Screen time (again - sorry!)

[vilamoura2003]

My DD is now going into year 10, 14 years old. We have always put downtime on since she had one at the beginning of year 7 as it seemed to go off at all hours.

The school are starting to say we should be teaching them to be more independent, and so we have really relaxed it and let her have more freedom but she is just on it all the time, the downtime turns it off at 10pm but she has worked out that she can call on the phone as downtime doesn't turn that off, and I've just copped her having recorded stuff on her phone from her iPad earlier in the day watching it back in bed from her camera roll 🙄🙄

How the bloomin hell do you teach self control when they have none - she is the same with sugar, sweets and cakes 🤷‍♀️

She's going to be an adult in 4 years time but just can't regulate mobile phone usage if left to her own devices. It's just caused a massive row as she is pleading for me not to tell her father, and TBH I can't be bothered as he will go bonkers 🙄

I wish I knew. I think downtime is not overly controlling even for a 16 y old. Mine is nearly 14 and on it all the time. You can see the time thru screentime so maybe give her a week to try and regulate it herself and then reconsider if you want to reimpose limits? Sweets too - many adults can’t control themselves. It’s a big ask.

Learning to be independent is different to having sensible parental rules and restrictions. Your house, your rules.
Turn off the wifi same time every night

Also, if you look in her phone settings there is a "digital balance "option. You can set it to grey our all apps at night. Nothing can be used on the phone then. Then put AppLock on from Google play store. Use it to lock the settings with a pin number .
Any objections? offer to not pay the mobile phone bill !

I suppose she uses an iphone, right? My DDs have android phones and we use Family link parental control to limit maximum screen time and block it at night. I don't know about apple phones but there's a screen limit in the built-in parental control and Family sharing is the app for having more parental control features. You could install it and set a maximum screen time (1 or 2 hours a day is recommended by some expert), I think it's hard for an adult to self-regulate own screen time so it could be really really hard for a teen due peers pressure, many attractive stupid apps, virtual social life that promotes to be famous as measure of your person... putting an automatic preset screen time limit often is the best thing for them, they will be used to having few time and they will have a lot of time later to learn to self regulate on that, there are many more important aspect of everyday life where they should learn to self regulate first.

Thanks for the suggestions 👍 Sometimes it's just good to hear a bit of outside advice 😇