When Bradley got his phone two years ago, we had an agreement that the phone doesn’t sleep in his bedroom.
This means that every night, before he goes to bed, the phone is brought into the lounge or our bedroom, and that’s where it stays.
To be honest, we didn’t always stick to the rule. He ended up charging the phone overnight because the Samsung’s battery was so awful, and we didn’t worry too much because he was really only playing games on the phone.
Well, now things are different.
He’s got my old iPhone 5 now, and it seems that his friends are much more active online. OK, I knew he was chatting on Whatsapp more, but OMW I had no idea how busy it got at night!
On Thursday night, he plugged his phone into my laptop to charge, and then forgot about it.
The phone only stopped buzzing at 10pm! There were about 3 kids actively chatting until that time.
It’s a school night, for crying out aloud.
He’s only 11 years old, and so are the friends he’s talking to!
What on earth are they doing awake at that time of night?
Seriously, there’s no need to let your kids keep their phones in their bedrooms at night. They need their beauty sleep. If they want it for an alarm clock, then buy them an alarm clock!!
So poor Bradley now has the rule strictly imposed… there’s no way that phone is sleeping in his room now.
On the subject of alarm clocks though, Santa brought awesome Lego alarm clocks for them…
They work like a charm. Not too small and they have a cool backlight to light up the time at night.
I totally agree .. no phones in bedrooms
it seems like a worldwide phenomenon. It happens in our house too. We turn the Internet off now- when we rememberš
What are 11 year olds talking about till 10pm!!! That scares me. They should be fast asleep by that time
Both Megan and Michael have phones but they hardly ever use them. I don’t think Megan even has any of her friends’ phone numbers… And when she spent some of the December holiday with a friend, I could never reach her on her phone – I had to keep calling the friend’s mom’s phone to speak to her!
I know it’s coming, though, the endless phone calls and WhatsApps and *needing* to text so-and-so right this very second about something that that one said at school yesterday… But I’ll take this as it is while it lasts!
As we haven’t reached the phone age yet, this had not occurred to me, but I think this is a very good rule to have!
A is very low key on her phone but I think this has to be a rule in our house too. The boys have a Lego Yoda alarm clock.