Set up parental controls and thought he was locked out. Apparently he's been sneaking into my wife's iPad after we go to bed watching some influencer guy for like two hours. We've talked about trust and boundaries but clearly the talk wasn't enough. Going back to stricter monitoring. Anyone else dealing with this kind of stuff? How do you actually enforce boundaries when they get creative?
Four kids and I've learned they'll always find a workaround if they really want something. The iPad thing is just the symptom. My advice is figure out what he's actually looking for in those videos and maybe that's the conversation to have.
Yeah man, we had the same thing happen. Parental controls are great until they're not. Might be worth a family chat about why the sneaking around bothers you more than the late night YouTube. Sometimes they just want to feel like they have some control.
The using mom's account hack is next level. You gotta have a conversation with him about why the limits exist though, not just lock him out tighter. Might prevent the sneaking.
How old is he? At a certain point they're gonna find ways around the tech anyway so might be time to just talk about healthy screen time instead of fighting the control battle.
This is exactly why we have separate logins on everything. Kids are creative about finding workarounds. At least you caught it - 11pm YouTube binges are rough on sleep schedules.
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Been there. My kid did basically the same thing. We ended up setting specific hours when devices are off limits and he can actually see the schedule. Transparency helped more than the restrictions.