<p>“Although my parents don’t ask me to call them every hour, they do expect me to call or text before every time I go to a new place- going from friend’s house to the mall; mall to the movie theater; etc. It’s definitely a reasonable request.”</p>
<p>This was the system I grew up with. Of course, that was before teenagers (or most adults) had cell phones. The main reason that my parents wanted to know where we were was so that they could reach us in an emergency. Well, if the kid has a cell phone, you don’t need to know she’s at Tracy’s house in order to reach her.</p>
<p>There are a lot of 90’s sitcoms with episodes that just seem absurd now. Jerry Seinfeld is supposed to meet a supermodel at the airport, but he can’t be there in time. Oh noes! She will think that Jerry stood her up. Jerry tries to send George to the airport to meet her and tell her that he is delayed. Or Roseanne Conner’s daughter Becky lies that she is sleeping over at Susan’s house when she is really on a date with Mark. Roseanne keeps calling Susan’s house and asking to speak to Becky, and Susan has to pretend that Becky is in the shower or taking a walk.</p>
<p>We never gave our kids a curfew. I don’t remember anything going past 1 am on a weekend, and there were no late night events on weekdays other than practice for school plays. I was very strict about driving with other teens, though, so I always picked them up.</p>
<p>Most of the time, my college aged son and his friends don’t even go out until 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. My 12 year old stays out at friend’s and parties well past 8:30 (although I confess to getting annoyed at Bat/Bar Mitzvah parties that don’t end until 11:30 p.m., which I think is too late, since they often don’t get home after midnight).</p>
<p>Curfews are personal decisions, but in my experience, children who have been so grossly overprotected in high school tend to go a bit berserk with the freedoms of college, when they are making their own decisions. Some of these kids spend the entire fall semester going to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. (and some get sick, as a result). </p>
<p>My advice to the OP would be to relax the curfew to at least 10:30, to allow your daughter to participate in the activities that are normal rights of passage with her friends (later movies, ice cream, hanging out) who will be parting in a matter of months. It is important to relax these restrictions a bit so that she will be able to act responsibly and independently come September.</p>
<p>My D never had a curfew either. She DID have to tell us what time she was going to come home, and if that was going to change, she needed to call. Also, she called when she was on her way home and left a message on the answering machine, if we were already asleep. That seemed a lot more reasonable to us than creating a random curfew that she would have to be constantly thinking about. It seemed to us that having her create her own curfew, we would be encouraging self-reliance, self-discipline, and responsibility. As it turned out, she probably came up at the same time we would have set for her anyway. Maybe because others had curfews, but even now, when she is home for vacations she still calls us when she is on her way home. We explained to her originally that that was courteous, that her dad and I call each other when we are on our way home, too. That all seemed to make sense to her.</p>
<p>I agree that letting others know where you are is so that you can be reached, and in this day of everyone having a cell phone, that is not necessary. But it is also so if you never come back, people know where to start looking. At least that’s what I told my kids.</p>
<p>Back in the day, when my husband travelled, he left an itinerary with contact information. No longer necessary. Back in the day, I would tell my parents if I was visiting a friend and their number when I was in college. No longer necessary.</p>
<p>Until recently,D had to be in at 9:00 on school nights (unless school event or dance class), and 11:00 on non school nights. Her close friends had similar curfews, so it was rarely a problem. Now that she is 18 and graduating soon, we are letting it go later (no specific time), but she is usually in at 12:00 unless there is a sleepover.</p>
<p>I think this is for parents to decide based on their own values, what their child is like, etc., that said, I think 8:00 PM is really early for a child this age who will be going to college in a few months.</p>
<p>My own parents (really just my Dad) were very strict with me in H.S., not for any reason other than I was the oldest girl in the family. I was a good student, responsible and hung around with a group of friends who were fun but not wild. I felt as if I were not trusted and honestly like I was being punished for something I didn’t do and had no intention of doing.</p>
<p>My twins have a curfew of 10:30 on Sun - Thurs. On Friday and Saturday, nights the curfew is 12:30. They will be graduating in a few weeks and will be working locally over the summer. I wonder if the curfew needs to change? I realize they will be off to college in the Fall, but I don’t want them out too late.</p>
<p>My 17 year old D has an 11:30 pm curfew - actually, she is required to leave wherever she is at 11 pm.</p>
<p>In our house, curfew has 2 purposes:
Nothing good happens after midnight - I want D home safe and off the roads before midnight.
