To have said this to SIL re checking her DD's phone?

[weymouthswanderingmermaid]

My niece started year 7 this year. She's settled well, and is generally a well adjusted, well behaved sensible child. My DC's are younger and not quite at the smartphone / social media stage yet.
DN got her first phone when she started secondary school. Me and SIL we're chatting about DN yesterday, and SIL told her about several WhatsApp groups my DN is now on. Friends chatting and making social arrangements, and the like. I asked SIL if she was checking them / her phone is general, and she was horrified and said no of course not, she doesn't know her password anyway. I said that to would be sensible to check it every now and again, and to let DN that she would be doing so. To me, 11 is so young to have private access to WhatsApp and social media, and it's a parents duty to monitor it to keep the child safe and check for issues like bullying.
I explained that what I was saying was what i understood the general advice to be for parents, not just me being a snoop. I honestly did not say any of this in a judgemental holier than thou way, I was trying to be factual but helpful, iyswim?

But, SIL has not taken it well. She's seen it as both a slight against DN who "can't be trusted", and against her parenting, as I suggested she wasn't doing it right! SIL is a lovely, sensible woman and great mother. I really didn't expect that reaction

To the parents saying a secondary pupil doesn't need a phone. No maybe they don't but congratulations on setting your child up to be a victim of bullies.
Now that's bad parenting.

Greggers2017

You can use “bullies” as an excuse to let your child do anything their peers are doing, though, can’t you? Your child’s peers are vaping? Better get them a vape so they aren’t left out. Your child’s peers are staying out until midnight? Better dispense with bedtime. Your child’s peers are all allowed alcohol at a sleepover? Well, you wouldn’t want them to be bullied - better buy a bottle of something just in case.

That’s bad parenting. And being a sheep.

My DD is 13. I absolutely trust her and have an open and trusting relationship with her. She comes to me with concerns about what is said on SM or offline and often asks me to respond on SM on her behalf if she is away from her phone. Despite all this one of the three conditions set when she got her phone was that I have her passwords and will check what is on her phone. I do check and rarely see anything that concerns me but as it happens last night someone whose name I didn't recognise messaged her late last night (no tech in bedrooms at night is one of our other rules so she didn't see the message at the time) about doing an all nighter with a guy friend.
I asked about it this morning and it turns out it was someone from a regular activity she attends so she did no them and the message had a typo that when explained made it much less concerning. But that child is the same age as my DD and so if the message was as intended would have been very concerning.
The idea that checking a child's phone is the same as checking their diary is ridiculous. Unless they have Tom Riddle's diary the diary cannot draw them into unsafe situations and the world cannot access them through their diary. It can through a smart phone and I would feel utterly negligent as a parent if I did not take steps to protect her from that.

@churchandstate do you have a secondary school aged child without a phone then? They are useful for so much - family chats, school quizzes in lessons, even the scouts use temporary WhatsApp groups on days out to keep everyone in touch with each other and with the leaders.

I think probably as the years go by it will be easier for phones to be customised appropriately to the age group/maturity of the children using them. It's already easier to do that now than it was five years ago - there are more different apps for setting time limits, filters, parental controls and so on. It's still a bit clunky, because all phones are basically the same phones adults use and it takes more effort to put restrictions on them than it would if those controls were built right in from the start, but it's not impossible.

You can see a child through their teenage years with gradually evolving privileges on their phone till they hit a point where they and they alone are in charge of it. By then, hopefully they will have learnt a lot in the early years by using a phone with supervision, and they will still have had all the benefit of the things it makes possible.

how the hell are we comparing having a mobile phone, which pretty much every other fucker has, including probably you, to things like vaping and staying out till midnight?

Why would you want your 11/12 year old to be the only one in the family thats uncontactable when out alone?
My sons school has a policy of all phones off and in bag all day, but its hardly bad parenting to want to be able to contact him if hes late home.
I swear some of you probably have 3 year olds, but want to chime in with your opinion on what you would do with older kids.

orangechews

Not at the moment, no.

how the hell are we comparing having a mobile phone, which pretty much every other fucker has, including probably you, to things like vaping and staying out till midnight?

