| ▲ | hnlmorg 7 hours ago |
| 16 is too late. You can’t teach your kids good maturity with communication devices through abstinence. You just have to watch what they do online. Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed. Yes there will be some problems created from them having devices, but parenting isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be educational and supportive for the children. Which forced abstinence is not. |
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| ▲ | adastra22 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Yeah I’m pretty sure invading your kids privacy like that is setting you up for worse trouble. |
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| ▲ | hnlmorg 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A better way to frame this is supervised vs unsupervised access. And it depends on their age. At 11 I wouldnt expect them to have unsupervised internet access. At 16 I might, but by the time they’re 16 I wouldn’t need to monitor their online activity so closely because they’ll have several years of trust and experience built up. | |
| ▲ | linksnapzz 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If they're 10, tell them that literally anything they type into their device is being stored for parental review. No expectation of privacy. Obviously, this'll have to change at around 16, but those conversations need to happen anyway. |
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| ▲ | squigz 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed. Do they know you do this? Otherwise this seems like a very effective way to create trust issues in your kids. |
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| ▲ | hnlmorg 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Of course they do. You should be open and honest. For us, it’s a system that’s worked well. So well, in fact, that our kids have felt comfortable coming to us when they see something concerning in a group chat rather than waiting for us to find it. And in return, we’ve learned to trust their judgement a lot more because they’ve demonstrated mature behaviour online. | | |
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