DH and/or I stay up until D comes home. We are old and tired (ha ha) and we can’t stay up any later than that.</p>
<p>DS is home from his soph year in college. We don’t wait up for him, and he doesn’t have a curfew. But he’s 20 and very level-headed. He doesn’t go out much, if he does he’s either at the movies or at a friend’s house playing poker.</p>
<p>D2 is 17 and has a junior license, so if she is driving the state of PA gives her an 11:00 pm curfew. If she is not driving on a weekend, the curfew gets relaxed to 12:00 or 12:30, depending on the event. (Like some other parents who posted here, I don’t sleep well until D2 is home…and I’m old and tired!)</p>
<p>D1 is home for the summer after her freshman year away at college. She has no curfew. Interestingly, I can sleep just fine when D1 is out, so I have no idea what time she comes in. I don’t think it’s much later than 1:00 am.</p>
<p>No actual curfew, but I get really edgy when she is out late because she is driving and I stress about the other drivers on the road. She always calls to tell us where she is and when she is changing venues and I do not have a reason to not trust her. I just hate the nighttime driving !!! I hope I learn to deal because it will be a fact of life.</p>
<p>8:00 is a ridiculous curfew for a hs senior IMO. She is an adult in the eyes of the law and should be in the eyes of parents. It is time to respect her and acknowledge her as an adult.</p>
<p>Or, give her a lollipop and let her stay up until 11:00pm on her computer.</p>
<p>8!!! good lord. i dont even think i had a curfew this year. my parents trust me a lot and recognize that next year ill be on my own. im pretty sure my curfews been past 8 since about 8th grade…</p>
<p>curfew for my hs grad, turning 18 yr old is somewhat flexible. First, I need to know where and with whom she’ll be. and if she gets vague, we talk til its specific ;)</p>
<p>prior to graduating I wanted her home around midnight, now that she’s a free spirit for a couple weeks I’m open to her staying out a bit later…for a party etc. I believe in giving our kids freedom that they earn by being trustworthy. also know if we don’t respect their ability to make good choices how could they possibly manage at college…</p>
<p>8 p.m. sounds pretty harsh, that seems like it would really limit what she could participate in. For instance, to catch a movie and still get back by 8, the movie would have to start at about 5:30, and she’d have to eat dinner at about…4:30 or so (she’s probably not even off work by then).</p>
<p>Just wanted to chime in that the 8 pm curfew is not only overly strict, but potentially dangerous. Your daughter will be leaving for college soon, and you haven’t given her a chance to be an adult and make choices. When she leaves for college she will not know how to act like an adult and be responsible.</p>
<p>My first response to this thread is that there should be NO difference in curfews between girls and boys.</p>
<p>I concur with those that say 8:00 p.m. is a ridiculously early curfew, and if your D is going away to college, you are doing her no favors by imposing such strict rules. After all, you aren’t going to expect her to lock herself in her dorm room at an expected time (or at least I hope you don’t!). She’s going to have to learn to figure all of this out on her own and learn to make responsible choices.</p>
<p>I empathize, because it’s hard to let go. I think the D’s requested curfew is very generous (my kids would have pushed for something later) and you should accept it, OP.</p>
<p>My daughter is also a senior. 10pm on school nights. 1am on weekend nights, but we can negotiate any of these times. My limit is 2am on weekend nights. I don’t want her getting into the habit of staying up all night, because that will be easy to do in college, and is a bad idea. </p>
<p>Before I set these times, I tested her. She recently started dating a guy a year ahead of her (her other boyfriends didn’t drive yet)(he is the ex-boyfriend of a friend of hers, so she knows him), he is out of school for the summer. She ran into him at a school event in April, and they have been seeing alot of each other. The first week they saw each other everyday. She was coming home really late every night. Then started turning her alarm off in the AM and missing things. I gave her a chance to self-regulate, but it wasn’t happening–so I set the curfew. She *****ed at first, but I own the car and the cellphone, and she wised-up pretty fast. She missed the curfew the very first night by 30 minutes and did not call me, so I grounded her from seeing him for 6 days. Now she follows the curfew and no more angst. </p>
<p>I can’t believe that a soon-to-be-graduating senior would be given a curfew of 8 pm. What universe does this parent inhabit? I felt it was important to give my daughter the opportunity to make decisions while in high school and to learn from her mistakes while I was still close by to determine the consequences, minimize the damage, and to take advantage of teachable moments. When she is at college, she will be on her own. To go from no freedom to total freedom is a huge thing to expect a teenager to do well. </p>
<p>Maybe this makes sense in cultures that limit the freedom of and control girls from birth till death wherein they NEVER have any freedom–but if freedom comes with ‘being on their own’ in college, better to let the girl get some practice at making decisions.</p>
<p>Could 8:00 p.m. be the curfew on school nights, perhaps? I confess that I had trouble accepting this as a serious question. Honestly, an 8:00 p.m. weekend curfew for a high school senior would be extemely unusual in the United States, unless there was some unusual problem with the child.
With our kids we’ve never had set curfews, but have dealt with the issue based on the arctivity involved. When is the movie over? How long is the party supposed to last? Who will be bringing you home? What time do you have to get up the next day? We are much more concerned that the kids come home or call when they said they would than what the specific time is.</p>