Finding boundaries with DSD's new mobile

[SallyOhxx]

DSD, 10, has recently got a new mobile given to her by her Mum. (DH wanted to wait another year until she was in secondary school ). He said she could bring this at weekends round ours as she said she was missing out from texting her school friends so he agreed. DH did lay down some ground rules though in that we respected our privacy i.e. didn't want pictures being taken of us, and no Face-timing other than in her room.

Trouble is, her Mum seems to be bombarding her with messages & calls and it's beginning to really grate on me. It's a hard thing to explain but it does feel like an invasion of privacy at times. I must say that this may be down to the fact that she was quite high conflict at the start of DH & I relationship (we're married now and been together 6 years). So it feels like all the emotions I was feeling at the start are now rushing back to the surface.

I pick her up from school occasionally when my DH is working and it's not even 5 minutes in the car and 'ping' her Mum is texting asking if she's ok. Then all weekend she will ask my DSD what we got up to that day, who we've seen, what did she have for dinner, that she misses her & can't wait to see her. The way the contact schedule works is that DH has her EOW (Fri through Mon) plus every Wednesday night, and even on the single nights the same texting pattern continues. We are not seeing the full extent of the messages either, as it's only what DSD tells us. I do get the feeling sometimes that she feels she has to reply to her so not to upset her.

This Sunday just gone for instance, DH had to nip out to the hospital for a few hours as his Mum is poorly so I looked after DSD. We had sat down about 6pm to watch a film together, everything was lovely but 45 minutes in and her Mum rings and she literally jumps off the sofa to speak to her. I can hear her Mum asking if she's washed her hair! It just seems pointless phone calls at this point.

I have spoken to DH about this and he's not happy about the level of messages either. I think if DH had been home yesterday he would have nipped that convo in the bud rather quickly, but I feel like it's not my place to. He also doesn't want to say she can't message her Mum when she's round (I don't want that either) but how can we draw these boundaries?

Do people think this level of contact from Mum is necessary when she's round her Dad's? This is a new thing we're navigating so any advice welcomed, thank you.

it's the constant harassment tbh and this is what DH had when they first split.

It's nothing to do with your DH, it's a mother and daughter texting ffs 🙄 seems like you're hung up on how things were years ago

It's the intrusive quality of the messages. What have you all been doing? This is the DHs time. So ffs give the child and her father some space.

It's not healthy to constantly intrude. It's not healthy to be so constantly messaging like that either.

I wonder if the mum constantly messages the child all day whilst she's at school also.

It's teaching the girl terrible phone habits

Yes, I think it is too much messaging.

Before DSD got the phone, her mum wasn't constantly calling you and checking for updates, was she? They didn't need to be in constant contact before she had the phone, so why is she sending all the messages now?

It's not healthy for DSD to be constantly pulled out of the moment to answer a text message. It's not modeling a healthy relationship with her phone/technology for DSD, and it's not helpful to set up an expectation that very frequent contact is an expression of love and care.

Is she sending messages all day while DSD is at school too? (Did you have your snack at break? How was maths?Do you want me to bring a biscuit for you at home time?) If she is that's also really unhealthy and must be really annoying for staff to manage. And if she's not, it shows that she can maintain appropriate boundaries with school - so why not when DSD is with you and her dad?

Honestly though, even though it's annoying it's probably best to try and manage it with phone boundaries at your house, rather than risking making a huge deal out of it. So things like no phone at the table, using silent mode / do not disturb and putting phones away when doing family activities. But also modeling not responding immediately to non urgent things, not jumping up just because the phone makes a noise, and setting the expectation that if DSD's mum needs something urgently that she can call, so that DSD doesn't feel like she needs to have her phone on her at all times.

I’m willing to bet she doesn’t do it when the child is anywhere else. School isn’t competition for love/best parent.

it’s a way of controlling the child and keeping them tied to their primary parent.

my child had a phone early on for when she spent time away. I let her know she could call/text anytime about anything. I’d send the odd text to reassure her she wasn’t out of sight out of mind, but no reply expected.

being constantly on the phone with I love you and miss you emotional dependency when someone is away for a short time is a red flag. If I went away for a weekend and a partner insisted I was in constant immediate contact, making constant interruptions, he’d be dumped.

putting this level of neediness on a child is not a good thing.

what o/p can do about it though is nothing except try and set good relationship examples.

Really, I do not understand how posters with zero idea of what the DSD and her Mum are saying to each other by text need to imagine that the texts are ‘emotionally manipulative’ or ‘unhealthy neediness’ or ‘emotional dependency’
🙄

It’s all an excuse to police the DSD and her mum.