Well if you are 13 and found these forums, then its already to late for you anyways. Your parents are going to get more worried as you venture deeper into internet madness. :wink_smile:

Aren't parents supposed to set limitations for their children?

Well look at it this way, if you go to sleep at 9:30, you can get up at 5 am and do what you have to do then play video games etc. You don't really lose time with an early bed time. I go to sleep when I want though, sometimes I get 4 hours of sleep for work, sometimes 3, sometimes 8, sometimes 12, doesn't really matter to me, if I have unimportant things I want to do such as video games, then I'll play them until I decide it's time not to.

I'm going to make a wild guess at what I suspect is going on.

It sounds like your parents took more of a "free spirit" attitude towards raising you. However, once you hit 18, you are going to be an advlt who has to be able to function in a world of rules you really don't get a choice about.

So, I suspect they are getting you ready for the real world you're going to be thrust into. There is not going to be an abundance of great jobs. College graduates with very good grades are underemployed and those who get anything decent work their butts off for it. They could be seeing the writing on the wall and realize that if you don't start competing now, you'll never be able to move out and be on your own because you'll be so mundane that you won't have much of a chance at the few good opportunities that will be out there.

Certainly, you should have a good talk with them about WHY the sudden change.

And it is wrong to impose standards on you but not have similar standards on your younger brother.

I had a bedtime until I was 14 on school nights, never had bedtime on weekends or summer.

I think your parents are right giving you a bedtime for school nights, but bedtime in the summer? That's jacked up.

I can vouch for that, I've had a year off so to speak, no school and no work to go to, so I've had little reason to get up early. It's getting rough, I've got driving lessons I need to be awake for

You have free will don't you? Use it.

If it only 72 hours since they started showing the symptoms of becoming one of 'those' parents, they may have a chance. If it has been longer than that, well, you know what you have to do. :flamethrower:

Sounds like you need to emigrate from your country and never contact your parents again. Only reasonable solution I can think of.

Trust me, bedtimes are good for your health. How late are you bedtimes in summer?

Don't run away from your problems, face them like a man. With fire.

All the more reason the "their house, their rules" is applicable.

Lol you'll be amazed how different you are after hs is done.

Anyways, you're 13, not too late for a bedtime. I agree 930 is harsh, they were probably tired of you staying up all night and being cranky all day.

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Summer school? What kind of bull is that, if my parents tried to make me do that, even at the age of 13 I would have ditched it every day until they got the message. I had a 9:00 bedtime from the time I was 6 until I was 16, didn't stop me staying up till 11.

I guess my advice is: ditch summer school every day, and take a 2 hour stroll around town, you're parents will get the point. Also, whats to stop you sneaking out of your room and watching television if your parents are sound asleep in their room?

Something odd does seem to be going on. The bedtime even in the summer time I can understand. As it helps keep you on the same sleep schedule. But the summer school when you're already an A student makes no sense. When I was still in school, summer school was only for classes that a student was failing, and were recommended by the school. It was a case of either go to summer school or get held back a school year. So what classes are you taking at summer school?

And as for the "because we say so" when you ask them why is BS. That usually indicates they can't or don't want to give a good reason for the new rules. Everyone needs rules or limitations in life. But with kids it does more harm than good to suddenly impose new rules for no reason. It almost sounds as if your parents have you and you younger brother mixed up.

Yeah, I mean, I love my parents. But that doesn't mean I listened to them as a kid, they told me to go to bed and I did...only to get up a few minutes later and go watch TV or play games for a while.

Is your mom going through PMS? My mom is at that age, and it's like someone shot her Mrs. Gutsy combat inhibitor. She's turned into a firebreathing dragon, and now my house is like entering the gates to oblivion. bliviongate: Her ob/gyn told us that it'll be 8 more years of this before everything is back to normal again. FFFUUUU- :sadvaultboy:

My mom made me do school work of sorts during the summer most years growing up... while I hated it, the kids that didn't do anything all summer seemed to have lost a lot of the stuff taught the previous year. I can't say for sure whether it really made it all that big of a difference, but I seemed to pick up on things faster earlier in the year then anyone else. Your parents are probably just trying to set you up for success next year, as lame and non-fun as that might sound.

I'm guessing you are the oldest child? I know it is a big cliche, but puberty is a very tough time. Not for the person going through it, man, why does it always have to be about you It is a very tough time for parents. You may not notice the shift in personality as much because, well, the change is happening to you so you are unlikely to notice it. Your parents, on the other hand, have to deal with essentially a whole new person. You probably don't believe me, but trust me, that is the case. So they are wondering: "Who is this stranger in my house and what happened to my son (or daughter, but this is a video game forum, so I'll bet heavily on the male demographic)?" Understandably or not, that leads to a certain amount of "freak out" on the part of the parents. Sometimes, that freak-out manifests itself in the form of new rules, strange dominance games (my house, my rules!), and a great deal of apprehension.

