So worried about 12 year old DD. Is this normal?

[Marilynmansonsthermos]

She started her periods a couple of months ago. Prior to this she was the same for a couple of months though. Basically she is glued to her phone, she never takes her eyes of it, unless she's out. She tries everything to stop me taking it at night and the worst thing is she will never leave her room. If I let her she would only come out to get food and wash. I'm not even joking. She looks at YouTube videos and messages people constantly. Apparently it's normal to stay in your room all the time and her friends do too. I still insist she goes on family days out unless she has plans with friends. I think I'm reasonable as she's only 12? The way she reacts though I feel as though she absolutely Hates me. At my wit's end. My rules are no internet/phone after 11, some family time i.e just leaving her room and coming downstairs for a few hours in the evening, and coming oh family days out if she doesn't have plans. Is that so bad?

Take control of the phone, a good app is called 'family link' you can set times that she can use the phone and has a bedtime function where the phone can only be used for calls and text.
Works well in our house and our 14yr old ds always appears when I put a block on his phone and actually interacts with us 😂
I think most teenagers are like this to some degree with phones but I feel 11pm is very late for a 12 year old to be on the internet.

Ours are 12and 14 and get 90 minutes screen time a day. One of them fights it, the other doesn’t, but that’s still all they get.

Hi thanks for your reply. It's only in the holidays that it's that late she has pushed and pushed for that time. She is like a screaming banshee when I say about the phone. Good to know that you don't think I am being unreasonable. She is making me doubt myself I feel like I'm losing my mind.

I need to be stricter, her screen time was 5 hours today. Will download that app tomorrow.

What other hobbies does she have? You need to help her get some or this will be very bad for her mental health.

Nothing atall except guides, likes art but only when forced to come off her phone. Doesn't read anymore..it's awful. She never used to be like this. She's shown an interest in a kickboxing class so we are going to go to that together. She is doing well at school and has a group of friends that she sees regularly for meet ups. Basically her phone and seeing her friends Is all she seems to care about.

We have screen time set up on my daughters iPhone. It's restricted to amount of time spent and also a cut off time. Any arguments mean she gets less time.

I think it also depends what she’s doing on her phone as to whether you should worry or not. My dd is a huge extrovert, loves being around people. From year 7 she started to spend a lot of time on her phone but the bulk of that time has always been social, messaging friends or FaceTiming them.

In years 7-9 we tried to restrict it in different ways and encourage other things with varying degrees of success, but I also began to realise she just loved being around people. She prefers meeting up with them in real life even more so I don’t think it’s too concerning! She’s also made lots of new friends via first chatting to them online (all either at her school/friends of school friends at other schools/friends of church friends etc so not total strangers). She’s got a huge social circle now which has been great for her.

So I’m not too worried about social time on the phone - in my view it’s better than aimlessly scrolling through Instagram (or worse ). She also spends time on Netflix in holidays which I’m not worried about.

There are lots of harmless or even positive things that can be done on a phone - as well
As negative things. So I would get a feel for what she’s doing with her time and discuss it with her - is she happy with how she’s spending her time, does she feel some of it is time wasted, does she want help regulating?

I always think it’s best to get them onboard in trying to self regulate too. Dd now has exams (year 10) coming up and asks me to take her phone/block it etc as she knows she gets distracted. Ultimately, I want her to be able to self regulate by the time she leaves home!

Take the phone of food her and replace it with an old Nokia!! She’s only 12, take charge.
I had no rules or boundaries growing up and I hated it.