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.

This made me chuckle.
I remember the challenges of raising teenagers very clearly, and can laugh about it now lol, but I feel your frustration.
They are very clever and devious when they need to be.
I remember removing my daughters mobile phone and without us knowing she dug out the oldest Nokia brick and set that up instead.
On another occasion she paid her brothers to use their phones.
She was so blooming resourceful. We laugh about it together now, but I remember how challenging it was.
Keep going. Be firm, be fair, be consistent, be approachable. I promise you it gets better and they do come out the other side.

For those saying ‘they just get around it’, what do you do then?

when mine tried early on to get around the screen time, I warned them that if they tried and I found out, their phone would go for a week. One did, and lost her phone for a week. I said if it happened again, it would be a month.

funnily enough, it didn’t happen again.

you need to enforce your rules, not give up when they think they’ve bested you. Because then they have?

phones handed in an hour before bed here, we’ll plugged in in communal space and all tech out of bedrooms overnight. They just cannot be allowed to police themselves at their tender teenage age.

Apologies if this has been mentioned, I’ve just skimmed through but I have an iPhone 15 and it tells me I’ve spent ten hours on my email app when my phone has been switched off all night. So I wouldn’t necessarily trust what the phone is saying.

If anyone knows why my phone does this please do let me know. It’s tricky monitoring your phone use when it tells you you’ve been on it for bloody hours when it’s not even switched on.

I'd swop her phone for a flip phone - then she can make calls, but not surf.

Spending so much time in the water sounds like she is on the autism spectrum- my niece is seriously autistic and putting her in the bath was often the only way of keeping her happy. Focus on solutions to the problems rather than diagnosis though- having a diagnosis doesn't actually help in any material way.

This sounds so like DD2, down to the timescales of getting as far as the start of year 8. She then left the school she was at, I couldn’t find any other schools that would take her until the start of year 9, she started there and that went tits up very quickly. She’s still on roll there but hasn’t been in for over a year. What’s your DS doing now, if you don’t mind me asking?

Yes she is on her phone a lot, but we live rurally, there really isn’t much for her to do around here, I have to work and I also have another autistic dd who needs a lot of support. There is one me. I do what I can to spend time with each of them, and in the case of DD2 as the thread is about her, she often comes out and about with me doing dog/horse stuff, she loves watching sports and goes to football matches regularly, and like any teenager so loves a trip to the shops. Yes in a perfect world she’d be going to school but the knock on effect of the stress of trying to force her into a system that isn’t built for her and that she can’t cope with is MASSIVE. For herself, for me, and also for my other DD. Her behaviour when she’s in school is literally unbearable (both at school and home), but it all comes from a place of anxiety and stress for her. It’s probably hard to understand for anyone without a PDA child but taking her out was the only way forward, for all of our sakes. I’d rather she was happy and felt secure in life than mentally scarred from school. She’s bright and determined and she can apply herself to whatever she wants to follow at any time in the future, but undoing mental damage isn’t so easy.

That said, she will hopefully be back in school very soon 🎉, the school she’s on roll at have agreed to a managed move to the smaller school which I think will be great for her. Fingers crossed.

@MamaConchy

If she was a shit, she was a shit, c'est la vie. Don't worry about the po-faced on here.

I use Family Link for my kids (albeit on Android) and even at 16 I have controls on their phone, quite sensible of them actually as it can be removed past the age of 13. But they know if I didn't switch them off at a certain time they'd spend all day and all night watching Netflix or what have you. It also block inappropriate sites and searches etc. and I also have blocks set up on my wifi extender - you can also use one of those to switch off the wifi to particular items if you need to. Might be worth looking into instead of having a fight trying to take it off her all the time (although not arguing, seems she probably needs that).
Good luck

She'll be down Tesco buying a burner

@MamaConchy

I only worked part time, so I was around a lot when DS was out of school. He was willing to do some school work, so we had a bit of a routine going and we did basic maths, spellings, writing a story and some reading most days. Outside of that I did take him out and about with me and he had coaching sessions in a sport he enjoyed. The rest of the time he gamed, but he made some on-line friendships from around the world, that still endure to this day. It was a really lovely time and I miss those days.

He is 22 now and working. He does nightshifts in a supermarket, so he is mostly nocturnal now. He likes this as it's quieter, not so many people in the store. I signed him up for UC when he was about 20 and explained his issues. They referred him to a scheme, and they helped him get this job and he is still there 18 months down the line. It's been touch and go a couple of times, but his manager says he has a good work ethic and is willing, so that helps. But I know it could go pear-shaped any day, so every day is a blessing.

He still takes up a lot of my time though, if I didn't handle his life admin, make sure he put his uniform in the washing machine, remind him to take his meds and sort out ordering repeat prescriptions, remind him to set alarms etc etc then I don't think he would have held the job down.

When my child was badly behaved and had a phone ban I was able to go on the account as it was in my name and block the intenet . I was able to block all messages too and calls . I would have it so he could contact me but it only worked when he connected to wi fi.
The phone company were all happy to bar calls and messages or just data .

