Enough Chances! No More Tablets For My Son!
Just last week, after serving a gaming ‘time out’ for poor school grades, on the day, he would have gotten his ‘game time’ back, as he had corrected his grades, he tried to circumvent our lockouts on his Nintendo 2DS, by trying to reset the parental control passcode, which sent an Email to me, with a temporary code to reset the parental passcode, at 4:37am, this action added two extra days to his punishment.
During the time of the ban, I tried to look at his tablet and I find that he has locked the device, so I cannot see what he has been up to. So, like every time he does this, I do a hard reset on the tablet to restore it to factory defaults. I also logged into the Google account that I created for him, and find that it has not been used for almost four months, which I know means he had set up another Google account.
Last night (Sunday), I looked at his tablet again, and it was not locked this time, but I discovered that he had created, not one, not two, but three Google accounts and that he had signed up to Twitter, Discord, Pinterest and several forums. It’s not that he signed up for these accounts that bothers me, it’s that he did it behind our back, instead of asking, we would have allowed it as long as we could monitor his activity.
What I did was take control of those Google accounts, resetting the passwords by sending a notification to the tablet and setting my Email as the recovery address. This allowed me to see the full extreme of my son’s deceit, he had been using his tablet, during his ‘time out’ for grades as described previously, his Google activity clearly shows he was using the device during the times he should not have been.
Fast forward to this morning, at about 9:45am, I try to log into the primary Google account that he had created on the tablet and lo and behold, he had reset the password again, overriding my reset at 5:57am. Again, breaking the rules, the rule is no tablet time before 12pm or after 8pm and again trying to block our access to his online activity. This was the final straw for me, his tablet is gone, no more chances.
I really don’t enjoy punishing him, I wish that I didn’t have to, I wish that I could trust my son to do the right thing. As I said, if he asked in a proper manner, I would have let him have the accounts he had set up, not the three Google accounts, as he already had a perfectly good account, which was set up 3 years ago, but the Twitter, Discord accounts, etc, but instead, he decided to be deceitful, hiding his actions.
As for sneaking extra time, why, since he started school six weeks ago, we have relaxed the reigns, as long as his school grades remain good, the only time limits are no tablet before 12pm and no tablet after 8pm and no tablet on Sunday’s, We want at least one day a week away from tablets and games, this rule applies to both of my children, but my son is not happy with a maximum of 28 hours a week it seems.
The funny thing is; what triggered my investigations into his activities was my son attempting to reset the pin code on his Nintendo 2DS. Now, as a result, he will not get another tablet as long as he lives under our roof rent free, he lost his laptop in a similar fashion a couple of years back after circumventing the parental control and tracking systems installed, while setting a password, blocking my access.
I truly don’t understand why he continues to break the rules, he gets caught every time, just search this website for “my son” and you’ll see the pattern of behavior, it seems no amount of talking or explaining to him, gets into his thick head, I clearly cannot trust him to be honest and do the right thing!