How Late is OK for 13?
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| Sat, 03-24-2007 - 10:00am |
How late do/did you let your 13 yo's stay out on weekend nights?
What's normal... safe... appropropriate for very young teens? What did you allow when your's were 13 and would you allow the same thing now, based on what you now know about the teen world and changing culture?
I feel I'm riding in the middle between the very strict parents and the very relaxed parents and I'm not sure if I'm making choices based on my memory of DS as a little boy... or if it's just plain silly for a 13 year old to be out at 11, 12, 1 at night -- excluding sleepovers, of course.
(It's kinda funny because the kids whose parents I think undersupervise and have very "relaxed" limits, DS tells me those kids don't LIKE their parents very much. The kids whose parents are strict, those kids get mad but generally like their parents. I pointed this out to DS during a heated *discussion* about being out late and he had to pause in surprise. THAT was an interesting part of our conversation. But I digress....)
Karen

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I'm 13 turning 14 in April and my parents usually let me stay out sometime between 10-11. It depends where I'm going though. If I'm going to see a movie and it gets out closer to 11 it's usually ok. If I'm just going out with friends to hang at Starbucks or in town, then I usually have to be back closer to 10 which is understandable. Kids get in trouble when they have nothing to do. Hope I could help!
~Dana
Curiously, I've found that the parents of girls we know tend to be more lenient(either regarding curfews out or curfews on the internet -- I'm amazed by the girls I can see on myspace that are up on school nites until after midnite) than the parents of the boys we know. Yes, there are exceptions, but when I was younger it was just the opposite. When I was younger, it was the girls who were held back from the wild boys!
As for my son, he doesn't get to do much of anything mid-week. He's too busy with sports, scouts, and school. Besides, he still needs lots of sleep. If he isn't in bed by 9.30 at the latest he can barely get up in the AM. Squeeze his hour-long shower into that, and there isn't much time for socializing.
But he has few friends that live close by. So weekend evening activity, when it happens, is something we are still figuring out. (Thanks for the post with the elasctic curfew concept!) Of course, spending the night elsewhere is a different thing, but movies, skating, bowling, and a few mixed-gender parties has come up. I think if I or another parent I know supervises well is in attendance, I don't worry as much. But on their own at the skating or bowling alley just feels different to me. 13 just seems so young still.
That's why I was wondering what it was like for others.
Karen, I'm one of those parents who is slightly (and I do mean slightly) more lenient with DD than I was with DSs, but it could very well be a factor of exhaustion! LOL After being thru the mill with 3 boys I'm TIRED! ;) Seriously, N has handled her freedoms much more wisely than her brothers did and is much more set in her goals for life after high school than they were, so I'm more comfortable letting her have the freedoms than I was with the boys.
I'm amazed at how late some of these kids are up on the computer too. How do they ever function in school if they're up past midnight on the computer?
Rose
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