at wits end..on internet and phone at all hours despite us saying not to

[febel]

ok, another post over my challenging 16 yr old daughter. Just discovered she is on internet and phone..both calls and texts...in early hours etc despite us asking, and trusting her, to leave phone and I pad outside door at around 10.30 each night...just as her elder sisters did without any bother until they were 18 (and went to uni) She is cCONSTANLY challenging and pushing boundaries and discovered phone etc cos looked closely at my bill after something her elder sister said about her waking in night and hearing youngest on phone.

So...what do we do besides obvious...taking hone and I pad off her..which seems over the top and anyway last time I warned her I would take phone off her, and had to, she fought like a wold cat to stop me and scratched all my face.

Please someone give us advise, we are at our wits end with her..she is forever overstepping boundaries, v cheeky and in yr face etc and to be honest I am dreading confronting her with this

I also have this level of control - no screens in bedrooms. There's a definite link between 'performance' at school and amount of sleep and my 15 year old son isn't doing as well as he can and can't regulate his screen use himself so I'll do it for him till GCSEs are out of the way in June.

Same as I'm helping him with his revision/study guide until then.

Call me mean and controlling as much as you like.

Jean, your not mean and controlling if your DS accepts the limits as helping him.

I was really happy to accept my DDads always be back exactly when you say you will be back.

It meant I had the perfect reason to go home, before early hours coffees at boys I didn't fancies houses.

I don't think he sees the link but they are my rules in my house. He can read in his room as long as he wants after bedtime. I think that if this is the worst thing he has to worry about or the other 16 year 15/16 year olds then life isn't that bad. I'm sure we all had much more rules in place growing up, now it seems to be they have the right to be treated as adults in every single part of their life otherwise parents are just deemed controlling or unwilling to let go.

I have a no screens rule upstairs. she stays up reading her books til all hours but if she were allowed her phone in her room she wouldn't be reading would she?

besides it's more than just the issue of staying up late. it's more like what are they doing and who are they texting in the small hours. those of you who think parents like me are controlling, do you monitor your daughter's phone. do you check her private messages? do you know what she is doing on line and the photos she is sending? don't tell me you don't know her password or that you trust her

my dd's phone was with the CID for 6 months while they investigated the perv that was grooming her. she's a streetwise kid but she was had. they reckoned it would have been another 6 to 9 months of grooming before she'd have been asked to meet him.

don't just restrict the net time, monitor it properly.

Is it only on mumsnet where 16 year old are classed as adults and can do as they please. Because back in the real world a 16 year old would still have rules. My dd is 15 she goes to bed at 9.15 reads and only reads till 9.45 and goes to sleep. At weekends she goes to bed around 10/ 10.30 unless she is doing something specific. This isn't going to suddenly change once she turns 16. Sleep is very important for teenagers they need a lot.
Op just take the phone and I iPad of her at night.

Hear hear, my eldest two had the same rule till they were 18. In their case I didn't have to regulate as they did that themselves mostly. Where I live you're an adult till 18 and even after that, adult children are expected to follow some house rules.

She is always tired, and so short tempered and nasty

Maybe she is tired. Remember who is the adult. Remove the phone and Ipad every single night.

If she continues with her attitude then replace her phone with a cheap talk and text. Carphone warehouse do them for about £10 and they will accept any sim card in them as they are not locked to any particular network.

She is testing boundaries at the moment. So make sure that you and your DH make the boundaries very clear.

Well, gymbob, I was a teenager between 2002-2009 ish. My parents didn't know any of my passwords and certainly didn't read my texts or messages. My phone was mine. I kept it on me all the time - either in my bag at school or in my room at night. They didn't take it off me or read any of my messages because, yes, they did trust me.

I also had internet access in my room. I had MySpace/Bebo and no, they didn't "friend" me on there, they didn't know my passwords or my usernames and didn't make me log on so they could read my messages. It was my computer that they didn't have acess to. I wasn't damaged. I didn't go messaging random strangers. I messaged my best friends and kids from school, like 95% of teenagers do.

I actually don't think it's healthy to know everything about your children's lives like that. Plus, if they know you can read their Facebook/texts, they'll just delete messages or open a private account you can't access.

Our DDs didn't have mobiles with internet access at 16 but DD2 did still stay up late in her room and when she had a laptop the internet was turned off at 12. A lot of teenaagers are a bit nocturnal and whatever you did they would probably still stay up.

I do think we should stop seeing and treating teenagers as if they were still children. Not even 100 years ago, they were considered adults around the age of 15.
Girls used to help around in the house and the boys helped with the heavy work. And they got married and had their own family before/around the age of 20.

Now we somehow started to think they can't look after themselves, but they sure can. They aren't kids anymore, but young adults and how would you be if someone would always treat you like you can't look after yourself. You'd get pretty crossed and difficult yourself. Not because you think the other is right or wrong. But just because of the way they treat you.

