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.

iPhones aren’t actually easily hacked at all which is one of the key reasons I have one. They’re actually known to be more secure than Android phones. Just wanted to point this out in case anyone was worried!

Thank you @Puffalicious, and for your other comments on this thread, you’re one of the few who understand what I’m dealing with. She is so loved, it’s been a bumpy road and I’m sure there are more bumps to come but she is generally speaking becoming such a lovely girl (helped massively by not forcing her into a school she can’t cope with).

You call your child a ‘little shit’, wow. Good luck to her.

Hope you enjoyed the hug and the clean sheets OP Sometimes they are lovely and sometimes they are little shits. Mine are aged 39 -23 currently the 30 year old and the 36 year old are little shits, the rest are just meh, only the Grandchildren are lovely.

Oh I knew she’d been talking to someone as our house isn’t a castle. I also knew it was a boy as she was being cagey about who it was. Also I am friends with the mum of a good friend of hers so I get information that way 🤣. But the conversations seemed to have tailed off lately and I was only thinking whilst we were away at CP that that seems to have died a death, then boom 💥, DD strikes out of left field.

Love your update, OP.

Fellow PDA Mum here, though mine isn't quite 13 yet.

I echo PP's advice about support groups on Facebook. There's Newbold Hope, which is great for when they're in crisis (really good support), and there are various PDA support groups.

It's hard, because traditional parenting doesn't work at all, and working out the collaborative approach that often works means a lot of false starts. And it's extra tough when you're on your own.

Sounds like you're doing great, overall, since she knows how to make amends when messing up.

It's SO bloody tough. All we can do is support each other. Some members of my family have zero.idea (despite being loving & concerned), so ignore randoms on the Internet.

Hats off to you, as I don't know what I'd do without tag-teaming woth OH. He leaves tomorrow for work until Thursday (never happened before, but he can't avoid it) & I'm already dreading it. I'm practising my deep breathing 🙏.

She will I suspect either have changed the time on her phone to get round downtime or switched the phone to airplane mode

Could you recommend any of the PDA support groups on FB? I joined the Gentle Parenting Autism/ adhd/ PDA one: it's useful, but I find lots of the posts & comments don't help with the boundaries we need to lay, & many are sort of 'Us against society, we're so misunderstood & want to exist outside of it' which we just can't do.

My boy is also almost 13, & it's a tough road already.

I'm in this one Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) Support Group

There are 50k members, and quite a few are in the US, so sometimes you need to check where the poster is from because advice isn't as helpful in those cases, but I find it quite balanced with regards to expectations vs ability. I'm not in any other general ones, just one for Home Ed and then Newbold Hope.

I can relate to that, my parents for example just can’t fathom why I don’t just “put my foot down” with her 🤦‍♀️. But I can see from the positive changes in DD that I am treading the right path with her, we’ve come a long way from me being blue lighted into hospital due to the stress she’d caused me, and literally feeling like I was losing my marbles and begging SS to take her. Funnily enough, when school stopped, so did all of that. I’ve found a school now that is a lot smaller, more of a primary school feel to it, and I think it will work really well for her. Small class numbers and great staff, and although it’s not a special school most kids there have SEN. So fingers crossed for that.

Good luck for this week! You’ve got this, I think suddenly not having the support you’re used to is just as hard as never having had the support at all, but Thursday will be here before you know it.

It’ll be one of two things - she’s changing the time on the clock - you can stop that but I can’t remember how.

Or you haven’t got the bit highlighted that blocks at the end of the limit. Go to app limits, then select the thing you want to limit, then make sure both app limit and block at end of limit are highlighted.

Calling her a little sht doesn’t really make you look good here*.

This comment doesn't make you look good here so I guess it's catching

My DC got round it at the same age by setting up and using a new Apple ID in secret.

Yes and no.

An autistic child watching their favourite Cbeebies on their iPad to regulate themselves, fine.

