When was the crossover point, when they stopped hating you for it and started thanking you? And what was the specific thank you about? Not wasting their time with tiktok junk, or helping protect their developing brains from addictive slop?

The earliest time they expressed gratitude instead of annoyance at the boundaries was (I think) when they were 13 and 14. Their friends and classmates would be on snap at 04:00am on schoolnights, endlessly argueing and namecalling and drama. The youngest was really gratefull that she could be on snapchat, but only for a short period of time, and never after 19:00.

And this week they both said how thankfull they had so few advertisements in their lives. Because we block with pi-hole and ublock origin, and showed them how online ads work and how to avoid them.

(Sidenote: If you have kids: talk to your teachers and schools and ask to setup firefox+ublock origin on their classroom computer. Or just install 'brave'. All teachers use youtube during classes. With ads. You will be lifted to instant hero status for blocking those.)

Isn't keeping kids safe, fed, sheltered the baseline for parents and caregivers? People generally don't get thanked for doing the bare minimum.

Thanks to the hundreds of people who didn't punch me in the face or ram me with their car today

Do you call your parents and thank them that you aren’t a lazy drug addict? That your aren’t a prostitute?

When is the last time you wrote a “thanks for not letting get eaten by a shark” card?

Parents don’t get thanked for things that didn’t happen. If you are waiting around for that, you’re in the wrong care taking business!