Curfew for a 13 year old

[PrettyPleaseXo]

My DS is turning 13 in a few days and as it is summer spending a lot of time out of the house with his friends and with his girlfriend. They are spending time at the beach and at the park. His curfew is 8.30pm. Do you think this is a sensible curfew? He is pushing for it to by 9pm which I think is way too late and just for clarification it will not be this late when it is winter and it gets darker earlier or when he goes back to school.

What curfew do you have for your 13 year olds?

@mytuppennyworth it depends where you live, local to us the worst the kids get up to is maybe being a bit destructive running across flower beds or using benches as half pipes. The older teens maybe be splitting some booze taken from the parents but they would also do that in someone garden.

Our friendship group is made up of professionals in their 30s...........we all had the odd night sneaking booze to someone house party or a park bench by the river it's part of growing up. Dsis nearly 11 he's currently at a small park/field with his friends, he has his phone and the older ones would snitch on them if they were up to no good.

OP 9 seems fair and maybe 9:30 next year.

My 13 year old has gone to the beach with friends today for the first time unsupervised by an adult. I know where she is, who she is with and that she will be home by 6pm. I can see her location on findmyiphone. She has checked in once already. There is no way she would be out there after 6pm this year and she won’t be next year either.

She also doesn’t randomly “hang around” anywhere in the evenings. There is a park very nearby that she could go to if I knew exactly who she was meeting and what the plan was and how long she would be there for, that’s fine, but any kind of aimless hanging around in the evening wouldn’t be, particularly if I didn’t know the friends well.

I took the same approach with her older brother and his freedom increased slowly over the years. Children need supervision, even from a distance as they are building independence and learning to cope with unexpected situations and to make choices and to identity risks.

I agree that teens use parks in the evening but - the conversation was around whether 6pm was too late ! my local playground is still full of small children at six.

The more we encourage children to be out in public spaces - the safer those spaces become. Teenagers who are out in parks are outdoors rather than on the X box - why judge them for that?