There will be as many different opinions on this as there are people none will be completely suitable but that's what parenting is all about. My two kids are far to young for this to be of any applicability to them yet. Parents do what they will and set certain rules, mine did. We had our fights but in the end there was give and take on both sides. My observations in general are that respect for rules needs to be earned. I happen to disagree with your approach but that's irrelevant, I am not the parent, and I dont have to deal with your problem. Here are some thoughts: As his life changes you may consider changing your rules to accomodate the changes he is facing. First love is a really big deal (but only to him) made even more frustrating by parents who know that first love is often first lust and first forgotten. You seem to be dismissive of his feelings for this girl (references to chicky chicky) and that indicates to me that you may set rules without understanding his resolve on certain issues. Right now it looks to me that from your perspective this is more about the location of her residence than the fact that he is with her. If this is so you may be able to solve the conflict by splitting the two issues (girlfriend vs. location). You could offer to have her over at your place for the weekend etc, that way he gets to be with her and you get him out of her neibourhood. I also tend to think that your son may tire of his new grilfriend fairly quickly, she is obviously in a different socio-economic class to your family and that will make a teenage romance already difficult more so. BTW on curfews my folks did the following, they set a curfew and had an hour grey area, IOW if curfew was at 10pm, arrival home at any time within 10 to 11 was OK. Of course as kids we never knew that the grey area existed so tended to get home by 10:20 or so without cause for a fight. In the end both parents and kids got what they wanted. My folks got the kids home by 11 and we got to be out and not have to live by the absolute line of a deadline (even if we did try and meet it but through some extenuating circumstances missed 10pm exactly). Few things in life are absolute anyway. We only found out about the grey area years later when we were all married and had kids of our own, it was quite a funny when the folks revealed it to us and we reminisced over all the time we crapped ourselves that we would get into trouble because we got home at 10:34 or something.

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