Reese Almazan Imagine you’re a sixteen-year-old kid, and your friends just invited you to hang out with them later in the evening. You tell your parents about your plans, and you know they’ll let you go because you’ve spent the day doing homework and just came back from soccer practice. “Yes , you can go,” they say. You think you’ve pulled off a successful hangout with your friends — until you get hit with “be home by 10:00 p.m.” You think to yourself, “That works fine, at least I can go.” Three hours into the hangout, you realize you’re having more fun than you thought, and what started as “I’ll just leave early and make it home in time” turns into a unanimous idea of “where are we going at 9:58?” A night that could have ended naturally at a reasonable hour turns into a race against the clock, as a teen attempts to pack as much fun as possible into their curfew to avoid a lecture. This scenario is not foreign to the majority of teenagers with concerned parents — this scenario was me, just last weekend. Once I noticed the time, I found myself driving home in a rush, hoping to avoid any lectures. I wasn’t thinking about driving safely, just beating the clock. It made me wonder: Could strict curfews be creating more problems than they solve? Dr. Nancy Darling, a psychology professor at Oberlin College, conducted a study in which she found that 98% of high school students lie to their parents. A main cause of this is a lack of trust and freedom given to the child. Darling, whose research spanned high schools in four different countries across three continents, reported: “In that first study, areas of lying ranged from 2 of 36 areas to 35 of 36. In general — and not surprisingly — the more kids lie, the more trouble they get in, the worse they get along with their parents, and the less they feel trusted.” It’s a simple concept: the fewer freedoms given to teens, the more freedoms they want. The less parents allow their children to socialize and stay out late, the more teens will find ways to do so anyway. Speaking as a sixteen-year-old myself, when my parents don’t lay a strict curfew on me, staying out late becomes less appetizing. I don’t feel a rush to do a million things before I’m expected home — I’ll stay honest with my parents and come home at a reasonable hour we’ve agreed on. Think of it like a shopping trip, or the way my sister and I would put it: when you go out shopping and have no money to spend, every piece of clothing and jewelry looks perfect on you and you want nothing more than to buy it. But when you leave the house with money in your pocket, the stores are practically empty and nothing looks desirable to you at all. Don’t worry, parents — your children won’t have to lie forever. Direct your efforts toward flexibility, not rigid rules. Say your kid is at the movie theater watching the brand-new Odyssey film. Neither of you realized the movie is three hours long, so you’re already cutting it close to curfew — and then the post-movie debrief and parking lot goodbyes eat up a little more time than expected. A teen coming home a little later than they promised shouldn’t result in phone confiscation and punishment, but in conversation. Set strict but reasonable expectations around communication. Children should feel comfortable telling their parents they’ll be running late, while still understanding the importance of showing up on time. Curfews don’t need to be eradicated in households. They simply need to carry different weight. Teenagers should have experiences that don’t involve their parents watching over them, and they should be able to honestly share those experiences afterward. Putting trust in your children doesn’t mean leaving them unsupervised — it means allowing them to make good decisions on their own, and guiding them when they don’t. When curfews are built on trust instead of fear, they don’t just bring teenagers home. They build the kind of honesty and responsibility that lasts long after the front door closes. Reese Almazan is a junior at Ransom Everglades High School.     ABOUT US: For more Miami community news, look no further than Miami Community Newspapers. This Miami online group of newspapers covers a variety of topics about the local community and beyond. Miami’s Community Newspapers offers daily news, online resources, podcasts and other multimedia content to keep readers informed. 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