Am I too strict?

No overly revealing clothing and ensuring they have warm clothes in cold weather is reasonable.

A strict bedtime is kinda weird at this age to me, especially when it's not a school night, but I guess it's not completely unheard of. I started managing my sleep schedule/bedtime around 12 or 13.

A blanket ban on make-up bizarre. I mean, I don't think girls that young have to wear make up, but if they want to, they should have that freedom.

No sleepovers is nuts and is only harming her social development. My son is 10, and he and his friends sleep over each others' houses every weekend and practically every night during the summer, and have been for years now. Way to make it difficult for her to bond with her friends on a deeper level.

Screen time limits? In the absence of poor grades, poor behavior warranting such limits, or other outside problems stemming from it, I find strict, hard, arbitrary non-flexible limits stupid, pointless, and ultimately self-defeating (due to making it a forbidden, special thing) even with most school aged children (I can see having them in the pre-school years for developmental purposes). For a 14 year old, micro-managing their screen time (again, unless using such restrictions as a punishment for something else) is just setting her up to go overboard when she moves out and is frankly ridiculous. In just a few short years, she can watch 12 hours of Netflix a day and you can't stop her. Hard time limits don't teach a child or teenager to self-regulate any more than doing a child's math homework for them teaches them algebra.

No R-rated movies? At all? Oh my sweet, sweet summer child, at this age, if you think you can shelter her from that content, you are in for a rude awakening. Stop shielding her from that stuff and educate and discuss it with her instead. Mature content isn't something to hide and pretend doesn't exist. They're learning opportunities that you have regrettably missed out on with your kid. I mean, you know your kid best, and while this depends on the kid, the vast majority of 14 year olds can handle even X-rated porn online, and even more can handle R-rated movies. Again, you're just making such forbidden movies more desirable at this age, and I can guarantee you you're only teaching her to be sneaky to see such films.

No dating? At 14? Kids around me (who are interested in such things) are going on official dates as young as 11, and most start around 12 or 13. Even before they go on official dates, kids often have "boyfriends" and "girlfriends". My son turns 11 in the fall, and while he isn't exactly going on official dates unsupervised yet, he has a "boyfriend" (he likes both boys and girls) that he constantly gushes about to me and hangs out with at home or at the park and whatnot.

At 14, making dating (and by extension, sex) by banning it only sets her up to push you away when talking about those things with her later on. It also instills the attitude that such things are shameful, that romantic feelings and desires at her age are not valid or worthy of consideration simply because she's "too young to have them". At 14, she is 100% not too young to be dating.

TL;DR yes, I'd say you are overly strict. Given this age, you are more strict than probably 95%+ of parents I know. Just being honest. Lighten up.

/r/Parenting Thread