On a related note, out of curiosity, what is your social life like? You said you got good grades, but what about the other life skills that school teaches? I know it sounds crazy, but if you are excessively nerdy (straight As plus positing on the Bethesda forum suggests that may be a realistic possibility) they may be concerned about your social development. That may mean that they either don't like the friends you do have (a likely possibility given the draconian bedtime) and want you to make new ones (hence summer school, which creates unlikely friend-pairings due to shared misery).

Or maybe they've just noticed that you've been more isolated lately, so they want to get you off the electronic distractions and back into a meaningful social sphere. They probably don't have a good idea as to what you are "into" beyond the video games/internet that they want to wean you off of, but they do know that you do well in school. So they want to place you in a semi-social environment where you are not only comfortable but also likely to succeed. That is because, as an advlt, most friendships start in need. For example, I live in an apartment and needed a cool basemant for brewing. I kinda knew this one guy who had a house. So, I asked him if he wanted to brew with me sometime. I show up in my piece-of-trash car and during the brew-day, he mentions that he is a big gear-head. I taught him how to brew and got to use his basemant while he taught me how to fix up cars. And we became good friends because of that time together. The problem is that friendships in middle and high school don't really start that way -- especially if the excellence in question is in academics. But parents forget that sort of thing. So they are trying to do right by you and place you in a situation where you will succeed but because they have essentially forgotten the byzantine rules of middle and high school and they don't really know you anymore, they are going about it in a completely backwards manner.

Not to cause any freak-outs on your part, but "inappropriate sites" were also mentioned. If they were run-of-the-mill porm sites, that just compounds the problems of having a child who is undergoing puberty because it forces a very visceral confrontation with that fact. But if they were "different" in any way, then that may also cause them some distress. I've got a bit of a sweet-tooth for the [censored], and I was around your age when my parents found an unsent letter to a friend expressing my feelings. I didn't know they had read the letter until some three months later. But that time was amongst the worst of my life. Not just because my parents avoided contact with me (including freakin' eye-contact) but also because what little contact there was consisted of arbitrary new rules, yelling, and all manner of nastiness. And I didn't even have any idea why! I'm not saying that is what they found in your case, but if your parents found something like [censored], that would certainly count as "different" and in the way that would make parents deeply uncomfortable and confused. Sure, [censored] is essentially harmless. But we are posting on a message board, we know that sort of thing. Chances are, your parents don't. Misunderstandings like that can really compound the problems I've mentioned.

Basically, parents are like any other person. Identify and address the underlying problem and you'll be able to solve the situation. I'm guessing your age, your birth order, and your changes have a lot to do with it. And for that, I am sorry because there is really nothing you can do. But see if you can identify anything else on top of those that would be compounding the situation. If there is something like that, see if you can address it. If it is an important part of who you are, confronting them about it (in a respectful manner) is your best option. If it is unimportant to you, change the behavior and see what happens. If it is a misunderstanding along the lines of "[censored] as a porm site, OMG, my son is into the wildest fetishes imaginable!", then confronting them about it in a jovial manner is a good call. Along the lines of "I think I know what is freaking you out and, let me assure you, it is a big misunderstanding!"

Good luck, hope this helps!

Edit: Hmmm, they appear to censor a very popular website here. That makes sense, since this website is known for being obscene. Think of the lucky number associated with clover and an familiar Japanese form of address. As for the other censored, well, I'll let you use your imagination.

I've never really understood this? I mean, I get it when parents don't like their kids watching some of the truly [censored] up [censored] out there, but I've never understood what's so horrible about teenagers visiting a regular porm site. It's fairly common, and there's no use denying that, you can bet your ass your parents did that as well, maybe not online, but that's not really the point.

That one particular rule is one I'll never truly understand the thought process behind.

There is nothing horrible about it, it is just a loss of innocence by proxy for the parents and, for a parent, that is kinda sad -- or at least bittersweet. That can compound the other problems of puberty. On the other hand, if it is censored-up stuff, well, I suppose it depends on what we mean by "censored-up". Let's face it, there is a lot of freaky stuff even on the most pedestrian of porm sites.

http://xkcd.com/751/

The sort of thing previously reserved for kinkiest of fetish magazines has become so ubiquitous that we don't even think of it as unusual. For us, that is fine because we know and understand the internet. But what we think of as "banol" is extremely hardcoe by the previous standard. The standard that many parents are working from. So that can lead to misunderstandings.

Plus, a lot of people have stupid, Puritanical views on six. That is stupid, but what can you do?

Woah.

Maybe those parents have actual morals instead of your weird libertarian attitude to everything?

Personally I volunteer to go to bed at 10 every school night, I'm always way too tired by then anyways.