Curfews for teens

I’m for curfews of teenagers. Many parents have shared a saying with me, “Nothing good ever happens after midnight (or 10 p.m.).” I am also reminded of the popular public service announcement from the 1960s and 1970s, “It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

For parents who are trying to decide how to set a curfew, the age of the teenager is one obvious factor. It makes sense to me that a younger teenager or one with a history of pushing the behavioral envelope needs an earlier and stricter curfew. However, in fairness, a teenager who is older and has a history of respecting curfew and staying out of trouble probably deserves a later curfew. 

Among parents who impose a curfew, one hears a good bit of difference in how parents manage curfews. The classic approach, which we can call the fixed time curfew, is to set a time by which teenagers must be home on school nights and a somewhat later time on non-school nights. Another approach is to establish a curfew on a night-by-night basis, depending on circumstances. The night-by-night approach means parents adjust the curfew based on where the teenager is, whom he or she is with, the level of adult supervision and so on. There are advantages to both the fixed time approach and the night-by-night approach. The fixed time approach benefits from clarity and predictability. The latter has the advantage of being more adaptable to circumstances, but probably does invite the teenager to push to stay out later, as in “Hey, Mom, can I just stay at Sarah’s house another hour? We’re watching a movie.”

It is clear to me that cell phones have had an impact on the practice of curfew. I honestly cannot decide if it is positive or negative. On one hand, parents take some comfort from their teenagers being able to call or text them when they are out and from the parents being able to call or text the teenagers. However, I wonder if it has also made it easier for some teenagers to use that to their advantage by sending parents reassuring texts, for example, so the parents feel more comfortable with the teenager being out later.

I also see some real potential from these technologies. If smartphones had been around when my teenagers were at home, I would have required them to participate in an apps, like “Find My Friends,” which would allow me to see where that phone is on the map. I would encourage parents to look into that approach.

In the meantime, I do encourage parents to employ some kind of curfew that takes into account the teenager’s personality and history and recognizes that there is definitely something to the idea that high-risk behavior is more likely to occur late at night.

Dale Wisely, Ph.D. is director of student services at Mountain Brook Schools and has been a child and adolescent psychologist for nearly 30 years.