<p>A lot of parents have said they can’t sleep when the kids are still out. My best friend is the same way. </p>
<p>I have to be up at 5:00 a.m. during the school year. So even on Friday nights, I go to bed pretty early. Even if the kids are home by 10:30, I’m already sound asleep. Our house rule is that they come in by whatever curfew we have set, and knock on our bedroom door to let us know they’re in. (I usually wake up in the wee hours and then go back to sleep, so if I don’t know they are in at that point I have to get up and check…)</p>
<p>Anyway, I CAN sleep when they are out. I CAN’T stay awake waiting for them. </p>
<p>I don’t have any problem sleeping when they are out. </p>
<p>Our oldest was/is a complete night owl. The summer after his senior year in high school when we lifted his midnight curfew he used to go out after getting off work around midnight from his busboy job. He loved that job because he said nothing was really happening before midnight anyway. He often goes to bed between 4:00 and 6:00 am. When home from college he is totally bored because there isn’t much happening around here after 2:00 a.m. so he would want to have a bunch of kids hanging out in our back yard by the pool, listening to music, etc. That I didn’t like because I couldn’t trust them not to be drinking. Our solution now is to not have him home much. He sends emails from Brazil now telling us the discotechas were hopping until 6:00 a.m.–he loves to dance. He never seems to have trouble getting up for class at 9:00 a.m. and has become very proficient in his language, probably from talking to all the girls, so I figure it is time well spent. I think he sleeps on the beach in the afternoons.</p>
<p>The younger one still has a midnight curfew, so is home but stays up chatting on line until about 2:00 a.m. and gets up by 10:00 a.m. H and I are up at 5:00 a.m. even on Saturday and Sunday. I am therefore sound asleep well before midnight but sleep lightly and check on him periodically throughout the night. He is not as much of a night owl as his brother who used to get grounded 1 night for every 15 minutes past curfew and was typically grounded 3 out of 7 nights a week. S2 has never missed a curfew–I can set the clocks by him. But I don’t know when we would see him if he had no curfew at all.</p>
<p>I used to not be able to sleep, but as I get older I just can’t stay awake. I have a very physical job and have to get up at 5:45 am. So my cell phone is always right next to me on my nightstand. I got used to that from the fall semester when S was having a very difficult time. He would text or call me in the middle of the night and we would either talk or chat on IM. </p>
<p>When he is home from school, I can just look out my window to see if his truck is there. He tells us where he is going, but if he is not back yet, I’ll text him. </p>
<p>LOL, one night S called us from his room here at home (it is downstairs and we are upstairs) to tell us he had a bat in his room! Since he didn’t want to try to escape as it was flying all over, he pulled the covers over himself and called us to help. Very resourceful!</p>
<p>Now yes. After they left for college I taught myself not to listen for them. That was the dividing line for me. Before then I would doze on the sofa until they came in and they had to let me know when that would be. We never had hard line curfews, always situational so they had to say what they were doing and when they would be back. After they graduated from HS I stopped staying up. There is a small light on the stairwell. They turn that off when they come home. If they are staying somewhere all night they let me know so I won’t wake up in the morning and worry. </p>
<p>Much easier now than getting up for babies :). .</p>
<p>When the kids were in high school and esp for the d I always stayed up. It also depends on the situation, going for a gathering with gfs I know and at their house -I am fine, unless I suspect she was lying. If there was a boy involved, esp. one she was dating - I make sure she sticks to the curfew. </p>
<p>Somehow I worry less about the s. He was never involved in the party scene or drugs or drinking and was seldom home late throughout high school. </p>
<p>Nowadays, they always call if they are late, so I tend not to stay up anymore, but I still worry about accidents a little bit.</p>
<p>While in high school, I either waited up for them, dozed on the couch, or asked them to wake me up when they came in. Not because I couldn’t sleep, but because they needed some incentive to come in on time and okay. </p>
<p>Once they graduated from high school, all I asked is that they let me know an approximate time they were expected home or not at all. Just so if they disappeared, I could tell the police when they were expected back :)</p>
<p>After college age, their life is theirs. They do, out of courtesy, tell me if they plan to spend the night here. But if they tell me they aren’t coming back for the night, they aren’t held to that. They are always welcome back.</p>
<p>Yes, because my spouse can’t. LOL, but true.</p>
<p>As an aside, when I was a teenager, my mom would tell me the curfew. After I left she would put an alarm clock outside her door, set for the curfew time. She would go to sleep. I had to be home in time to turn off the alarm or she would know I missed it. Smart!</p>
<p>Ditto to dbwes post. I go to sleep when I’m ready whether they’re home or not. Once I’m asleep, it generally takes a seismic event to wake me up. So there’s a phone on the nightstand with a loud ring. </p>
