communication between parents & kids

[Marshawatcher]

I would like to let my 12 year old have freedom to go where she would like but I want to be able to know where she is at all times. What is the best way to accomplish this?

 

[inkkognito]

Various parents use various methods. You can bring two way radios, but phone is often more reliable. There is a message system on all the phones and "house phones" located throughout the ship so you can set check in times for her to call. You can also leave messages to each other in the little fish fixture right outside your stateroom door. However you do it, a check-in system should help you keep tabs on her while letting er have fun.
We have been at a dinner table a couple of times with families who insisted that their young teens at least join the rest of the family for dinner. It was funny to watch the kids just itching to get away and have fun! On one cruise, the family seated with us said they had a teen, but we had to take their word for it as we literally never saw him once.
Barb

 

[hopelea]

I am also interested in hearing some good advice on this subject. Traveling with me will be my dd & her best friend, both 11. We want to give them freedom. But, I want to know where they are going at all times. We thought about walkie talkies, have really cute Disney ones! Will they work?

I told her that they will have to beep us to let us know where they are going. I will then meet them there the first few times to see if they made it and are being truthful

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.......

Messages on the house phone?? How does that work?

Thanks, Hope

 

[greytlady]

I took the advise of these boards to have a sign out sheet in our room. If they weren't in the lab then they had to come back to the room and write down where they were going. I did the same thing so they would know where I was too. I also told them what time they had to be back in the room for us to go to the nightly show and dinner. Sometimes they had the Lab page me to let me know that they left the lab.

 

[CM_Mom]

I like the idea of the sign in/out log in the stateroom since it also serves as a great souvenir/record of the trip.

 

[Karel]

Ground rules for our teen, preteen and tween:

You may not go into other people's cabin or let anyone in our cabins. You must be in the cabin at 5 to get ready for dinner and you will eat dinner with us. You must stay out of the room steward's way.

We also set a curfew for each child. Here's a tip though: make sure they have watches! It works better that way. (Learned the hard way....)

We also had a note book log that everyone, including us parents, used.

You also will get a pager from the kids club but that's not always perfect. We found my daughter crying one night because they never paged us to let us know she was going back the cabin. She was upset because we were out and about and not in the cabin. That's when we started putting our location in the notebook.

Towards the end of the week, freedom sort of lost its allure for them and they started spending more and more time with us. Also, they were more tired at night and less apt to stay out really late.

 

[IvyandLace]

I am very interested in all answers in this thread due the fact that I will soon be cruising with my nephews (ages 16 and 12) and niece (age 14) along with my siblings, their spouses and my mom and dad. All in all, we will have 12 people spread between 4 cabins. Each child will be in a different cabin so they can spend time with aunts and uncles. Unfortunately, this creates a different issue in that there are more "parents" in the group. Since most of us have NOT cruised, we are unsure how to coordinate rules/bedtimes/etc. since each cabin will be "in charge" of their child separately. We are having a hard time between making sure we see the kids (especially for the "required" dinners) and letting them have some freedom-this is their vacation too!

I like the sign-in idea, but I'm afraid some other adults in my group think it's unnecessary and too confining for them. *sigh* I'm just hoping that we can figure out a good compromise-don't want any...ummm....ship searches late at night to ruin a perfectly good family reunion!

Thanks for any suggestions...we need them all!
IVY

 

[dclwdwlover]

We had rules very similar to Karel's & they worked great. Contrary to her kids, though, ours spent more & more time with they kids as the trip went on. They loved it & we loved hearing about their day every night at dinner & whenever we could catch them throughout the day.

In addition to meeting up at dinner & leaving notes in the cabins & 'popping in on them' at different times, we also would get extra copies of the navigators every night & then we would circle the expected places we believed we would be & they would do the same & all of us had a copy of where the other would be. We basically stuck to our intended schedule & if we didn't, they knew they could find us either at the pool or at the next event.

We tried the 2-way radios, but they didn't work for us & the kids hated lugging them around.

 

[ksjayhawks]

We used the log method with our ds and it worked great!

We would look at the kids navigators the night before and circle what he planned to do. Then we set up meeting times as needed. He had sign in/out privileges with the restriction that he had to let the CMs know where he and his friends were going.

He was not to go into other people's cabins, eithter.

We also let him know our plans as well.

If he had any problems following these simple rules, he got to spend the rest of the cruise with us--no more club.

Needless to say, we had no problems. He was very responsible--many nights he came in later than we did as he was so "busy" with the club and his friends!!!!!