Anonymous
Post 10/05/2024 18:22     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Anonymous wrote:Last night I learned that my 8 year old has been setting an alarm to get up in the middle of the night so she can go downstairs and use the iPad or laptop to browse weather.com beyond her "screen time" limits that we enforce. She loves looking up weather in various cities and just reading about weather patterns and such, could read forever (and apparently does!)
Lock up the devices overnight
How would you handle?
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 16:34     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Anonymous wrote:Last night I learned that my 8 year old has been setting an alarm to get up in the middle of the night so she can go downstairs and use the iPad or laptop to browse weather.com


Is this an advertising plug? Highly doubt any kid would be doing that. That's just the website they keep open to switch tabs to when you arrive. "Look, I was just looking at the weatherchannel!" LMAO.
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 12:31     Subject: Re:Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Our kids’ iPads & school chromebooks are in our room at night. They don’t have any other devices but if they did, we’d keep those in our room at night too. If they had a Fitbit or any other kind of device w an alarm, I’d keep that in my room too. I do this even though to my knowledge my kids (ages 9 and 7) have never snuck their iPads or chromebooks at night. It just seems smart to remove any temptation for them. Now that she’s broken house rules about screen time limits, I think you should also have a consequence like no screen time for a week or something like that. Age 8 is young to get addicted to screens so nip it in the bud or it’ll be way harder to limit when she’s older.

Fortunately this is not a hard problem to solve.
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 12:20     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Mine was getting up at 5 to sneak and watch skibidi toilet on the tv. Apparently my tv has YouTube on it
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 10:51     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Get her one of those home weather station kits and put it in her room
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 10:46     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
I don’t think this is that crazy and wouldn’t punish her. It could be worse. I would just go on your router’s app, if it has one, and turn off any devices she’d have access to. We use Xfinity and it is easy to go in and put in time limits or turn WiFi off altogether. WiFi in other locations isn’t affected so school chromebooks will still work at school.
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 09:11     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Weather. That’s adorable. Take her to the library to get her books about weather. Also shut off the wifi at night.


It’s telling that only you and maybe one other poster suggested this. Everyone else is like “consequences blah blah blah”. Such terrible parents nowadays.


I'm at the library at least weekly and my local librarians know me by name. Yet I think consequences are far more important than the mountain of books I provide my children. Boundaries matter, and love and flexibility within those boundaries matters too.
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 09:10     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Anonymous wrote:This is very easy to fix. Login to the router and disconnect their devices. People who say their kids get around the parental controls are simply not trying hard enough.
Your router can identify each device on the network by Mac address. My router is set to not allow connections from random Mac addresses.


I suspect the poster who described her kids getting around controls thinks that they are cute and smart and is proud of their tricks. And if she has black hat hackers on her hands, great I guess? Even if my kids were that good I wouldn't want it to be in the service of being sneaky.
Anonymous
Post 10/04/2024 05:19     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
This is very easy to fix. Login to the router and disconnect their devices. People who say their kids get around the parental controls are simply not trying hard enough.
Your router can identify each device on the network by Mac address. My router is set to not allow connections from random Mac addresses.
Anonymous
Post 10/03/2024 23:08     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
Anonymous wrote:Weather. That’s adorable. Take her to the library to get her books about weather. Also shut off the wifi at night.


It’s telling that only you and maybe one other poster suggested this. Everyone else is like “consequences blah blah blah”. Such terrible parents nowadays.
Anonymous
Post 10/03/2024 15:50     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
All devices need to be charging in your room at night. Now it’s weather.com, just wait til you see the crap they stay up for when they are older.
Anonymous
Post 10/03/2024 15:44     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
I don’t care if it’s weather.com or TikTok. This is unacceptable. It’s not cute because she wants to be a meteorologist or is “quirky”. Lock all the devices up at night since she can’t be trusted to make good choices.
Anonymous
Post 10/03/2024 15:41     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
TAKE ALL DEVICES INTO YOUR ROOM AT NIGHT!
Anonymous
Post 10/03/2024 15:36     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
This is so weird
Anonymous
Post 10/03/2024 15:16     Subject: Found out my 8 year old is sneaking downstairs to go online at 2am
I was like this at her age, except I snuck watching the Weather Channel on tv since it was the 90s. Set a firm limit about no unsupervised computer use and no sneaking around at night. But encourage the interest- it led to me winning my school geography bee a few years later. Get her weather books, and allow some times when she can watch weather-related documentaries and the Weather Channel, and access the latest website with your supervision. Just not in the middle of the night!