That’s brilliant that he’s managed to get a job. I can relate to a lot of that with my 20 year old, she still relies on me to make and take her to appointments, order and collect her meds etc, she’s still very child-like in a lot ways and any moves I make to encourage independence result in a bit of a mental breakdown from her as she still wants to be a child and has massive anxieties about adulting. I wish she could get a job but she has CFS on top of ASD, I arranged some volunteering work for her last year which was for one hour, twice a week, and she couldn’t even manage that as she’d either be too exhausted to go, or they’d send her home after half an hour as she was too tired to carry on. I have my hands full with the pair of them that’s for sure.

You clearly have zero understanding of the complexities of these needs.

Awww that’s beautiful ❤️ I genuinely feel so happy for you. It’s these little moments that keep us going when parenting is tough.
I live with the daily battles of a teen with ADHD, ASD, APD and learning difficulties. It is utterly exhausting.
It sounds like you are doing a great job. My entire life is given to trying to keep my vulnerable teen safe.
Please, please do not give a 2nd thought to some of the mean judgements being handed out on this thread from mean people with no experience.
Im constantly chasing chasing my tale re parental controls on Apple.
My daughter saw me tap in the passcode in the reflection of the patio doors - dark outside so she almost saw it in a mirror!
Shes changed the time zone - that worked for her. If she does this then there is an option within your control to shut it all down now (can’t remember which function it was).
Atm her screen time / parental control, has been deleted from my phone - I believe this has something to do with both phones running on different updates (it happened once before). It’s not completely deleted the controls tho, as she still cannot change her screen passcode and I can access her screen passcode.
I am biding my time to take her phone for long enough, when she is asleep, so that I can fully install it back on her phone without her knowing (from memory, when I reinstall it, it sends a notification to her phone and she can accept or decline it, before I can reinstall.).
She would have the mother of meltdowns if she knew I took her phone, including damage to the home and harming herself.
Good luck with everything. I’d like to say things will get better, but in my case, theyve got harder as she’s got older !! I am ever hopeful tho!
❤️

Mine had the “ask for 5 more minutes” but the request came thru to my phone and I had to approve the extra minutes.

I have absolutely no idea of the situation where you live, but I'm in Flanders (Belgium) and we have day-centers where children like yours can spend some time, talk with people, do some clubs like arts&crafts etc.etc. Always professional carers close-by. So no school but still a way of socialising? Would that be possible for your DD?

This is why you need to avoid romanticising when it comes to males she meets on the internet.

She's extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

Edited

I was talking about my oldest DD there, who has never had any interest at all in boys…or girls.

And why the fuck would I romanticise either of my children doing that? I’m not fucking mental. But thanks for the input anyway.

Sadly in the UK there’s approximately nothing available. It’s either go to school or not go to school. There are a few home ed parent-run groups and activities in the area but they’re all aimed at younger children.

This isn’t the case. There are other options.

In case you didn’t see my pp, if DD can’t attend school, have you requested alternative provision under section 19 of the Education Act 1996? On their website, IPSEA has a model letter you can use. This is separate from the EHCP process.

When was the LA’s refusal to assess? Did you appeal?

Yes, she had 2 hours AP a week last year, but the school wouldn’t pay for that and the college course she’s doing this year so it stopped. 2 hours a week was all the school could afford, without an EHCP.

The refusal to assess was because they thought the problem might have been specific to the first secondary school she was at, and she’d be ok at a different school. She wasn’t ok at a different school. So now I have that evidence maybe they’ll assess but tbh even if she gets one, at this stage it’s going to be probably too late to be much use for secondary, I have a friend whose son was granted an EHCP over a year ago and the LA still haven’t agreed on a suitable school for him. I know the heel dragging is deliberate to save money.

Under section 19 of the Education Act 1996, it is the LA who is responsible for ensuring DD receives a suitable full-time education (1 day at college &/or 2 hours AP is not a suitable full-time education). Ultimately, it is not the responsibility of the school to fund provision for DC unable to attend school. Send IPSEA’s model letter to the Director of Children’s Services at the LA. If they refuse, delay, or ignore you, you need a pre-action letter. Then, if this fails, judicial review proceedings will resolve the situation.

It isn’t too late for an EHCP to be useful. EHCPs can last until 25, or 26 in some cases. So if the LA refuses to issue, appeal. And if they fail to adhere to the timescales, you can enforce them, via JR if necessary.

If the LA issued your friend’s DS an EHCP that did not have a suitable school named, have they appealed? And if he isn’t in school, have they requested an expedited hearing?

clever!

When I’ve spoken to sendias they’ve said because she’s on roll at school it’s only the school that can provide AP 🤷‍♀️. Anyway, she’s starting the other school soon and won’t be going to college anymore so I guess I’ll have to see how that works out, hopefully she’ll cope a lot better there as it’s so much smaller and more hands on.

SENDIASS lied to you. IPSEA and SOSSEN are far better for accurate lawful information. See this page. Section 19 of the Education Act 1996 is clear.