If my son gets accepted into one of his top 3 schools, we’ve already told him there is a good chance he can’t go because of cost unless he works toward finding scholarships to help offset the cost. I’m sure other parents have also had to have that conversation. Luckily, his tops schools all have very low acceptance rates and are all reach schools.
^^^ That’s true FinalFor… I did tell my daughter “no” to a private school not known for being generous with FA, located in one of the most expensive cities in the country.
@utex2011, because Chuck E Cheese is not food.
And because painted toenails at camp are as appropriate as makeup at Base Camp of Everest.
“because Chuck E Cheese is not food.”
So you never let your children eat pizza?
“And because painted toenails at camp are as appropriate as makeup at Base Camp of Everest.”
Why do you against painted toenails?
@katliamom, @utex2011, I’m starting to think y’all are actually mother and daughter, hashing this out in public without realizing that that’s who each other is. 
OMG! You may be right!!!
The WEIRD thing is that I DID once “run across” my daughter on one of these forums… she was using a friend’s login/nic… when she first started college, a long time ago! She was as you may imagine, horrified that she’d been “talking” to her mom, and hasn’t been back on CC since :))
@utex2011 Chuck E cheese pizza is not food. Please don’t confuse pizza - which can be sublime – with what’s served at that awful place where desperate parents take their bratty kids because they’re too exhausted to find an edible child-friendly place and even more exhausted to actually cook. Chuck E cheese pizza-wish-it-was is a mass produced thing made mostly of starch, additives and enough chemicals to stock a decent high school lab.
As for toenails, if you didn’t get my earlier simile, then you won’t get anything else, so I won’t try.
Hmm, I’ve suddenly become the desperate parent of a bratty kid. Oh, well.
Aw @rosered55, you’re clearly the exception as are your children 
I said no to weird hair color in high school (with the understanding that at 18 my older daughter could dye it whatever color she wanted). She thought I was mean. Then she got into Harvard and asked to dye it crimson (actually Harvard crimson is more maroon). How could I say no?
Chuck E Cheese gave me a headache (the noise!) but it was THE birthday place for awhile. I have very sweet photos from some of those parties.
I said No to :
*Chuck e Cheese ( couldn’t stand the noise),
*unsupervised/ undersupervised pool parties, any use of a slip n side or backyard trampoline ( I’m an attorney… the cases I’ve seen would make you shudder),
- Eating in any part of our home but the kitchen/dining room
*Eating in the car ( a HUGE pet peeve),
*Keeping thing you haven’t used in a year ( except sentimental things that fit in your memory box)
*Using big city public transportation before age 13. Sorry but I don’t think kids ( at lest my kids) have the judgment to deal with a problem situation until that age
*Staying up ( or more accurately out of your room) . past the time I’ve set for bed ( that lasted till high school started)
*make your lunch after age 7
- wake up you up for school after age 7 without you getting an earlier bedtime as a result.
*make you something else to eat if you don’t like what we are having.
However on the flip side I have also said " no" to some peer pressure from other parents / adults to saying no to things:
- No we will not be observing tv/electronics free day/ week etc... ( my kids were excellent self controllers and the last thing I wanted was to bring some forbiddem fruit element into it) speaking of which...
*no my kid does not need to eat her Sandwhich/fruit/ veggies before her dessert…stop,asking her to do that
*No I will not agree to adjust my child’s social media use/curfew/movie content Just so that it will be easier to tell your child no. I have made my own decisions. You should do the same.
I said NO to some things preemptively, just so they wouldn’t ask:
Tattoos
Motorcycles, owning or riding on
4 wheelers, owning or riding on
Riding in car full of unlicensed or recently licensed kids. When my kids drove, one passenger, or two if I knew them, was okay. They probably lied about this, but teenagers.
I relented on
Earring piercings, after discussion with DW. I still think self-mutilation isn’t a great idea, but you can’t fight city hall.
