SD17 has officially completed her junior year of high school.
Once she graduates next year, she plans on cutting BM off entirely.
We're so close. Just 1 more year. 365 days. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!
Edit: We HAVE tried to "take the guardrails down" multiple times. Starting in middle school, she would get an extended bedtime for summer vacation. We would always make an agreement before school started, she could keep the bedtime if her first progress report was good. If it was, we'd continue, if not, we'd go back. She always agreed to this, and she always brought home a real shitty first progress report. So we'd go back to last year's bedtime and she'd go back to doing fine. Should we have tried again later in the year? It didn't feel good to shake up the routine again if it was working well.
Last year when we discussed it, my husband just said she's too old for this coddling, let her figure it out. We have had many many many hours of discussions about scheduling and why it's important, not just this year but going back for basically ever. We've given her tools, options, advice, encouragement, rewards.
My daughter is 17 and about to complete 11th grade.
As a lifelong insomniac who now struggles with permanent health issues because of it, I have always been very strict on sleep hygiene for her. I have always insisted on a hard bedtime routine to make sure she has good habits surrounding sleep, with the hope that it will extend into adulthood for her and she will not suffer like I have.
It's the only thing I have ever really been strict on. Literally everything else I am willing to compromise with. But the sleep thing is really important to me due to how strongly and negatively it has impacted my life.
My parents were never very strict on bedtime with me. They did expect me to be in my room and and to be quiet at some point in the evening, but they didn't really push for me to try to sleep or anything like that. So I'd do all the stuff I needed to, be in my room at 10pm, and just stay up until 3am. As long as I was quiet, they didn't care. I had my own tv + gaming console, as well as a computer in my bedroom.
I was always exhausted, I suffered so greatly in school that I actually flunked out and had to complete it during summer school. I was always in a bad mood, I struggled to maintain relationships because I was always cranky and lashing out, I constantly made poor poor and rash decisions because I was always sleep deprived. My parents always expected me to just figure it out on my own and I never could. They expected discipline but never taught it.
So I wanted to make sure my kid never experienced that. She never had a tv or gaming console in her room, her computer was password locked and shut down at the same time every night, 2 hours before bedtime to give her brain time to calm down before bed. When she got a phone it was to be left on the charger in the kitchen overnight. No distractions, in bed, lights out by a certain time to allow her a good amount of sleep. I always made sure she understood WHY we did things like this, and how important it was to get restful sleep.
But last summer she complained that she wanted more freedom. She hated being asked to log off the computer while all her friends were just logging on. My husband agreed with her that it was time, and that she was getting too old for such strictness. He also said, because she was doing well in school and has always been a well behaved kid, that she deserves it. I spoke to some friends and family for their opinions and everyone agreed that I was being TOO strict, especially for summer vacation. So I relented, stepped back, and I let my husband and daughter agree on new terms.
They agreed that, over the summer, she would be given total freedom, and then they'd re-evaluate before school started again. This meant for the summer, she had no bedtime, no computer passwords, unlimited phone access. And within a week she was staying up until 5 in the morning and not getting out of bed until 4pm. Which, in and of itself is fine I guess, but she would also constantly complain about missing out on events with friends and family. She loves my side of the family, and I'd visit them every weekend. She would say she wants to come with, and I'd tell her what time to be ready, but she could never pull it off. She would set alarms but fall right back asleep after turning them off, or just straight up sleeping through them. She would get mad when I wouldn't go out of my way to get her out of bed to join me. She became cranky and awful to be around. She does not have many chores, but she stopped doing them because she was always "too tired." She started becoming very emotional and crying a lot from over-tiredness.
But my husband insisted, summer vacation is the best time to let her flail like this, let her figure it out. So I kept quiet.
Two weeks before school started, she buckled down and flipped her schedule around. For this reason alone, my husband said to just let her continue. She proved she could do it, so just see how she does with it while going to school.
I was extremely anxious about this, but he insists that it is time to start loosening up, she is growing up quickly, soon to be an adult, we have to start letting her stumble so she can learn how to pick herself up.
Aaaaand she is immediately staying up until 3am while trying to wake up at 6:30am for school. She is so tired she can barely hold a conversation. She is not eating breakfast or lunch, she says she is tired and that's making her nauseous. But she is making zero effort to correct any of this, she just complains.
Her grades start to suffer. Her first semester report card that came home in January was concerning. Previously she was always on the A/B Honor Roll and now she has a couple of classes with C and D grades.
At this point my anxiety is really ramping up. She says she has college aspirations, but this is her junior year and these grades are going to be on her transcript. And they aren't as great as she's capable of. And I know it's because she is not sleeping.
My husband and I keep arguing about it. He insists that she is too old now to be coddled and bedtimes are for babies and we have to let her fall on her face so she can figure it out. But this is going to impact her future and she is not yet 18 and we are still responsible for her. I can't stop thinking back to my own high school career, and how I wish someone would have pulled on my leash a bit to reign me in so I wouldn't have flunked out.
After a long talk, she promises to put in more effort, and it seems like she is. She's gotten better at going to bed earlier and she's started eating breakfast and lunch again.
But the end of the school year is upon us, and one of my daughter's teachers actually reached out to us this week to let us know that she is going to fail his class. It's a required credit too, so she will have to drop an elective class next year to be able to retake it.
I'm crushed. I'm really struggling with this. I do know that there was always going to have to be a point where I let go and let her make her own mistakes so she can learn from first hand experience, but my issue was always with when. I wanted to trust her, and trust that I'd given her the tools to make better decisions but it looks like I have not.
This grade goes on her transcript now, it's brought down her entire GPA, and I feel like I've failed her.
I don't even know how to handle this. My husband just keeps saying that she's almost an adult and I just want to say YEAH BUT SHE'S NOT, YET! I feel like an appropriate solution would be to shut off her access to the internet between certain hours. Is that excessive?
What would you do? The hardest part about being a parent has been toeing the line between keeping control and allowing freedom to grow. My own parents gave me WAY too much freedom and I do not want to overcorrect.
Begging for gentleness. I feel in over my head.
tl;dr - teenage daughter chafed at bedtime routine. husband insists on eliminating routine and letting her figure it out on her own. she never figured it out, and is now failing a class in school due to sleep deprivation. do we now try to enforce a bedtime for someone who is almost an adult, or let her fail?