Help needed! Boundary setting with 15 year old autistic daughter

[RowanDeco]

We are giving my daughter a laptop for her birthday - what boundaries should we set? She wants it to live in her bedroom and us to trust her not to use it after 8.30pm. She already has trouble focussing on homework; I want to be allowed to see what she is accessing. Her phone has a 'bedtime' of 8.30 and gets charged overnight downstairs. Should we have a written contract? What is reasonable (but firm) parenting?!

Leave it downstairs. Too tempting in her bedroom.

Wise words - noted BigSandyBalls2015

What are you so afraid of which causes you to restrict your 15 year old daughter's phone usage to a time which I imagine is way before her bedtime? Imo, I would be fine with having both phone and laptop in her room at 15, I mean she's fifteen.

RowanDeco has every reason not to want her daughter to have phone and laptop in her bedroom over night. Teenagers and adults will faff around all night on the internet.

Basically, it's the homework issue. That's a whole other headache (and possible future thread!) - she's Year 10 now and is still homework avoidant. If she's off her phone there's a chance I might persuade her to do some. Sometimes.

Dd has autism, I'm not terribly restrictive on her gadgets because she generally only draws on her laptop as social media isn't an interest. The easiest way to ensure the homework is done though is to have the rule that there is no laptop until homework is completed. So you can choose to complete it straight away to get the laptop or you can stress and strop for an hour or two then do homework and only then get the laptop. It sinks in pretty quickly IME.