Top surgery for trans son. I relented, but only after extensive counseling for him and family
Pit bull (or some such mix). I was a bigot. I love my rescued dog now, and am sorry that I was so resistant. That said, I insisted on extensive evaluation and training by a respected and accomplished dog trainer ($$$, don’t do it unless…)
I said YES to
Safe sexual experiences at home. They were going to do it anyway, they might as well not be in a car, park, etc.
Alcohol. Funnily enough, none of my kids are drinkers now, except for the very occasional beer or glass of wine at a restaurant. One of my kids was the DesignatedD at a high school party and called 911 for a kid with acute alcohol poisoning, possibly saving that kid’s life and suffering classmate anger for “ruining” the party. He did the requisite college freshman drinking thing, but quickly realized it was stupid.
I said “no” in regards to certain movies and certain video games.
I raised two kids who were possibly the only kids in the Eastern United States who were not pulled out of school for a family trip to Disney World.
If you wanted to miss school for something (other than illness or a school-related activity – like all-state honors band), the answer in our house was no. Always. I even went out of my way to get the kids Saturday dental appointments whenever possible to avoid pulling them out of class.
We loved Chuck E Cheese, though, never prohibited movies or video games on account of their content (although there was a limit to how much we would spend on them), and never said anything about painted toenails or fingernails. It would never even have occurred to me to say anything about toenails or fingernails.
Our kids set some of their own limits – like refusing to go to the mall with a friend who was known to shoplift (although the kids still visited each other’s houses) and refusing to go to a friend’s house because an older sibling and her friends were using drugs there (although the kids would still go to the movies or the mall together). I was even asked to make sure to be home when certain friends visited because they tended to get wild and might break things, and my kid might not have been able to cope with that without a parent’s help. Sometimes kids have good instincts.
I was thinking about the second part of this question, how do you stand up to the other parent peer pressure.
I didn’t feel it. I guess I trusted my gut, as others have said, and was confident of my instincts. Sometimes I looked back to what my folks had done, the limits they had set and how they affected me. And I knew my kids. (The “knew my kids” part made me more liberal than other parents. As the kids got older and starting having travel opportunities, I knew they could handle it. When other parents were worrying about HS kids on the subway and wanting tighter rules, I was confident my kids could navigate, for example.)
That is not to say I never changed my mind, especially on the tech issues. My kids were the last ones to get phones and Gameboys, but they did get them. I wanted them to be older and I needed some time to figure out the pros and cons. The culture changed, too. Older kid didn’t need a cell phone because 1) coaches were consistent about stopping practices at the same time every day and 2) there were school landline phones available if there were schedule changes. As people got more comfortable with cell phones, these two factors changed. By the time kid two came up, coaches assumed that players could call their folks on cell phones to come get them after a game or practice.
@marian We also never took our kids out of school for vacations. Schools have enough time off to plan vacations without disrupting classwork and inconveniencing teachers. Model UN was an acceptable reason to miss school - vacation, not so much.
@utex2011 In Illinois, it’s illegal for a 16 year old to drive any more than one other person in the car until they are 17. If the police pull them over, it’s a very expensive ticket and 30 hours community service. Yet, some parents in our neighborhood just leave it up to their kids whether they risk it or not.
@surfcity I hear you about being the parent that says “no”. So many parents around us want their kids to be popular and allow all kinds of stuff. Daughters with their rear ends hanging out of their shorts, parents buying alcohol for kids to drink while at their house, freshman girls being allowed to go to prom with senior football players - all crazy if you ask me. Meanwhile, our local paper has a Police Beat section that writes up kids who have been caught drinking under age or caught with drugs. At least I know our kids won’t be in the Police Beat!
All the time! We always say we don’t care what other people decide - we decide for our family and YOU (kids)
- You can see PG-13 movies when you are 13...I don't want to negotiate on each and every movie.
- No TV in bedroom
- Computers stay in living areas
- You can get a cellphone in 6th grade when you start to do stuff without adults being present every scecond When we were living in Germany:
- No you can't go to Spain as a 17 year old unchaperoned with all your friends.
- No you can't stay over with other kids and your boyfriend at your boyfriend's mother's hotel.
- Yes I will pick you up but I am not going out past midnight
- Yes I will make sure there is an adult home when you are at someone's house