My Ivykids are almost-12 and almost-15. Call me old-fashioned, but we’ve set a cut-off time of 9pm for them to call friends or receive calls. Evening is family-homework-chore time, and they’ve had all day at school to chat with their friends.
So the kidlets are in bed, and I’m reading in bed before I go to sleep when I hear a muffled ring ring.
I look at the clock.
It’s 10:55pm.
Now, Ivylad’s father has recently died, so we no longer have that phone call to dread. Who the hell could be calling? Is someone hurt? Did someone have an accident?
I scramble out of bed and rush to through the living room to answer the phone sitting on top of the computer desk, nearly stubbing my toe on the ironing board.
“Hello?” I ask anxiously.
“Is (Ivygirl) there?”
So, this is some eleven year old girl calling my daughter at nearly 11 o’clock at night??
“Do you know what time it is?” I ask sternly. She mumbles an apology and hangs up.
I have no idea who it was. 9:05pm I could handle. I would have told her politely that Ivygirl does not take phone calls after 9pm. But 11pm?
Obviously I have no more an idea of what the call might have been about than you, but maybe the girl was depressed and needed someone to talk to and had an idea that your daugher might be the one to listen and make her feel better. Maybe the girl was just molested by her father and needed a shoulder to cry on. Maybe the girl was having nightmares and needed to hear a friendly voice. Maybe the girl was any number of things that had nothing to do with being an out-of-control airhead who stays up late and is inconsiderate of other people’s phone rules.
I understand your rant, but perhaps you could have been a bit more sympathetic, at least until you knew for sure she was just calling to gossip about a cute boy at school, then you could have firmly explained the 9:00pm rule.
(yeah, I guess I am projecting myself and my experience with my best friend’s mom)
I hate getting calls after 9:30, and I’m 28. I’ve gotten some funny looks from people when I asked them to not call after that unless it’s an emergency, but honestly, people, that’s when I start winding down for bed. I do not want to chit-chat at 11 PM.
It could well be that your daughter’s friend has her own phone so her parents didn’t know she was calling that late. Or else her family is just a lot more relaxed about phone call times than you (and I) are. Nonetheless, there is no reason to let her call past 9 unless it’s something serious, though I’d let your daughter be the one to tell her. “Yeah, my really mean Mom doesn’t like it. Yeah, it’s stuuuupid, but you know Moms…”
I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you how much I despise this mentality. Why should I be expected to give credence to every far-fetched remotely possible excuse for poor behavior? Maybe she was just an airhead with poor manners calling at a late hour to gab about nothing, maybe not. Frankly, I don’t think it’s too much to expect polite behavior from everyone (including not calling at 11PM), nor do I think its unreasonable to be miffed when that expectation is not met.
I’m not inclined to excuse every jerk I run across just because this just might possibly be the worst moment of his wretched, pathetic life. In the words of my dear missus, “Get over yourself.”
Hey, ivygirl, we have the same rule in our house! My 16-year-old daughter has friends that she can call late at night, and that’s fine (although she has a bedtime of midnight, so later than that is out of the question), and our 13-year-old, who is a night owl, will often stay on the phone with a night-owl friend until the wee hours (on non-shcool nights, of course), we do not allow incoming calls after 9PM unless it’s an emergency. For one thing, it’s my winding down time (I usually go to bed around 10, because my 4-year-old is up by 6:30), plus, with hubby’s parents being as old as they are, middle-of-the-night phone ringing just skeeves me right the hell out. My 16-year-old has tried to convince me that this rule is barbaric and unreasonable. She tried the “It’s my phone, too” complaint. I told her it is not her phone, as she didn’t purchase it, and doesn’t pay the phone bills. It’s my phone, and she uses it only by my leave. She hates me.
BTW, there are very good reasons why my 16-year-old has a bed time, and my 13-year-old does not, but it had nothing to do with the OP, so I’ll just leave it alone for now.
Another Doper parent checking in. We also have a set a curfew for calls, although it varies by child with the 8 y/o curfew being 7:30, 11 @ 8:30 and the 9 for the 13 y/o. I have told the oldest that his will be extended until 10 when he reaches highschool. He asked when his calls would be extended till 11, I told him when he moves.
I completely understand your complaint, ivylass. My only hope is that you didn’t punish your daughter for her friend’s behavior.
