To wonder how the hell my dd has done this?

[MamaConchy]

Posting for traffic and I need some iPhone tech help!

Last night my DD age 14 was severely in the dog house and one of the punishments I have given her is to remove her screentime. Unfortunately after I’d retrieved her and dropped her home, I had to leave again for work and I won’t be back home until this evening. Adult DD was also home so she wasn’t alone.

I’ve set her screentime so that it’s basically switched off all day, every day, and her phone is blocked. But I’ve just had a look and somehow the little shit has been online for over 4 hours today (I turned her screentime off around 9pm last night). She will still be asleep now so presumably she was somehow on her phone from midnight until 4am for her to be online today for 4 hours.

I am planning on physically taking her phone away from her when I get home but I’d like to know how she’s getting around the screentime thing.

What did she do to warrant the sanctions?

Anyway, just confiscate the actual phone. Easiest way I think.

Sounds like you are a great parent with firm boundaries regarding behaviour, SEN or not.

Oh yes I do make a point of praising her as much as possible. But equally when she pulls stunts like she did yesterday then it’s not going to be without consequences for her. I think I’d be a far worse parent to ignore what she did and sweep it under the carpet because she put herself in massive danger.

Are you sure the data ais accurate? It says she had almost 16 hours screen time on Friday. That means there were only 8 hours she was off her phone, but surely she can’t be actively using her phone whilst in lessons at school and she must be getting sleep somewhere too? It could be apps being used in the background that are showing up. Can you not see which apps were being used? On my phone you can see how many hours you were on each individual app and what time you were active.

Edit: Just looked and you need to click where it says ‘see all app and website activity’ under the graph and you can see what time she was on her phone and which apps she was using.

I do my best! I’m not perfect and winging it like everyone else but I do try.

I took her to a school open day yesterday (I’m trying to get her back into school), which was really positive. She then said she wanted to meet up with her female friend in town (about a 15 minute bus ride from the school we were looking at). She’s done this solo lots of times and it’s never been a problem. So I said that was fine and gave her some money for transport and lunch etc. I said I had to get back to work but to let me know if she had any trouble getting home, trains are a bit all over the place at the moment.

Anyhow, when I hadn’t heard from her by about 6.30 I tried ringing to see if she’d made it home. She ignored me several times but finally picked up after I sent a very direct text to her. Long story short, she’d never gone to meet her friend in the town she said she was going to, she’d actually been to the house of a boy she’d been talking to online but never actually met before. Cue me having to leave work and doing a 65 mile round trip to collect her and drop her home.

She did something similar about 2.5 years ago, at least I didn’t have to involve the police this time to find her I guess!

The stupid thing is I am really not a strict parent at all and of course she’s going to want to meet boys at her age and I have no problem with that, there was no reason at all to lie to me (although obviously I wouldn’t have been ok with her going to his house without having met him or his family before).

is this apple controls?

they are USELESS and so easy for kids to get around - they also don't even block some apps.

Jeez OP, I'd have gone tonto as well! You have my sympathy, 18 yo woth adhd here & hos compulsions have caused me over the years to call him worse that a little shit. At 14 he had to charge his phone downstairs at night as a baseline, & we turned off the wi-fi when he had consequences.

He's now at uni, still a very tall shit sometimes, but otherwise on his way to being a decent adult (we'll not talk about the vaping🙈).

Hold on in there.

@MolkosTeenageAngst my phone shows combined use as like 8h a day but most of it is youtube music, I hate silence! Total use is probably 2h which includes a phonecall to my mother!

She’s not at school, as I’ve already said. I have just figured out how to see the breakdown of what she’s been doing. Looks like she’s awake because it’s gone up by another hour and a half, and yes I was correct it’s TikTok and Snapchat she’s been on. But how 😵‍💫.

I’ll be home in a couple of hours so her phone is getting taken away then.

Better idea is remove the charger... They self limit to keep their phone going longer!! Then when it dies and she has no phone you don't get blamed!! She may manage that better than imagining you going through her phone if you take it away. ...
Ime dc do the daftest of things but most times grow out of it...

My dd had figured out my screen time passcode when this happened in our house. I had kept the same one for years so it was hardly surprising she had noticed me typing it in. So she was just providing the phone with the code to authorize more time. I changed the code and she was blocked again

Thank you! I’ll try changing that.

This is true. My iPad sometimes says I've used the device for 12 hours straight when I'm actually sleeping. It turned out, in my case, to be a remote control app that I downloaded when I lost the TV Remote. This app was "always on" in the background.

Reading why you're punishing her makes me wonder if this is the right approach. You say your DD has SEN. If this is something like Autism, ADHD, LD, she is going to be much more behind in maturity than her age. Children like this are very vulnerable to being misled due to their naivety. Does your daughter understand why what she did was wrong? As in it is wrong because it is dangerous. Not because it is one of Mum's rules. If she doesn't understand why she shouldn't do something like this, she will just lie about it again in the future.

My 16 year old is a Knobhead at times and so is DDog
I don't think I am either a bad parent OR a bad dog owner unless I yell it at them (and even then if I was provoked)

Yeah my mum said it to my face regularly so I’ll judge anyone who openly says it about their kid in such an open forum. Words can be very hurtful.

Google “how to bypass iPhone screen time limits” and work your way through the list. The most common is changing the time on the clock- ie putting the clock into a different time zone. But there’s a lot of different ways around it for a tech savvy teen.

That’s awful, I’m sorry your Mum was like that and I totally agree words hurt. Wouldn’t it have been better for your Mum to vent to friends or online than to say it to you?

maybe you do need to be a strict parent with her - if my children told me a lie this bad they would have absolutely zero privileges (included phones) for at least a week. My 11 year old was cheeky to me yesterday and didn’t get off fornite after me telling him twice. That’s no fornite for a week. No negotiations. Kids , especially teens, respond to firm rules. They might argue against it honestly it is the best thing for them, even though it makes life harder for us in the short term

calling her “a shit” is pretty vile

Might she have another device that you're not aware of? One she could put her SIM into but not her phone? An older model handset perhaps?

You can also turn it off and on for certain apps, so check all apps are locked, use a pass code not easy/that you use everywhere else.

Oh don’t worry, she did that too, and I could hear her even though she thought I couldn’t.

Calling a kid a little shit is horrible whether they can hear it or not.

You know its unlikley OP's DD is actually reading this and knows its about her don't you?