DD15, phone dramas & no sleep for me

[Perimeni]

Hello all, I'm new here, hope you can help me. I'm really at the end of my tether... My DD who is 15 has changed into a Kevin. She is lovely but we're having real problems with her being permanently attached to her phone. She's in year 11 and doing her gcse's next year which is fun at the best of times let alone at the moment. I think lockdown has really changed her behaviour as she's a social animal and really missed seeing her friends at school. Her phone is always going off on the rare occasions when she's doing her homework which distracts her constantly. If we try to take it off her while she's doing her homework she says she needs it for research. We've given her a laptop to use instead and when she behaves we give her her phone back but ultimately she reverts back to the distractions. The biggest problem though is that I'm peri menopausal and am finding it really difficult to sleep at the moment. I tend to go to bed about 10 to start winding down and the kids are supposed to hand their phones in at 1030 on a school night. My DS is 14 and hands his in fine. I end up snap chatting my daughter to remind her to hand it in. After the same arguments to get her to hand it in my stress levels are sky high, we end up with me shouting at her and then I'm wide awake for hours afterwards. I'm sitting downstairs at the moment crying with frustration. She can get up in the morning and has always been a bit of a night owl but with her exams and the revision she'll need to do we try to get her to wind down rather than have the phone in her room as she would be on it all night. The other day we took her phone away and she was a different kid.. Focused at school and pleasant at home (probably to get her phone back) She is seriously addicted to it. I feel harsh because I know it's her lifeline to her friends but I could easily smash it into a 1000 pieces at the moment and give her a bloody burner phone. I can't stand this repeated drama every night, especially when I've got work the next day. Anyone else suffering and have advice...

So sorry...sounds super difficult. Is your dd on your phone plan. You could just shut off her phone if she doesn't turn it in by 10:30. Are her grades being affected by her phone use, or are you just expecting that they will be affected. My dd (18) is surgically attached to her phone and takes way more breaks than I ever did at that age, but seems to be doing just fine in her classes at Uni.

It might be worth giving it a little more leeway because of the isolation of not seeing her friends can have some significant impacts on a normally socially active teenager.
Have you tried some of the hormonal options for peri-menopause? I found that going on birth control pills really helped me with my symptoms.

PS. Shutting off the phone plan is probably a more sensible and lest costly solution than smashing her phone :)

PPS. I am single mom to 2 teenagers and completely understand your frustration

Just activate downtime job done.

Glad I'm not the only one up at this time 🤣 @SofiaAmes she is on our phone plan not sure how we could do that but I'll look into it further as that would be ideal. We did put settings on hers and DS's phone and that worked a treat on his phone but she's found a way around it and it doesn't go off. She is a good kid and I will give her more leeway but omg she's glued to it. It's mostly the arguments at bedtime I need to sort. Will look up the phone shut off option and if she agrees to that it should sort it out

@SofiaAmes LOL I've come close

Honestly. Choose your battles. And if there is no evidence it is affecting her health or productivity then let her manage it herself. Perhaps agree a session that’s fun with no phones for anyone eg watching a film together or playing a board game.
Or put the phones in a pile and the first one to reach for theirs needs to do a much hated household chore! Don’t make it a battle.

@SofiaAmes

PPS. I am single mom to 2 teenagers and completely understand your frustration

@SofiaAmes I salute you! Re hormones I started on HRT about 9 months ago and it's bloody marvellous. It has totally changed my life. I do need to wind down though to get a good night's sleep and by the time we've had our night time wrangles I'm too wound up. Got to get out of this cycle. Mission is to get that downtime working... And make sure it stays on...x

@AldiAisleofCrap

Just activate downtime job done.

@AldiAisleofCrap 👍🏻

I set up restrictions on how long my eldest can use certain apps and between 8pm and 7am she can only use the phone function for emergencies. My dd is slightly younger than yours but the screen time restriction is fantastic and I lock the ability to change the time so she can’t bypass it that way. She then has to request extensions for certain apps and they can be dependent on homework and attitude etc. Really recommend it.

@Isadora2007

Honestly. Choose your battles. And if there is no evidence it is affecting her health or productivity then let her manage it herself. Perhaps agree a session that’s fun with no phones for anyone eg watching a film together or playing a board game. Or put the phones in a pile and the first one to reach for theirs needs to do a much hated household chore! Don’t make it a battle.