When I was but an adolescent, I had a phone curfew, too, and made it clear to my friends that I wasn’t allowed to take calls after a certain hour. Nonetheless, there were those one or two people who, because my parents were so nice and wonderful and sweet (and they were, but that didn’t stop them from grounding the shit out of me), just figured I wouldn’t really get in any trouble . . .
I finally just started unplugging my phone (I had a private line) after 9 p.m.
Of course, that didn’t stop my one friend from riding her bike to my house at 10:30 p.m. and ringing the doorbell to wake everyone up (and no, it wasn’t a crisis of any sort . . . she was just bored and wanted to play with my dog). My parents insisted on driving her home, because of the late hour, which was all well and good for her, but boy did they let me have it afterwards!
So I say just make sure that your daughter has made your rules clear with her friends, and then please don’t blame her when one of her friends disregards them! Because that just sucks.
Oh, absolutely not! Who would do such a thing? My children have told their friends not to call after 9, and we don’t allow them to call their friends after 9.
Equipoise, I’ve got enough to worry about without borrowing trouble from my children’s friends. I cannot live in a could have-should have world, when I have to make sure my own family is buttoned up.
Besides, she didn’t seem like she was in crisis. It was a perky, “Hi, is (ivygirl) there?” No sobbing or dejected voice.
So, how do you know it wasn’t something fairly emergent? Just because an 11-yo doesn’t have the spine to say something to an adult who immediately demands to know if she knows how late it is, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. The way you handled it was, frankly, kinda rude. You could at the very least have asked what she wanted, then explained the house rules.
I had a roommate after college who was supposed to phone her mother every evening. (She was 24 at the time and lived 1000 miles away but thats what was expected) If she didn’t call her mother would phone at 1am. At the time my friend was working most evenings till about midnight and i was working during the day starting at 6am so i was usualy asleep before she got home. Sometimes if she missed the bus she wouldn’t be home before that call.
I was brought up to believe it was rude to phone after 9pm unless it was an emergancy and my grandfather had just gotten out of the hospital. Every time the phone rang it scared the shit out of me
Finaly one night i grabbed the phone instead of my friend and told her that she was scaring me and would she please not do phone. I think she thought I was a complete bitch but she quit phoning after 11. I figured with the time zone it was a good comprimise. My freind was happy too not to be checked up on that way.
I think it is part of our responsibility to society to train our children polite use of the phone. The only thing different you should have done was to find out who that child was and have a discussion with her parents.
I answered a phone call at 4:00 am on a weeknight from some silly twit of a friend of my son’s. I read him the riot act, to be sure, and then bitched at my son the next day. And it was not any kind of an emergency.
I forgot to mention that said friend had tried him on his cell phone, and when he didn’t answer (because he was asleep!), the friend called the house phone. These kids are 18 and 19. Way old enough to know better.
Yet another Doper parent checking in. Our kids don’t call late either. And if a friend calls after they are in bed (usually about 8:30, if we’re lucky – 9:00 realistically) then our kids don’t speak.
Heck, even I don’t call anyone (except my sister - who allows me to) after 9:30pm (barring emergencies, of course).
I’m 32, and I’m the same way. Don’t call past 10 unless someone is dying, kidnapped, or on fire.
And I can’t seem to get my best friend to grasp this. He’ll call at 11 and I’ll tell him “Do not call me this late.” He’ll remember for a month, and then it starts again. Doeesn’t everyone own at least one clock?
I fully respect the OP’s right to handle the call as she wishes, and it sounds like the girl wasn’t having an emergency. But because of past experiences, I’d urge parents to try to find out if the call actually is an emergency. Ask who it is, say Child X can’t accept a call unless it’s an emergency, and wait for the explanation.
As I said, I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t do this, but there have been times when it’s been important.
I understand the OP’s reaction. If she wanted to take some of the points raised in this thread, she might ask, “Is it an emergency?” and then, on receiving a “no,” would then explain the house rules. If it were an emergency, I imagine the young person on the other end would feel better about having been taken seriously
Then there’s people like me who don’t even answer the phone til after 9PM (when the telemarketers aren’t allowed to call anymore). I never had problems when I as a kid of my friends calling too late. I think my parents would have been thrilled that I had friends!
I can totally understand where the OP is coming from, because I’m a night person and I generally have a ‘do not call me before 11 am unless a thermonuclear war is about to break out and you want to say your goodbyes.’
Course I understand most people are not vampires like me, and I make sure I don’t call them in what they consider to be the ‘middle of the night’, either. I reserve those calls for my vampire friends.
