Bed Times and Ratings on Games

[daisyfry]

Really have to many fights with my 12 year old at the present. He goes to bed at 8:30 to 9pm. He shares a room with his younger siblings who still wake in the night and early. He also wants to play violent games with much higher age ratings than he is? Any help and advice would be greatfuly recievied.

My DS is also 12. He goes to bed at 9.45. He is allowed to play xbox games up to age 15. We have said that age 18 games are just totally inappropriate. He has been happy with that rule. To be honest I dont know how much gaming he actually does as I think he spends most of his time making maps (or something).

IMO 12 is an age at which we start to let our DCs self manage. They can stay up a bit later but if they are tired in the morning then that is their own fault. We have 3 DCs and so far these rules have worked for DC1 & 2.

Daisyfry - is your DS wanting to stay up later? 8.30 would seem a bit early to me. Is it possible for him to go to bed a bit later if he can do it without waking his siblings? You could make this part of the deal.

Have you looked at the games he wants to play? We agreed on age 15 games as to be honest the younger ones were a bit wet!

My DS is also 12. His bedtime is around 9.30pm on school nights and 10pm at weekends. 8.30pm seems very early for a 12 year old, especially as the light nights are on the way.

As for video games, he and his brother (8) are allowed to play games with a 12 rating. I have just recently allowed DS some 15 rated games. I dont allow games which just want you to go around shooting anything and everything. But I will allow platform games which have a story, such as Fable.

We dont really fight over these issues as we have both made compromises. DS mainly wants to go to bed later than DS2 even if its just 10 minutes.

My DS is also 12. He is supposed to go to bed at 9 pm and sometimes he's still tired, even then. He can play games up to the age of 15, but does not really want to. In this, he is completely different from my older DS who was/is pushing the boundaries.

My DD is 15 and DS is 14, they have never been big sleepers and so haven't had bed times since 13, although they know being up past 12 on a school night warrants a lecture from mum about 'taking the piss'! When they were 12 they had to be ready for bed by 9:30pm (changed, washed, teeth, stuff ready for next day) and then in bed at 10:30pm, always found this helped them to wind down for an hour leading up to bedtime and reduced their insomniac tendencies. At weekends they had no bedtime but usually crashed before 2:00. In our house the weekend rule is nobody downstairs before 9:00 am except special circumstances like football or christmas, so they always had enough sleep before we started crashing around.

Not everybody needs the same amount of sleep, maybe 8:30 is too early for your son, what about saying he can read or watch a dvd in bed between 8:30 and 9:30 so he's still in bed but he feels it's later, plus if he's tired he'll fall asleep during this time anyway.

Also about games, I've always let them go one level up.

At 12 they had rating 15 and once DS is 15 I'll probably allow 18's, DD has lost interest in games but I have allowed her to watch some 18 rated films. Before they were 12 I let them have rated 12 pretty much from they get go as these were always harmless in my opinion. DH normally implements any bans on unsuitable games as he knows more about the content than I do.

Ds (age 12) has to get up at 6:45, and I find if he goes to bed later than 9, he will be noticeably tired and irritable the next day.
We are so far holding out on him not having games rated higher than 12 - we have said we will judge games he wants individually, but have so far not been persuaded.