<p>It’s summer; curfews are negotiable for the almost 17-year-old and nonexistent for the 19-year-old. Actually, CA law dictates that younger son has to be home, or off the road, by 11 p.m. if he is driving himself. If friends are driving him, we stretch that by an hour or two at most. Neither H nor I wait up.</p>
<p>I can’t go to sleep until they are home safely which is generally not a big problem for me, since I can be a bit of a night owl sometimes. During HS it was also a question of wanting to greet them as they came in - often a time for sharing the events of the evening and I enjoyed that. Many parents I know also think it’s important as a way of keeping tabs (ie the sniff test) on what might be going on. At any rate, from my kids perspectives they knew that it was not just a question of a curfew - they were also being considerate to us by getting in at a reasonable hour. Even college aged son, who has no curfew, so to speak, doesn’t abuse this (too much) when he’s home. My point of view is that just as he would have to be considerate even as an adult at any other home in which he is staying, it’s fine for him to continue to be considerate of us when he’s home. Between drunk drivers and other risks being out on the roads too late is nothing I encourage at any age. A friend’s son was recently in a horrible car accident at 3 AM - fell asleep behind the wheel (he’s OK now). </p>
<p>I think that some of the solutions that the posters who need their sleep but want to be aware that their kids made it home OK devised are clever, too!</p>
<p>We don’t wait up. We are not night owls and are usually sound asleep at 11:00 or shortly thereafter. S2 (18, just graduated) usually gets home around 1:00 on averge (earlier if he has to go to work the next day) but even if he came in at 11:30, we would already be asleep. If he’s not coming home, he calls before 10:00 to let me know. He is very quiet. I usually don’t even hear him come in unless the dog decides to bark.</p>
<p>Sometime I sleep, sometime I do not. I asked D to knock on my door when she is in, even if it is 3am. I am up at 5:30am year around. I am lucky, I do not need much sleep. 3 hours of sleep is very normal, 5 hours is awesome. Coffe and/or morning swim works perfectly. I can nevel fall asleep during day time, so napping is out of question.</p>
<p>I set my alarm on my cell phone for 10-15 minutes past curfew, she knows to come in and shut it off. I get too tired to stay awake. I trust her but worry about accidents. I don’t want to wake at 5am and realize she never came home.</p>
<p>^^You’re the second poster here who mentioned variations on that ingenious system. But: couldn’t they just come in, turn off the alarm, and go out again?</p>
<p>I like to go to bed by 11. My older daughter has been very good about getting in by 11 on week nights. On weekends I will fall asleep and wake up when she comes home. We’ll usually chat for a little while, especially if it’s a big night (date).</p>
<p>We also have alarm that will chime when someone comes in and out of the house.</p>
<p>p3t, on the subject of kids coming in and going back out, I remember we were missing our son once due to a misunderstanding where he said he would be home at 10:00 and we were thinking 10:00 pm and he was thinking 10:00 am based on permission received several days earlier for a sleepover that we had completely forgotten about. In the course of trying to track him down, which ran into post-midnight hours before we were successful, we had more than one parent go in to wake up their sleeping child to find out when ours was last seen to discover supposed sleeping child was nowhere in the house. These kids were not all together either. S2 has a wide range of friends and a lot got into trouble that night before we finally found the right one. He was not happy with us for getting all his friends in trouble, but came scurrying home when we finally did track him down and realized it wasn’t a good time to chastise us. I was a complete basket case by the time we found him. He was in middle school at the time and didn’t have a cell phone yet. This scenario would never happen today. Although cell phones may permit your child to lie about where they are, you at least can get ahold of them at any time and easily clear up these kinds of misunderstandings.</p>
<p>I still make a point of wandering around multiple times a night because it could otherwise be an issue in this house, but I get the impression that it’s not a problem for many. You just have to know your child.</p>
<p>Back when my oldest was in high school and we had him wake us up to tell us he was home, I woke up once past his curfew and thought to myself “oh,no. He never came home.” Went downstairs to start looking for him to find him at the computer. I said “you’re supposed to tell me you’re home.” His reply was: “I knocked on the door, you said come in, I told you I was home and you said thank you.”</p>
<p>I suppose if you have to worry about them shutting off an alarm and then sneaking back out again, then you have to worry about them sneaking out when you are fast asleep anyway. That’s why you have to know your child.</p>
<p>I don’t stay up for the son who is home from college. I do stay up for my 16 year old daughter.</p>
<p>TheAnalyst, your story in post 18 should be an eye-opener for many parents. Our hs had a 14 year old girl who snuck out one Friday night and got hit by a car. The rescue crew couldn’t identify her because she was unconscious and had no ID on her. It wasn’t until the next morning when her parents woke up and she wasn’t home that they reported her missing and found out she was in Intensive Care with severe head injuries. She’s ok now, thank heavens.</p>