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No Curfew · Let's Ask the Mamas!

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  We got a question for our American mama. Dear Mama, I heard you
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  on the radio talking about never giving your kids a curfew. Why not,
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  Well, let's ask our American mama. Mama, Mama, and joining us
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  now our American mama, Terry Netterville. You were invited to be a guest
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  on a morning radio show in street Port, Louisiana on KIEL Radio, because
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  you know you're the American mama, You're Terry Nettaville. They wanted to hear
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  from you, and they asked you about some parenting tips, and you did
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  say I was listening this one. You said that you and Kevin didn't have
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  like hard and fast curfews for your kids, right right, Yeah. They
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  were asking all kinds of wonderful questions and one of them was about that,
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  and I said, you know, Kevin and are Kevin's We were strict,
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  but in a lenient way, if that makes sense. But we did not
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  give our children a curfew. And and sometimes when you're being interviewed, you're
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  talking about it, you have a point to be made, but somebody interjects
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  and you get on a different topic. So I really didn't get to finish.
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  I'm glad that you brought this up. The thing that we did with
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  our children that worked so well, and we've talked about it since then.
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  Our kids did not have a curfew, and there was a reason why we
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  wanted to empower them to self govern. We told them our expectations. We
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  told them about what it means to respect your parents. You know, after
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  a certain time, eleven or midnight. It's one of those things where if
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  you're gonna be out later, let us know where you are, right And
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  they knew we had a steadfast rule no drinking in a high school, and
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  so we did that. We started with steel, and I will never forget
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  I was listening. I was in the laundry and we had some friends over,
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  and one of the girls said to him, the laundry was really close
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  to the den. They didn't know I was in there, and I remember
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  she said to see, why won't you have it? Why won't you try
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  out? Why won't you drink the beer? And he said, because you
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  know what, nothing could taste as good as my freedom feels. And in
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  that moment I just was washed with Oh my gosh, thank you God,
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  because he understood that if he did something that not only broke the law,
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  but broke our family rule. Not only would we take the keys away from
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  him, but he would not be able to have the no curfew rule.
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  You know, he would have a curfew. There would be things that we
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  would have, you know, set in place. But I feel like if
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  my parents did this with us too. When you empower your children and you
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  put expectations on them and you tell them how proud you are that you can
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  trust them enough to not take advantage of this and do the right thing,
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  I am telling you they will live up to that standard. They will do
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  it because they don't want to disappoint you. So your kids weren't out till
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  two or three or four o'clock in the morning, right, No. Never.
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  In fact, I will tell you this, they always came home before
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  midnight. They always came home before midnight. And then if they're at the
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  times, and then when they didn't, they would call and say, hey,
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  I'm gonna take so and so home and then I'll be back. But
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  it was that, you know, all three of them had the same rule
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  and it worked beautifully. Now, if one of them had done something that
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  was disrespectful or broke the house rules or whatever, we would have. You
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  know, Kevin and I were a team. We would go in there and
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  talk to them and you know, set things straight because they weren't perfect,
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  but we But it really does give them a sense of empowerment when you allow
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  them to self govern, because they don't want to disappoint. If they do,
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  their consequences and our kids knew that there were there are consequences for every
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  action, right, and they understood that because we were such a communicative family
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  anyway, we talked about absolutely everythingsation. Nothing was off limits nothing when I
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  tell you nothing, nothing was off limits in our house. And our kids
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  knew that. But that's what that's what I meant when I was talking this
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  morning. I didn't get to elaborate on it, but when I said that
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  our kids had no curfew. There's a reason why it works with some and
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  why I won't work with others. And there are consequences if you don't kind
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  of have respect with that, right, but if you do empower the kids
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  that My parents did give us curfews, but they also allowed us to feel
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  like we were the ones in charge of our actions and consequences. My brother
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  and I both had curfews. My brother's four years older. He always broke
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  the curfew, like all the time, and you know my mom, oh
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  my gosh, yes, And which how'd your mom handled that? She is
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  military. She stayed up and waited for him to come home, and he'd
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  take his shoes off as he's trying to come in the house, sneaking in,
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  and she's like, they're at the front door. Okay. So he
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  got in so much trouble from that. I did, And what I learned
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  was if you want to break curfew, call first, yes, And so
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  I, yes, I broke curfew all the time in high school. But
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  I got away with it because I always called my parents and I told them
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  where I was, and I told them, Okay, here's you know,
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  I'm at Wendy's house. I'm going to be home and shortly it's just a
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  respectful thing to do. And back then we didn't have cell phones. No,
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  we didn't have cell phones. Are your parents were up waiting? So
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  now it's a little bit different than parents can text or call or whatever.
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  I can track my kids on the FA yea yeah, yeah, for sure.
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  But the other part of what you're talking about, it's kind of the
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  same philosophy we had with with our kids. I tell people our kids were
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  free range kids, but there was an electrified fence. Yes, so you
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  could play in the pastor you can do all the stuff, but there are
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  hard and fast limits and if you touch that, you're gonna get a shock
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  and you're not gonna like it. So you get you get to play.
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  We gotta give you a whole bunch of freedom, a whole bunch of room.
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  Don't test us. That's it. I think it's a key. I
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  think it's a great key to parenting. If you like to ask our American
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  MoMA question, go to our website American ground Radio dot com slash MoMA and
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  click on to ask the mom a button, turn it in. I'll thank
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  you so much