Hey, what a coincidence…
You and Ephedra got axed today…
Boo Fucking Hoo… 
Wow, three pages, on the merits of a late phone call? Thanks for the responses defending me against Dog80 quite frankly I had forgotten about this thread 3 millliseconds of having posted. That said Dog80 the last comment in my OP was obviously tongue in cheek, and my kids phone call rules are set like they are for a reason, (in addition to me starting work at 6 am) they have differing bedtimes and all that. Also I think I should mention that they have they’re own house phone which I rarely answer unless know one picks it up by the third ring.
In addition to the phone rules, they also have to do their homework and chores before they can go play or play video games, guess I’m some kind of Nazi, huh? :eek:
Ok, I understand. In your first posts it just seemed like you had a little bit of “Children should be seen and not heard!” going on. 
“my dad just got really drunk and he’s beating up me/my mom/my sibling and I am scared and don’t know what to do”
“my babysitter/brother/uncle/Santa Claus just tried to molest me”
“my mom just died and I’m really upset”
“(for whatever reason) I feel like I want to kill myself” (don’t say it doesn’t happen–I started having serious suicidal feelings around 6th grade.)
And yes, in some of those scenarios calling the police seems obvious to us, but to a lot of kids, they don’t think of calling the police on their parents as being an option. Or they may need to have someone else confirm that it’s a good idea before they do so. Kids aren’t always rational.
Before anyone starts, I realize that in this case the girl had a “perky voice” and didn’t seem to be upset. I’m not saying that I think the girl in the OP was having an emergency. I’m simply addressing the bizarre notion that there aren’t any situations under which an 11 year old could be having a legitimate crisis/emergency. And a shy kid may very well get spooked and murmer a quick “sorry” and hang up rather than confront an angry adult–especially if they’re traumatized by whatever their problem is to begin with–so saying that if it had been a real emergency, they wouldn’t have hung up (or that the parental radar would have kicked in) is not necessarily true.
Heavy Sigh
Okay.
Yes, there are some instances where an 11 year old might have an honest-to-Og emergency. I would hope that said 11 year old would go to an adult vs. another child, but I realize sometimes that isn’t the case or, regrettably, that 11 year old may not feel that they have an adult with whom they can trust to go to.
However.
Since that was obviously not the case in the OP (in any of the myriad of hypotheticals various posters have put forth, I’d be amazed to hear a “perky” voice on the other end of the line) I chose not to go the “geez Ivylass what were you thinking, it could’ve been an emergency” route. I disregarded the option because in my mind, that option was a possibility in this particular scenerio.
But I will concede there are occasions where an 11 year old would have an emergency, however rare that occasion may be. My above comments were referring to the situation being discussed in this thread.
They ONLY pertain to this thread.
Can we please stop with all the various emergency lists that were obviously not the case with the OP now?
Wasn’t a possibility in this scenerio.
Argh!
You’re forgetting that I was responding to a post whose writer stated “what emergency could a 11 y.o. have?”, and IIRC stated previously that the parents would have taken care of any emergency. So, the fact that it’s not comparable to the OP doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant to the point of view stated in the post I was responding to, which wasn’t the OP.
My point was that 11 yo can have emergencies, and that there isn’t always an adult around to handle the situation.
And emergencies can happen past 9 pm, by the way, home rules notwithstanding…
I’m surprised no one commented on this. I think Ivylass has a good point here-if it WERE an emergency, don’t you think that it would be better for Ivylass to handle, rather than wake up her daughter?
I completely agree. I was thinking the same thing.
I believe nobody suggested that she should wake up her daughter. At least for my part, I only said that enquiring about the caller’s motives wasn’t unreasonnable.
In the case of something like, say, sexual molestation, a child may be extremely reluctant to discuss it with a stranger. The child may have a close friend/confidant that they felt comfortable enough to talk to, but no one else. (Again, I’m not saying the girl in the OP had an emergency.)
Wow, who knew late-night phone calls was such a hot topic?!
Anyway, I still say I agree with how IvyLass handled it, because it disturbed her sleep and the whole family as well. However, with a separate phone line or cell phone (not saying get one specifically for this purpose, but if they had one), I’d think the rule could be “As late as you want, but you deal with the consequences.” And no, I don’t think this would result in failing school. Having recently been a teenager myself (well, ten years ago, alright? 
), I can tell you that any kid that’s up late talking on the phone? would have been up late anyway. I used to stay up till 3 in the morning every night writing in my journal, listening to music, staring moodily into the flame of a candle and composing poetry to my wretched ex-boyfriend, you know…teenager stuff. And somehow I muddled through without failing due to exhaustion.
Anyway, I have no kids. I just remember what it was like to be one very vividly. For some reason, this was never a huge issue in our house. We had the no-calls-after-9:30 rule, but if I was still talking to someone and it was 9:45 and my mom was heading to bed, she’d just say “Don’t talk too late, okay?” and I’d say “Sure, mom”, and that was that. If I’d had a separate phone, I don’t think she would have cared. She just didn’t want to be woken up.
Hmmm. I’m a teenager and my parents never had any such rules, but they also don’t have a phone in their room. That’s probably because my mom likes to take naps during the day…even so, I doubt my friends would be rude enough to call my home phone after 11. They call my cell phone when they’re in late-night nervous breakdown mode.
Roma, we have an informal policy here of not resurrecting threads older than a few months. If you want to continue a discussion on an older topic, go ahead and start a new thread.