot of parents of 14 year olds would be making the decision in the knowledge that the child might be so wound up and pissed off they don't sleep properly anyway.

Checking out now as once we have posters using The Sun headline language like ‘nutter’ we know that there is no point trying to communicate meaningfully.
I hope that you can take the excellent advice on this thread and allow your son to enjoy the occasion without anxiety on your part.

Fair point from a pedant.
That was my pred text and I didn't read it back in time to edit and remove the g.

I agree with the first ten words.

❤️ (ps let him stay up) x

Op just this once be a cool mum let him sit up and have the next day off.
Once every 4 year.

Let him stay up. When he’s older he won’t remember the day he spent at school tired, but he will remember the special time he spent doing something different and exciting with his dad.

I dont like sports or football but every 4 years here i am.

I'd let him watch it and probably phone off sick tbh. My mum was really, really strict and formal when I was school age. I was never allowed to parties unless she'd spoken to the host's parents (so I never went to parties because I would never have lived that down lol) and I wasn't really allowed to stay over and rarely had friends to stay etc. But every once in a while she'd just take me out for the day instead of going to school and they are SUCH special memories. I also got v good grades, so it definitely didn't impact my schooling.

Sorry only just seen that DH won’t be watching it. But my point still stands, let the kid stay up, it will be a special memory for him.

Just let him. But also send him in

With my year 6 (11 years old) we are recording it and then getting her up at 5:30 to watch it before school.

Could your DS go to bed early and set an alarm to get up at 1:00?

Oh god yeah can't do that, it'll mess with his wake windows 🙄

I'd still send to school whatever you do, as they'll survive one night just fine with little sleep and will just catch up across the week surely.

This is it. Bed straight after tea and sleep til 1, back to bed at 3 to get a few more hours. Will be tired but functioning, early bed on Monday. It’s not that much of a big deal. Plenty people have a few hours awake in the night every now and then! I’m sure he’d survive jet lag etc.

OK, I understand about the PP's post.
I still don't agree that this is so massively important. If they were making a family night of it and he was excluded, I'd get it more, but they aren't. And I think more parents than you think won't be making a thing of it at home, so won't see why it's any different to the other things there's been hype over, or all their mates have been allowed to do, and will say no.

Like I said, I still think he should be allowed to watch it, not least because by the sounds of it, he won't actually manage to wake up or stay up for it, but I don't think it's this huge event he can't possibly be expected to miss that some posters (not you in particular) are making this out to be.

King Charles called Lord Berkeley a nutter.
So it's not only Sun readers who use the word when it fits the bill.
I don't personally read any newspapers, but I do hear this word being used fairly regularly amongst my professional upper middle class colleagues.
As an aside, just to be clear, are you stating that Sun readers aren't worthy of engaging with in discussions on mumsnet?