An SEN 14-year-old having unrestricted access to the internet on their phone, and watching 10-15 hours of TikTok day? No. It’s wildly irresponsible parenting, it’s literally destroying her brain.

OP, you actually sound like a great mum who is doing her best. But children and teen access to smart phones (esp watching hours of seven-second videos on TikTok) will be the major health scandal of our time. Just google “Tiktok damage to teenagers brain” and have a read. She is fourteen years old, you can take away her phone and replace it with a dumb phone that only has text and calls. It’s hard, but she will likely thank you one day.

For the poster who snarkily said “what else will she do all day?” Literally anything else is better. What did we do when we were teenagers? Watch tv, read books, talk on the phone, go to clubs. TV actually is loads better than phone screentime - watching films/series is fine, not overstimulating stuff that’s been edited into seven-second bursts.

This.

That screen time is horrific. Most of her waking hours. My daughter same age is limited to 2. How do you not have any limits on her screen time? Wake up OP and give yourself a thorough shake.

Thank you. I'll check that out.

Impossible to police.

And sorry but imo it is just beyond disrespectful to call your own daughter 'a little shit'. It is just horrible.

The relationship with her is insecure. I don't think this approach is good. She's your child, you'll do what you think, but I think a policing attitude combined with this sort of labelling of her is not the way. But up to you.

Oh I can relate to the 'Just be firmer ' chats!

I'm so sorry to hear you were so stressed. OH is always going on about what stress will do to us. It's a constant battle to balance it all & have space for yourself.

So encouraging to hear you may have found a good fit school wise. I'm lucky in that DS has always really liked school, although by the end of primary I could see the pressures of not being NT getting to him.

I fought like a warrior for months & months, going down the legal route, & at the last gasp just before secondary started last Summer the council capitulated. He has a space at a specialist unit connected to a secondary, which means he has a personalised hybrid education: sometimes he's in unit like a primary classroom, with very small numbers & high staff ratio; sometimes he's in mainstream with staff support. There's been bumps in the road, but he likes it. Post-school is tough, but we get there.

Best of luck with the new school & continued, open communication.

PS Ignore the continuing haters on here, they do not have a clue.

valentinka31Insecure attachment my arse. John Bowlby's theories apply to NT children (I have indeed known many a child who has insecure attachment/ ACES whose behaviour looks very like ND, but it isn't, the root has nothing in common).

All behaviour is communication, you know. Your son is clearly showing you that he feels imprisoned at home - by his emotions, by you, by physical obstacles such as walls and doors... he yearns to remove the doors and live free, as all children deserve to be. Any loving parent would take all their doors off the hinges and let the air of happiness into their lives. Open-plan living!

Has he, by any chance, been hiding single socks inside clocks and the like? Hats under mats? Because that's REALLY serious.

It's not hard on with iPhone or Android. My cousin's DS (who IS an entitled brat) is in no way a tech guru, could Google & find ways around every attempt to block his use. Once, out of pure spite, he blocked his parents phones when he unlocked his own! Devices had to be locked away, so he snuck in & stole his DM's phone while she slept, from her bedside table. She only found out because despite being on charge all night, her phone was drained.

They'll find a way around it.

when setting screen time make sure you turn on the ‘requires passcode’ tab at the bottom or they can just immediately bypass it

I think the problem is way bigger than just sneaking phone use.

She's clearly vulnerable, has extremely poor judgement when it comes to her own personal safety, and at a loose end. The boy who persuaded her to go and meet him sight unseen should be reported to the police.

Are you sure it was a boy and not a man - or men, or a group of boys? I'd take her to be seen by a doctor, and I'd be concerned that she was coerced or persuaded as a vulnerable teenage girl into sex.

You can’t if you’ve set it to block and don’t know the screen time code.

@MamaConchy what does it say she has been doing. You can click on the bar and it gives a breakdown. She might have been sat on messages if you allow it during downtime…