To ground my dd indefinitely and take her phone

[Autumnbe]

Long and short of it went through my dd12 phone last night and saw photos on her phone (saved not active message) of a boy with his top off, next saved photo was her posing in her bikini with her face scrubbed out. Upon questioning her it transpires that she did infact send him this picture. She doesn’t know him well and has not been in contact since.

We are a very open family, sit down to dinner every night, discuss the day, very close. I feel like I don’t know her at the moment. I also feel very guilty for not being aware that she potentially would do this.

I’m worried if I don’t punish her now, her behaviour will spiral.

She also has pornhub in her search history, which she said was a joke with her friend. Her friends are also into vapping. She is adamant that she hasn’t tried it but what do I do?

Why scare the boy if she’s doing it too, that’s like telling the parents of the boy
to go to the OP DD’s house and scare the shit out of her.

This.

But try not to punish her - she’s 13, and not quite got that maturity to deal with this. Peer pressure is massive at that age

I disagree and think punishment is necessary here. She is repeatedly going against your word and distributing child porn.

Some posters are incredible. Do you really think you can ensure your teenager never encounters porn? This is so naive

Old thread so hopefully sorted by now

Remove it for 24 hours, give it back, if it carries on further then the loss of privilege will be for longer, if it still continues, a brick phone to contact parents and friends until she can be responsible.OP can carry on with that chat but that’s not working and how much longer is OP prepared for this to continue and explicit photos/videos of her DD to be potentially in circulation, it’s protecting her DD best interests who is clearly not ready for the responsibility of using a phone.

No it hasn’t, it’s got worse.

I’ve done those things in Dec when it first happened. It’s unfortunately escalated, I think I have confused people resurrecting an old thread

For us, as I said above, they could have it for going to school and back, and give it back when they got home. Then request it as needed and give it back after. Not take it into their rooms for hours. Not sit for ages sifting through it. I’m not saying that would be easy, but it’s likely what I’d try. Also adding more restrictions on - eg restricting / banning camera usage, Snapchat etc.

I admit I haven't rtft but just wanted to say that you should warn her about the editing. There are loads of videos that show people how to remove these scribbles to reveal peoples faces.

The phone removal is interesting. Why do teens need phones to go to/from school, why not remove it completely or replace with a dumb phone. Most of the parents here managed to get to/from school without being GPS tracked or needing to call home to check in for safety.

On the other hand, based on some of your DDs behaviours I might worry she’d go AWOL so would indeed want to track where she was. What a minefield.

DS's cousins have a "no phones upstairs" rule from 13 to about 15, and "no phones in the bathroom" they must stay downstairs overnight (that's mainly so they aren't on them until all hours on a school night).

I'll be probably doing likewise as I can point to their house and claim it's standard teen rules.

That's one rule I'd put in place right away for your DD, as well as monitoring what she's viewing. I'm not saying that sitting on the sofa with her Ma and Da will totally prevent her looking at 18+ stuff or sending/recieving photos, but what it might do is curb any impulsive immediate response to a request for a nude photo. It might give her time to think first and act later, if at all.

Some schools need them to use a phone in school - ours did - because there wasn’t enough funding for laptops so they did research etc on their phones (cheers austerity).

Smart phones are cheap nowadays and it can provide kids with access to the internet - which they need at home for homework - especially if a family cannot afford a PC/tablet (yes these families exist!). My siblings who still live at home only have their smart phones for the internet.

You can also put screen time limits on your kids phone. I do that for mine.

Hadn’t realised some secondary schools almost require them. Would just add a 32Gb chrome book is £120 in Currys and probably cheaper online. Perfectly adequate family laptop for internet research.

Having said all that I do realise internet access is necessary for a whole bunch of stuff and for some people £100 is still a hurdle so not intending to derail the thread.

Bloody smart phones and the internet. For all the good they’ve done, they’re equally evil.

His parents should also be aware so that he can be protected too.

The school will have something in place for those that do not have a phone. They cannot dictate what parents spend their money on.

Do you know who she's sending to/receiving from? Does she fully know? I'd want to know that just as much, i'm sorry you're going through so much this really does sound horrendous x

Sit down together and watch "the most hated man on the internet'

Watch this with your sons as well as your daughters.

Our school has to have a new phone to support the apps and now a chrome book to take in every day.

it’s expensive and makes policing so much more difficult

Thank you so much for your advice, stories and opinions. We sat down last night, I spoke to a parenting helpline yesterday.
have read message threads where there is clear pressure for her to send pictures, once she knew that we would need to get the police involved she talked and actually said please don’t give me access to the apps (snap chat and tik tok). We sat and deleted all the apps together. Some of the things she has told me about girls within her friendship circle are frightening but I’ve agreed to allow the school to deal with that. She seemed relieved. I’m not going to start a pity party about how I’ve failed her, I’m a parent and I get things wrong, but thankfully it’s been caught before it got a lot worse.
going forward she will have access to her phone in a communal environment, as taking it from her completely is just not rational as this is to do with educating her and putting boundaries in place.

Glad you’ve come to some sort of resolution. And you haven’t failed as a parent. Far from it.

Great work OP - it’s a huge learning process for your daughter and I hope she’ll get there - your precautions and joint plan sound very sensible.

I’m not going to start a pity party about how I’ve failed her, I’m a parent and I get things wrong, but thankfully it’s been caught before it got a lot worse.

You didn't fail. You listened, you got proper advice from a range of sources and you picked the best option for you and your child - and like you say, you caught it before it got a lot worse.

That's all any of us can do. I'd call yours a parenting win to be honest.

No I think you are missing the point. The dd is ignoring the op, but if the boy’s parents find out and they threaten him with grounding and loss of phone, plus explain the consequences of sending, and having pictures of a child on his phone, then he might be frightened off.

i wasn’t suggesting grabbing the torches and pitchforks and banging his door down lol