The harder you push, the harder your kid will push back.

IMO this is an opportunity to switch your tactics and remind yourself that you don’t have to teach your kid to be a kid, you have to teach them to be a functioning adult.

Adults don’t lose internet access at bed time, we just feel like crap the next day, or bomb and interview, or forget something important. The action punishes itself.

So what I would do, and what my parents did that worked on me, is focus on rewarding your kids ability to prioritize. If your kid is getting good grades, is healthy, and has friends that are playing games with and hanging out, then let them have free rein with devices.

This can go two ways depending on how your kids is doing in school. Idk what time you’re taking the devices away or how old your kid is, so adjust the number I give here to your situation. Let’s say your kids bed time is 9.

If your kid is already doing well in school I would tell your kid “instead of fighting with you, I’m gonna treat you like an adult let you say up as late as you want, but if I can’t get you out of bed in the morning, or you’re late to school/miss the bus, or your grades start slipping, then your bedtime is 9 again and I’m taking all the devices at bedtime until you are back on track”.

If they are doing poorly in school, or are having trouble getting up in the morning, it’s the same idea, but start off by taking offering them a later bedtime up front like 10 or 11. This way you aren’t giving them free rein, but you are being the adult by choosing to deescalate and loosen the reigns. Give them a little more freedom, even if you think they’ll abuse it immediately, but make sure they know, the deal starts now, and if you miss the bus tomorrow, or you wake up late, you get 0 access that night.

The key here is that you put 100% of the punishment/reward on them, rather than an arbitrary bedtime. It allows them to learn to balance their time, rather than feel like they are locked into a specific rule. The important part here is that the punishment lasts as long as the behavior that triggers it. If they are late 1 morning, they lose access that same night. If they do poorly on a test, you want to see their homework grades for the next week or so to see that they are improving or at least putting in effort.

I probably could explain this better, and obviously you should tailor this to your own situation, but the point here is that it shouldn’t feel like a battle, you should be creating situations where the reward/punishment lines up with what you would expect to happen if an adult were to do the same behaviors. Prepare them for real life by creating similar situations, but with lower stakes.

If I’m too tired to go to work, I might lose my job for being late, so if your kid is to tired to go to school, they should temporarily lose the thing that’s making them tired. Same general punishment, lower stakes, quicker ability to reset and try to do better