Would have been a great day when my high school students were done with homework so the Internet coukd have been shut down at 9:30 at our house. :(. Their EC and homework load made that impossible most days.
@cobrat, what is with the '*'s – are you footnoting or something?
I took my son’s iphone every weeknight at 9pm through high school. Otherwise he would only get a few hours of sleep on school nights and I was not okay with that. He complained endlessly but I didn’t budge and I have absolutely no regrets.
Cobrat likes to include asterisks in his posts.
As to the EC’s and homework-you would be surprised what they can get done when they know they have a hard deadline of 9:30 for the online stuff. We’re not cutting the power to the house-just turning off the screens. There is still typically a lot of reading and writing to be done.
Their time management skills have improved enormously so they have enough time to do all their online work and still skype with their friends all over the planet (ok the Aussie friends are first thing in the morning, but you get the idea).
We don’t consider it to be one of those things where the kids get out from under our thumb and go nuts-we look at it more like, wow, my life and digestion worked better when I wasn’t drinking soda and staring at a screen 24/7, maybe I should go back to that.
A lot of kids don’t know how to model healthy behavior because they’ve never been exposed to the routine of it. While we don’t expect the kids to adopt every healthy routine we have (heck it took us a while to adopt some of them!) at least they’re aware of the feeling of the routine, and know how to fall back on it if they start to struggle while becoming adults.
@MaineLonghorn, recently I have noticed this, although don’t remember it in the past. Just wondering if there is some hidden meaning…
One asterisk after a word/sentence means I’m adding a footnote.
Two asterisks before and after a sentence means I am describing an action in a manner similar to some play books describing actions of one or more characters in a scene of a given play.
@CaliCash wrote:
WiFi being turned off at night is standard practice at boarding schools.
There have been times that we pulled the plug on the modem at night with our 9th grader. The problem for us was that our 11th grader and my husband usually are working late on their computers. And we don’t have cable we have Sling so I wouldn’t be able to watch TV…
Thanks for all the advice and reassurance. He actually has a good number of other activities too. Probably impacts social life more than schoolwork. Already does robotics. Like the programming idea. Thanks again.
One simple solution I’ve suggested to some friends and clients is to have two or more separate wireless networks either in the form of multiple routers or one router with capability to generate 2 or more “guest” wi-fi networks*. Give the child/guests access to the secondary/guest wifi network which can be turned on/off as needed without needing to turn off the cable modem/wifi access to the adults and those who legitimately need it late at night.
If it’s a secondary router, simply unplug and secure the power adapter each night.
Ended up working quite swimmingly for the friends/clients. Of course, the kids who had no legit needs after a certain late hour hated it.
Some wireless access points can turn off only certain devices after a certain time (Parental Controls). I need my CC late at night, but my D doesn’t need the temptation of sneaking out to her phone after we’ve gone to bed to text her boy/girlfriend. She can still use data, but I can track that much more easily if I need to. So, only D16 goes ‘full Luddite’ after 11:00.
This worked for us.
We have an understanding that there is no electronic time before dinner and phones must be checked in downstairs before bed. The phone check in is mostly to avoid their friends texting for homework help late at night. Our internet shuts off at 2am.
When they’re home in the afternoon, this has reinforced getting homework done as early as possible and kept gaming from interfering with dinner time.
We’re not legalistic but, they do have to ask for an exception on school days. Weekends and holidays are different.
-forgot to add- My favorite part of this is when they finish early and have “nothing to do.” I always suggest spending time together. They groan and then wrestle mania breaks out. Nothing says “I love you, brother” like a headlock.
I’ve assisted with quite a few middle school activities and I haven’t seen anything good come of smart phones. The kids who own them are chronically distracted, very poor team members, and also very distracting to the other kids. I wouldn’t give one to a middle schooler.
It can be restricted even in some professional work environments for ostensible adults. I’ve worked in environments where colleagues and I had to check-in all personal electronic devices due to information security policies. Only exceptions were short breaks/mealtimes if they were taken OUTSIDE the work environment/office.
This often meant that we’d be out of contact with families/friends/social contacts for several hours at a stretch…especially considering office phones/computers were not to be used for non-work related communications. Sometimes…one just has to learn to suck it up and deal going without one’s personal smartphone, flip phone, or other personal electronics for several hours at a stretch. Some colleagues had to deal with unhappy grumbling spouses irate at not being able to contact them in the course of the day despite the fact those spouses knew very well what my colleagues were signing up for when taking a position with this firm.
An ex-GF could only take phone calls during her lunch period and short breaks because her workplace environment was so far underground cell reception didn’t reach and her work environment barred use of office equipment for any personal non-work related communications.
The reason we decided to turn it off for everyone vs. designated wireless routers is because we felt it was a healthy lifestyle choice-we try not to do too much “do as I say, not as I do” with the girls. They’re not stupid; they see that their lifestyle is somewhat similar to ours, and we didn’t want it to be seen as a punishment.
The adults end up doing more wrestle mania, as well. 
Electronics don’t even work at all at Hogwarts, and look at how many valuable friendships were forged there.
" I wouldn’t give one to a middle schooler."
Our public school system has thing called “bring your own technology”. They expect all the kids to bring a cell phone,lap top,tablet or some other device that can get on the internet at school. All the devices are supposed to be registered at the school so that hopefully they don’t get stolen. In middle school I refused to let my youngest take anything. The teachers then assign things that the kids are supposed do or look up on the internet. It really depends on the teacher on how much they use the internet. Some teacher seem to hate the idea and make the kids put their cell phone in a box at the beginning of class.There were times that my youngest grades suffered because he couldn’t look stuff up during class. I really don’t know how the low income kids handle this.
My 11th grader has a cell phone but refuses to take it to school. So far the teachers have the kids work in groups or they go to the library and use the computers there. However my 9th grader ran into problems almost right away in French class. The teacher told everyone to look up words on the internet on a daily basis with very little time… He was stuck using a French to English dictionary and couldn’t keep up. At first I let him use mine but then went ahead and got him one for school.
While the 9th grader does use the cell phone to text his friends he is much more likely to be on skype with a bunch of them instead.
i have a kid that age too who likes minecraft; and an older kid who used to do lots of video games. I think its partly the age; and i think your kid will grow out of it at some point. I see 8th grd as a time to relax a bit; enjoy life and get ready for HS.
I guess they have to turn off the fireplaces so they are not up all night talking to friends.