@Isadora2007 this one at bedtime can't carry on. We have the movie time now and again and we get out as a family. We don't have phones at the table. She likes to chill in her room and facetime her friends which is all good but she would literally stay on it all night and we can hear her and can't sleep. Don't mind at the weekend. The downtime or shut off during the week will sort it I'm sure x

@Crinklyoldhag

I set up restrictions on how long my eldest can use certain apps and between 8pm and 7am she can only use the phone function for emergencies. My dd is slightly younger than yours but the screen time restriction is fantastic and I lock the ability to change the time so she can’t bypass it that way. She then has to request extensions for certain apps and they can be dependent on homework and attitude etc. Really recommend it.

@Crinklyoldhag yes we've set that up for DS and it works great. She's either found a way around it or we didn't set it up correctly. I did look into workarounds a few months ago to try and figure out if there were any hacks and there appeared to be something they could do with the request more time function that gave them a whole days usage Rather than say 15 mins and so I gave up. I'm going to look into it properly and try again.

Thanks all for the advice.. Good luck with your teens... Bless them they have a hard time with hormones and everything else..I do try to go easy on them both as they're good kids.. But can't be doing without the sleep at my age 🤣🤣 night all x

It’s not working for you though at the moment. What happens if you ask her what SHE thinks the solution is? She knows you need sleep, and I’m sure she also knows she needs sleep. Ask her how she would self regulate her phone useage If left to her own devices. She needs to learn at some point and she needs to take it seriously if she is actually getting addicted. Just intervening and taking away her autonomy isn’t the answer.
She might surprise you if you ask her to come up with a workable solution.

@Crinklyoldhag this was it...
Quote from another site 'I was so excited to turn on the screen time restrictions in the new iOS. Until my 13 year old found a work around within 2 minutes of handing his phone back to him during “down time”—he went to settings and changed the date/time of his phone to an unrestricted time and voila! Free screentime again'.

The screen time passcode is set and he doesn’t know it. He circumvented the downtime settings by simply changing the time on his phone. Downtime is 10pm to 7am, it’s 11pm so he goes into the settings and changes the time to 11a which opens everything back up.'

Little treasures

My 13y old DD has parental controls set with bedtime 11pm till 7am, and 3hrs per day limit of phone use. So if she decided to reset her time she'd still not be able to stay up all night. I think your instincts are right but you need to find a way to handle it without too much stress for yourself - in this sense parental controls are way better than physically taking the phone for the night.

The reason you're having stressful arguments over and over again is that there are no consequences in place for handing in the phone late, or not at all. If there were, you could leave it up to her to decide whether she's handing in the phone on time or facing the consequences (whatever they might be).

The social dilemma documentary on Netflix about the dangers of teenage phone use and social media is really good.

I don't think phones are evil, but I do think DC's time spent on all screens need to be limited if they are to have a good balance between study, exercise, social time and relaxation. GCSE students should not have time to be spending hours aimlessly on Facebook.

Your DD should be earning her phone time through study and revision- in year 11 I'd expect at least 2 hours of homework and revision on weeknights and then 4 hours per weekend day.

I'd set a routine where your DD hands over her phone as soon as she gets home and then asks permission to go on it once she's completed her 2 hours' study time- weekends should be the same.

Her screen time should be limited and she should be clear that not completing her study time= no screen time.

Screen time settings - we’ve found them work really well. Especially as we can limit the time spent on a APP - tik tok hour a day etc

When she sleeping around her friends it’s easy to open the settings up.

And she can still text call us for emergency.

I would say we discussed it with her and meet in the middle.

We didn’t have screen time for my older daughter - we managed it by saying you do 45 minutes revision without phone then you can have a 10 min break worked quite well as to be honest everyone else was revising so no one was really chatting 😂

Tell her she knows the rules and you wont argue with her at 10:30 at night from your bed. If she doesn't hand the phone in without argument (if she does argue just let her keep the phone that one night) the consequence is it will be taken off her straight after school the next day and she won't get it back until school the following day - her choice.

Always follow through.

Honestly? I don’t remove phones or tech from mine. If they’re up until silly o’clock the natural consequence is that they’re tired the next day. They learn to self regulate that way. (Ds1 is now 18, a natural night owl, but able to get up when he needs to. Ds2 is 13 and still a work in progress, but I want him to learn to make the good decisions for himself.) It means that we don’t have the huge blow up arguments over tech use, but we can talk to each other if we see an issue.
Just to give a different perspective.

@ColdTattyWaitingForSummer I think that's sensible for some children but doesn't work for every child. If a child has addictive or depressive tendencies, it is cruel to leave them to it and let them figure it out by themselves.

Absolutely- DC’s screen time (not just phone time) needs to be limited particularly during exam years.

If they are not applying themselves to their studies and working hard, they should not get any screen time. It’s as simple as that.