Let them be young adults. If she wants to have a phone, ok pay for it yourself. Find who can give you the best offer. Not able to pay your phone bill this month.... bad luck, her problem, not yours.
You give pocket money and for every good mark she gets on school give her extra money. Helping out at home... extra money. Same like us we also have to work for our money.

Staying up late and not able to get on time on school. Again not your problem, hers. Call the school and tell them she's late because...
She probably will get furious on you. But we learn the best and quickest from our own mistakes. If someone keeps telling us what to do. We can't learn to think and decide for ourselves.

I think 10.30 is too early to take phones etc off a 16 year old. I remember being 16 and most of the best socialising took place between then and 11.30ish.

I think I'd just leave her to it to be honest unless she's disturbing anyone else by chatting loudly in which case I'd go in and throw a glass of water over her or something ridiculous and irritating like that (as ridiculous and irritating as her staying awake all night chatting).

I agree with profile.

Teens are so paranoid that they'll miss out on something in their peer group, so not having access to technology when (they feel) everyone else does, is a total flashpoint for stropping. (Not excusing your DD being violent...that's awful for you).

I don't control screens and phones for my 16yr old DS. I agree with profile and others...'oh dear are you tired? Best not stay up all night texting then', then ignore, ignore.

The phase does pass, they grow up, understand that feeling groggy every day is rubbish, and get more confident at telling their friends not to text after X time as they'll be asleep.

My DS was 16 last summer...I've seen him get more sensible over the last 6 months...it's jolly slow though sometimes!

It's true, teenagers body rhythms are different from adults, they naturally stay up later. There was an article on the bbc news site about it.

That's why they sleep all morning at weekends and holidays. Ideally they would start school in the afternoon, but ad the teachers aren't on the same sleep schedule that'll never work!

Encourage her to sleep, don't tell her. And every time she picks a fight just respond that she's in a bad mood because she's not getting enough sleep, and say nothing else.

Then wait for the day she picks a fight and adds 'and I have had enough sleep!' :-)

Rather than turn off or disconnect you router you can change a lot of settings from the router menu. These of course vary from router to router, but for a bt internet if you put in bthomehub.home/ or the IP address in your web browser, looks like this: 192.168.1.1/, or, for different routers google the IP address and after a bit of looking you can usually find the correct one.

This should give you access to the settings menu. BT home hubs have a lot of options, but the ones I like are the power saving option which can be configured to switch off at a certain time, and the Parental control menu. This one allows you to limit individual machines that are attached to your router. Some of these will show up as the names and will be obvious; iPhones, iPods and xboxes, but others only appear as numbers and then it's trial and error.

Set the password to something secure and off you go.

bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11364/c/

uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080909132253AAMmF9r

These answers will give you a flavour.

Having set this up, you can either present it as a fait accompli or deny all knowledge and promise to look into it. I told both my DSs to suck it up. Xbox goes off at 9:00 and wifi at 10:00.

Of course, 3G phones are another thing entirely.

I try to give my 16yo as much autonomy as possible.

My view is that he will be living independently in two years so he needs to learn to make good decisions for himself rather than having me constantly enforcing them.

We had this problem, but have been a bit extreme in solving it. We bought a mini safe from B&Q (about £25), and now put phones, pads and xbox controller and computer power cables in it at 9pm (they are 13). If they try to hide a gadget, we turn off the WiFi, and when we get hold of the gadget, it goes into the safe for longer than just overnight. We had to get the safe, as when we just took them away they would come down in the night and find them. Now they know where they are, but haven't yet found out the codenumber. If the figure it out, we can change it again. As I said, a bit extreme, but we were driven to it as they were getting sneaky, lying little toads, using these things way into the night, flouting every rule we tried to enforce.

I've given up with this one with almost 16yo DD. Her oh so bloody sensible father (not together) bought her a bloody blackberry for Christmas. I've given up! She gets out of bed in the mornings, if not I take her duvet away and she gets to school on time.

Before that, she had a PAYG phone, got £5 credit a week, and when it was gone on data/texts/calls, she couldn't chat any further out with laptop times (shared laptop hahaha).

Now? BBM is the work of the devil, I warned her father, but he knew best. Not a row I can be arsed having for as long as she is getting to school on time!

I confiscate phones & devices as they go to bed at 10pm.

This might seem early for 16yr old but the problem I'd have is that my DS who is bad at getting out of bed for school has to catch a bus so if he misses that then I have to take him or as his parent, I would be the one getting fined for non attendance!

Bunny64, I bet your DCs will all own cheap PAYG phones you don't know about within a year if they don't already, or a mate to lend them a contract 3G phone now and again.

DD1 wouldn't miss her phone for the odd evening, she facetimes her DFs