I am an adult. An 11 year old doesn’t need access to all the things I have access to. It’s my view that 11 is too young for their own smartphone. That doesn’t mean they would be uncontactable when out alone.

Don't kids just delete any messages they don't want you to see, if they know you are checking their phone? It feels more important to me to work on keeping up open lines of communication than believing that having access to their phone will necessarily stop them from getting into trouble.

Why do you assume those things are mutually exclusive?

Also, why do you assume that all the things parents are watching out for are things the child knows to be wrong and so would delete? One of the issues is that children can get drawn into things that they don't even realise are dangerous.

They feel mutually exclusive because saying you can check up on all your child's online chats with their friends feels like a declaration that you don't trust them?

I struggle with it tbh, I suspect most kids don't care as much but I have an intensely private DD who hates me looking at even the most innocuous of WhatsApp convos with her friends. I was the same as a kid, just had a vvv low embarrassment threshold. On the other hand, she spends v little time online and rarely has her phone in her room. If her usage patterns changed I might re-evaluate my position. Tbh I think that's the problem with threads like this. Kids are so different that there's no one size fits all. When her younger brother gets a phone I'll be keeping a much closer eye out.

Yanbu. Dd is the same age. She’s a sensible girl. The first time she called another child mean in a text, I made her apologise so she knows absolutely not to be unkind. I’m more concerned with what will be said / sent to her.

It's irrelevant that WhatsApp has a 13 age limit - if anything untoward were to happen it's not going to be any better because your child is 13 and not 12! I don't consider it to be setting the parenting bar low to allow a 12 year old access to SM - it's a choice that parents make because they know their own child and consider it better to allow these things with parental influence to guide ratherthan risk it being done behind their backs because the parent says a blanket no!

I am an adult. An 11 year old doesn’t need access to all the things I have access to. It’s my view that 11 is too young for their own smartphone. That doesn’t mean they would be uncontactable when out alone.

OK so you've solved the problem for year 7, say. What about year 8? Do you suddenly give your child a phone with no oversight and no limits? Or do you again say to yourself "no, that doesn't seem very safe, better have no phone at all"? What do you do at the point where you can see that a phone would be useful, but you still can't be 100% sure your child will know how to use it wisely? That 100% certainty that the lines of communication are perfect, that they understand all the issues etc., may never come. But at some point they'll need to start learning how to use a smartphone.

You can give a year 7 child a phone that has no access to YouTube or has time limits on it. You can make it impossible to install apps without your permission, so they get installed at home not during the school day. You can gradually relax those limits as the years go by. Just because an 11 year old doesn't need access to all the things you have access to doesn't mean they can't use a smartphone (in the same way that having their own pocket money doesn't mean they're suddenly free to spend it on a bus into town instead of going to school).

I suspect most kids don't care as much but I have an intensely private DD who hates me looking at even the most innocuous of WhatsApp convos with her friends. I was the same as a kid, just had a vvv low embarrassment threshold.

I understand and to me this is where discretion comes in. You can do a quick check of a phone every so often late at night, and you don't refer to anything in there unless you see something that concerns you (and even then, if you can do it without making reference to the phone, you do).

You also don't have to read the chats with known people - it's looking out for the unknown people, keeping an eye on the big class chats that can get a bit out of hand, and things like that, that are more of an issue.

But again I think it's also really important that kids aren't relying on phone chats with friends as truly private, as that can come back to bite them later - they should be being a bit restrained in online chats, whether it's in anticipation of a parent who might see, or of anyone else their friend might show the chat to.

There is a tension between the illusion of privacy a personal phone offers, and the need for adults to supervise the use of a device that basically puts a young teenager in direct contact with potentially anyone in the world. It is difficult and needs tact and discretion, however you manage it.

