This week on Parenting, one mother asked for help getting her teenage daughter to give up her phone at night now that school has started back again.
“My daughter is 14 and she’s going into second year,” she told Moncrieff.
“Over the summer, she got really addicted to her phone and she stayed up until all hours of the night on that thing.
“But it was the summertime, so I wasn’t overly concerned.
“Now that school is back, I’ve started taking her phone off her after half eight.
“She doesn’t need to be on it all night, she needs to sleep - I know how tired teenagers get.
“When I told her this, all hell broke loose.
“She cried, she screamed, she slammed the doors and now she’s not talking to me.
“I know how important socialising and being online is to teens these days, but I’m not having her messing up her sleep schedule for a few texts.
“How do I make this transition easier?”
Mother comforting her upset teen daughter at home. Image: olga Yastremska / Alamy. 15 January 2023Family psychotherapist Joanna Fortune said this parent “wants it both ways”.
“You want to put in a fairly hefty restriction, and you want your teenager to be okay with it, and that’s just not going to happen,” she said.
“When you say, ‘Over the summer she got really addicted to her phone’, it’s also fair to balance that statement out by saying, ‘We didn’t apply any boundaries to her phone use over the summer’, and she understandably took advantage of that.
“Now we’re in an established pattern that isn’t going to work for us, so we want to change it – so, that's what’s going on here.”
Collaborative approach
Joanna said that while this teen will likely never be happy with this new rule, it is still worth approaching things in a more collaborative way.
“From her perspective, you’re changing the plan without discussion with her,” she said.
“You just came and said, ‘Hey, this is now going to be how it is,’ and you’re expecting her to be okay with it.
“It would serve you better to go back to her and say, ‘I’ve messed up, I took my eye off the ball over the summer.
“’I let things fall into a pattern that was never going to be okay in September, and I didn’t let you know it was never going to be okay, and I should have done something different.
“’I’m worried about you getting enough sleep, I’m worried about how you’ll be able to concentrate in school, and I understand you’re upset, I can take that and I’m going to help you through it’.”
According to Joanna, while it may seem to parents that there could be nothing of interest going down in those few hours before bed, that may not necessarily be the case, and it is worth acknowledging this girl’s feelings that she will be missing out.
Main image: Mother Arguing With Teenage Daughter Over Use Of Mobile Phone. Image: Daisy-Daisy. 17 July 2018
