Phones: Bedtime Battles for Parents of Teens

Ask Rachel anything When taking phones at night turns into a power struggle One of the hardest things about parenting teenagers is that the battles that matter most often happen at exactly the moment we have the least capacity to deal with them. A mum wrote to me about the nightly struggle over handing in her 13-year-old daughter’s phone. She’s exhausted by bedtime. Her daughter pushes back, calls her dad, and suddenly what should be a simple boundary becomes a negotiation, then a row. We’ve ...
When taking phones at night turns into a power struggle
One of the hardest things about parenting teenagers is that the battles that matter most often happen at exactly the moment we have the least capacity to deal with them.
A mum wrote to me about the nightly struggle over handing in her 13-year-old daughter’s phone. She’s exhausted by bedtime. Her daughter pushes back, calls her dad, and suddenly what should be a simple boundary becomes a negotiation, then a row. We’ve all got to the point where we’re exhausted and can’t keep our calm.
It’s an extreme situation, but I think it highlights something many parents will recognise: when we’re depleted, even sensible rules can become very hard to hold.
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