To me the smartphone a year 7 child has is more like a portable offshoot of the family PC, than anything like an adult's phone. It can be similarly supervised and limited. Then as the years go by, it becomes more personal to them, they take more responsibility for it, and it eventually becomes nothing at all to do with the family any more.

orangechews

I wouldn’t give a teenager a phone with no oversight or limits, and I wouldn’t give an 11 year old a smartphone, so I suppose the answer is somewhere in the five years between 11 and 16, and decreasing monitoring as trust is built that the child understands how to use the phone responsibly. How exactly that will work and when depends on the child.

I don't check DS' online interactions. He talks to me if anything bothers him. He has a right to privacy.

If your DS is under 16, you are being very foolish.

People who groom children online are skilful and put a huge amount of effort into making sure that the child feels comfortable talking to the and wouldn't consider mentioning it to any adult. The prize of getting a child to meet them so they can be assaulted or murdered is huge and worth spending long periods, gently cultivating these relationships.

No child is equipped to be on social media without some oversight from a clued-up adult. The internet is a bloody dangerous place and, as parents, it is our responsibility to be involved in their interactions so we can protect them.

Any responsible parent makes it a condition of having a phone that they know all passwords and will be checking the phone regularly without notice.

Alongside that, we need to talk to our children a lot about internet safety and the strategies that might be used to draw them into a dangerous situation.

It also helps the dc to realise that THEIR FRIENDS parents might be reading their messages. Or as I say 'don't write anything you can't defend in the headteachers office'.

I could retire tomorrow if I had a pound for every time a parent has told me they don't need to check their child's phone because they have such a great relationship, they've "always kept the lines of communication open", DC tells them everything, it's all about trust etc. and I've then had to burst their bubble by showing them something disturbing on their child's phone they were not aware of. I'm talking about good kids from stable, loving homes in the majority of cases by the way. I've also had many parents tell me their DC "isn't even on social media" when we know for fact that they are, and if they checked their phone they would know this.

Likewise, it really is very worrying. Some parents simply will not believe it of their child.

Oh my God! No wonder why so many teenagers suffer with anxiety. Having their laptops checked, their phones checked, their tablets checked... I would have probably killed myself back when I was a teenager if my mom was so controlling.

SweetSally

Unfortunately the internet isn’t safe for a young teen to have free access without supervision. That comes before concern about being “controlling”. Children are entitled to the protection of their parents.

Sounds like SIL over-reacted if you were merely factual. If you were pushy (I wasn't there, I don't know if you were pushy) then it would be annoying.

I don't check DC's phones.
DD tells many stories about sneaky things her friends did to (successfully) avoid their parents seeing forbidden activity on their phones. At least twice I helped DD's friends in tricky situations where they had lied to their parents and did not dare tell them the truth.

There is more than one successful strategy.

Funny thing is... I have all DC's email logins. & I know 2xDS's login patterns on phones. There's nothing to stop me snooping if I wanted.

At least twice I helped DD's friends in tricky situations where they had lied to their parents and did not dare tell them the truth.

What did you do?

I would have probably killed myself back when I was a teenager if my mom was so controlling.

There's a big difference between controlling and protecting.

DD tells many stories about sneaky things her friends did to (successfully) avoid their parents seeing forbidden activity on their phones.

Parents don't need to get involved in smaller issues. Of course that would make their teens take some things underground. This isn't about taking control of all their internet activity; it's about making yourself aware if it looks like they could be entering into dangerous conversations and being groomed for abuse, exploitation or even murder.

Only get involved if something looks dangerous to your child or someone else's. In all other respects, keep your counsel and let them come to you for advice if they want to.

I think people saying their children are so responsible that they need no monitoring need to be far more aware and far more careful:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hannah-smith-suicide-second-teenager-2154484.amp

Oh the old bullying line if they don't have the latest shit. 🙄 Look its a parenting choice and if someone chooses their child does not have a phone then that's up to them. When their child is old enough to make some money from a paper round or part time job, then they can have a phone. Where does it stop? The latest ipad etc. I still don't agree with checking up etc, if phones are so good then why the need to check everything on them. And a large amou t of bullying happens on phones!