Acceptable curfew for 15yp

[iwillcallhimgeorge]

DS is in yr10. He’s the old oldest in his year so will be 16 in September.
Until very recently if he was out with his friends I’d ask him to be back by 9pm. Later if he was at someone’s house/ a party.
Most of his friends now, though, have curfews of 11. They could just be walking around chatting, sitting in a local park etc. Im not comfortable with this BUT it’s really difficult to argue when everyone else allows it (and they genuinely do, DS isn’t pulling a fast one). They’re good kids. There’s a bit of booze at parties but not much at all and DS isn’t interested really.
So what is an acceptable time for a 15yo?

My DS15 is September born too. He's my third child tho, so I've been there done that somewhat with parenting teens.

The question isn't as black and white as you are think OP. There are too many variables, so one parents judgment of risk will be uncomparable to someone else's.

Depends on:

• where he is
• what he's doing
• who he's with
• if there is history of lying about any of the above
• if he is generally a rule-follower
• if you have a strong relationship and you know he'll contact you if feeling unsafe
• if his friends are generally rule-followers you trust
• if you're picking him up
• how far from home he is
• where you live and how safe the community is
• weekday or weekend
• school holidays or not
• one-off event or every night

You don't need positive answers to all the above. But you use these to judge and manage the risk to decide.

Don't let what hus friends parents do affect your own decisions. They could be lax, or shit parents.

Im a secondary safeguarding lead and have an observation on this.

I previously worked in a highly affluent and very highly achieving school. I now work in the opposite type of school.

In a high achieving school, with very engaged parents who keenly focus on the best possible outcomes for their children - many of these children don't have phones until 13yo / Year 9 and because this is fairly commonplace the children aren't that bothered by it. Similarly curfews of 9pm on school nights though to the end of Year 13 are not unusual, except for one-off occasions. In winter we will routinely see parents only allowing organised events after school because it gets dark early. Socialising is usually done at sports clubs and extra curricular activities - so with adult supervision only.

It's interesting to see that much of what I thought unreasonable or unrealistic as a parent of a teens myself, happens routinely in circles with high investment of children's outcomes.

Compare to the sink school, in the rough area of a socially deprived inner city where I now safeguard.

It would be unheard of for a child not to have a phone in Y7, and usually have all the 13+ social media apps too upon arrival in Y7. I would say parents let kids go out much later, and stay up much later.

This leads me to many a sociology pondering. If the sink school parents took the same approach as affluent school parents, to what extent would this change outcomes? How much of these two parenting styles is down to peer pressure from other parents? How could society change this? Anyway, I digress....