Curfews: How to Give Your Teen a Curfew

Understand that teens need the routine and firm foundation of rules that your family provides to be able to navigate their world confidently. Curfews help provide these routines and by setting them, parents are helping their teens become confident young adults. Curfews also help keep order in a household.

Parents give curfews in two main ways:

1. A blanket curfew is given and expected to be followed most of the time.
2. A curfew is set each time a teens goes out to do something in particular.

I’ve seen families do a combination of the two, but parents tend to lean one way or another in determining when their teens need to be home at night. This is because of how the parent was given curfews when they were younger or how active their teen is.

How to Give a Blanket Curfew

A blanket curfew is a time set that your teen will have to schedule their activities around. It doesn’t change and helps your teen understand limits and boundaries. It does not have to be the same time on weeknights as on weekends, but it does remain consistent from weekday to weekday and weekend to weekend.

When setting a blanket curfew, talk to your teen about what it means to have this responsibility. Discuss the trust you are placing in them to be home on time. Tell them you will still need to know where they are and what they are doing. Set up a parenting contract and agree to the times you both have set.

How to Determine a Curfew Based on Teen Activities

Determining a curfew based on teen activities alone can be a difficult and time consuming task. Or I should say tasks, as curfews are an ongoing debate when done only in this fashion. But it does work very well in some families. For instance, in families where teens stay home much of the week and go out on weekends.

When setting a curfew based on teen activities, you’ll need to ask your teen where they are going to be, if they plan on going anywhere else during that time and what time the activity will be over. Decide how long it will take your teen to get home from the activity and base the curfew on that time.

Setting Curfews Using a Combination

In our home, we’ve always set curfews using a combination of the two main ways. There is a general curfew but when our teens decide to do something that will run them later, we take into consideration what the activity is and how their behavior has been, then determine if a later curfew is warranted. If so, we give it. If not, we don’t.

Setting a curfew comes down to parents taking the time to think it through and then establishing the rules with their teen’s input. Compromising when the curfew rules are being set and staying firm after that the curfew has been agreed upon will lead to curfews that work for the whole family.