Blocking access to social media

[Bunbaker]

DD is in year 11 and has a lot of exams coming up. She seems to be totally incapable of revising without having access social media sites, Putlocker and YouTube.

The problem is that a lot of her revision resources are online. Ideally I would like her to use a laptop, but be able to block access to Facebook, Messenger and YouTube.

I can confiscate her phone and iPad so she can't text, use Snapchat or Instagram, but I can't not let her use the laptop.

Any ideas?

A bit of teenage social anxiety and undergoing CBT are a world away from each other when it comes to parenting.

I'll type up my revised advice after I've slept. I've just trapped my finger in a car door and typing really fucking hurts atm.

Oh dear. A cold compress. Thanks anyway. I really need to be able to support DD and would rather be constructive and supportive than put too much pressure on her.

Mac has an app called SelfControl which let's you blacklist websites for a set length of time. I would say get that, or the PC equivalent and let her set her own time limits. E.g, work for 90 minutes then break for 15 etc. Confiscate phone during study periods.

Bribery also works. £50 for every A she gets?

Cold Turkey blocks various SM sites, you can set times on it. I used it all the time when I had to revise.

If you have something set up to work automatically then it takes so much drama and agnst out of the situation. Say you have social media blocked between 6 and 9 every school night and the Internet and Social media turned of every night from 10:30 then you don't have to keep nagging discussing it with her again and again.

I've never really understood the 'let them fail' advice on MN.

Why would you? They're teens. Not yet programmed to avert risk. Failing GCSEs won't speed up the process of connecting synapses/equalising hormones. That's why we don't leave them to it in respect of alcohol, drugs, unsafe sex, driving too fast and all the other host of things teenagers sometimes do without proper thought for the consequences.

GCSEs these days have an absurd impact upon the next stage of life. That's not of our teenagers' choosing.

OP, does your DD accept that social media is a problem vis a vis school work? If she accepts it then you might be able to broker a compromise as to when access gets shut down.

GCSEs these days have an absurd impact upon the next stage of life.

Not for my eldest.
I hereby promise to always assume that nothing about my situation is remotely like anyone else on MN.

Well there we are ragged, both you and your DS are MN mavericks. Shrugs.

And back to the OP...her DD wants to stay at school, where she cannot either resit or move on to her next educational stage without the requisite GCSE grades. Just like lots and lots of other DC in the UK b they wanting to take vocational courses of A levels.

“Let them fail” depends on the consequences of failure. For someone whose consequence for not getting the grades she wants at GCSE is that she gets to do them again at college, I would say that “let her fail” seems like a reasonably safe option. So yes, it probably is better now than later. But that doesn’t mean not supporting her at all. It just means not catastrophizing over it.

Given that she is anxious, I wouldn’t threaten her with college and I wouldn’t talk about “failure” either. College is simply an alternative, a fall-back. Better to treat college in a cheery positive kind of way on the assumption that if necessary college would be fine and she will find ways to cope with it and perhaps even enjoy being treated more like an independent adult; and better to talk in terms of “getting the grades she wants” (emphasis on what she wants) rather than “failing exams” (emphasis on failure). The more anxious she feels the more avoidant she will be and the more she will spend time trying to get reassurance from her friends. It’s tricky.

There are various strategies I use with my DS, who is also a prize procrastinator. (Even so he is very successful at schoolwork so we have a slightly different set of issues, I’m a little concerned about what will happen to him at Uni when he will need to put in more effort and he’ll be on his own. Anyway.) I try to put DS in charge of the nagging. I offer to nag him rather than insisting! I ask him if there’s anything he’d like to be nagged about. Our deal is that if I nag he will not snarl at me, otherwise I will stop – you might have a different kind of deal. I nag in the most cheerful, mild and non-threatening way possible. You could ask your DD what kind of nagging she would like – would she like to go through all the things that need doing that night when she gets home, or would she like to be reminded about a specific piece of work? Would she like to be nagged at regular intervals through the evening, or just the once? And would she like you to pop in with a cup of tea after half an hour as a check on whether she’s working (and be open about that, and friendly if she hasn’t started yet, perhaps stand withr her while she gets going?) ? Would she like to work in the kitchen with you for half an hour? When DS was a bit younger I used to sit in the room with him at times, with a book or knitting. And if DS doesn’t want to be nagged I back right off. I try to be a resource.

I also have low expectations about how much time DS actually spends working. This helps because half an hour of actual work is more valuable than three hours of tiddling around. Your DD may be setting herself goals which are not totally unrealistic but are scary and off-putting. Even half an hour in the kitchen with you may be fine for one evening. She can ramp up later.

That was a bit of a ramble, dunno if any of that helps

One thing that helped my two (or at least they said it did) was being in agreement that year 11 was pretty crap!

I didn't even try to dress it up. The concepts in GCSE are not particularly exciting, ad certainly not by year 11 when they've well kicked the arse out of them. Revision is dull. Getting organised and keep on, keepin' on is the last thing anyone wants to do...

Once we'd al accepted that, we could move on and just get through the damn things.

Thanks again for all your replies

"because half an hour of actual work is more valuable than three hours of tiddling around"

Spot on Kleinzeit. This evening DD had some down time, then she did about an hour of science revision with me, had 45 minutes off then did some maths practice questions on one of the topics she struggled with. After an initial strop because she realised she had misread the question she managed the others quite easily.

I call this a positive result.

I am now setting her some more maths questions on another maths topic for her to do tomorrow.

The only thing I'm disappointed about is that she didn't stay after school for the maths revision class when I had asked her to and to which the head of math has suggested she attends. It doesn't help that her maths teacher is now on paternity leave for a fortnight and she has someone new (she doesn't deal well with change), so she felt she couldn't ask the new teacher about the maths revision sessions.

Or any other teacher in that department?
Or pastoral support?
Or her friends?

TBF to your DD bunbaker after school revision sessions are a PITA.

For one thing everyone is hungry and tired!

I sympathise. My DD 17 is easily distracted by social media and spends all her time at home looking vague and wandering rounded the house clutching her phone and messaging her friends. Spends hours on You Tube.

She did very little work for GCSE and came out with mediocre results. She scraped into the 6th form of her choice and has now discovered that her GCSE results have affected her predicted grades for A level.

I know that turning off social media and removing her phone, which she pays for, would lead to nuclear confrontation.

I have just come home from parents evening and in the light of this am going to insist that both my kids sit down early evening and do some focused homework, sitting downstairs where I can see them, phones and iPods off.....

We've just installed Norton Family on dss phone, it blocks inappropriate sites and you can add sites to it and put time limits on it. It's £30 a year and I think can be used across a number of devices. It informs us if he deletes it and it stops some types of apps being downloaded.