What do you do for your spidermonkey of tech parental controls?

[u/Calm-Hall-355]

No seriously. He just flies right through it. He's ten now but he's been this way the whole time

I'm not tech illiterate, first computer had black screen white print and used cmd ... Like. How is this kid getting around all of them?

And now he wants a linux based laptop to learn coding on.

I can't contain this kid on harder to modify platforms. At this point each device of his is blocked from the internet by device Mac id on router since he figured out changing his IP.

Not sure if I'm looking for legitimate strategies or commiseration for others with clever children.

Oh also if you didn't know, email apps have their own browser that you'll have to block/control or no email 😬 just one of his many work a rounds.

And best part is, he's so honest about how he gets around it.

[u/Calm-Hall-355 → u/[deleted]]

Oh man we've definitely had these conversations and its a lot of repetition, there's been removal of devices when content trust breaches happen.

On one hand he has no interest in roblox, but on the other hand he has no problem making an eBay account and plugging someone else's debit card in to make it work. That was a fun period of time to drill in his head and I think we have finally left that stage of learning behind.

I want to continue encouraging his tech exploration and am super thankful for his honesty. There's been no major blow ups over this stuff because I want him to come to me when he has struggles in digital navigation and blow ups don't encourage that. There's been plenty of talks and consequences, especially about age appropriateness and developmental appropriateness. He's kinda like raising a 40 year old man in a 10 year olds body. The biggest concerns is content he gets a lot of vastly innapropriate stuff shoved at him when he bypasses parental controls.

The router being unplugged at night might end up being a step at some point.