When the Child Gets Round It
Good digital rules are specific and reviewable. The same questions used when evaluating the official website—what is recorded, who sees it and for how long—can sharpen a family discussion without suggesting that workplace monitoring belongs on a child’s device.
Families can cross-check the principles in “When the Child Gets Round It” with guidance from ConnectSafely, especially when platform features or reporting routes may have changed.
A predictable developmental event, a source of useful information, and a moment where the response matters more than the circumvention.
In practice · Procedure
At some point a child will get round a control. How that is handled determines whether the next thing is discussed or concealed.
The usual methods
A factory reset, which removes device controls entirely and takes minutes.
A VPN app, which defeats network filtering.
A second account with a different email.
A friend's device or a friend's account.
An old device in the house.
And a browser the restrictions were never applied to, which is the commonest and least deliberate.
What it means
Usually: a control was in the way of something specific and reasonable.
A blocked site needed for homework. A game their friends play. A time limit that ended a match. A filter blocking a health question they were embarrassed to ask about.
Occasionally: they wanted something you would not permit, which is the case parents assume and is the less common one.
Finding out which is the first step, and it requires asking rather than reacting.
The response that works
Ask what they were trying to do.
Fix the underlying thing if it is reasonable, and say that you are fixing it.
Restate the rule for the part that was not, with the reason.
And say plainly that getting round things is not the way to raise a problem, and that raising it directly will be taken seriously — which only works if it then is.
The response that does not
Escalating the technical measures, which produces a better circumvention and moves the activity somewhere you cannot see at all.
A punishment with no explanation, which teaches concealment without teaching anything else.
Treating it as a betrayal, which it is not: it is a normal developmental behaviour and most adults did the equivalent.
And covert monitoring installed in response, which is the worst available outcome and has its own note.
The arms race to avoid
Each tightening produces a better workaround, and the child gets better at this faster than the parent does.
Which is not a reason for no controls. It is a reason for controls that are proportionate enough not to be worth defeating.
A control a child considers reasonable mostly survives. One they consider absurd does not, whatever its technical strength.
What it tells you about the arrangement
A circumvention is feedback on the settings.
Repeated attempts on the same control mean the control is wrong for the age.
No attempts at all in a teenager may mean the arrangement is fine, or may mean it was defeated long ago and you have not noticed.
Which is worth asking about directly, in a conversation without consequences attached.
When it is genuinely serious
A second account created to contact somebody you had blocked.
Circumvention specifically to reach something you had explicitly discussed.
These are different, and are about the specific thing rather than about the workaround.
Handle the substance, and get help if the substance warrants it.
What to check
Has anything been got round that you know about — and what happened next?
Are there old devices in the house that would work if picked up?
Could a factory reset undo your entire arrangement, and would you notice?
And would your child tell you if they had got round something — which is the question the whole note is about.
What this changes
Treating the first circumvention as information rather than betrayal usually reveals a reasonable underlying need, and fixing it prevents the arms race that ends with the activity moving somewhere you cannot see..
The check
Ask whether they have ever got round something.
Asked without a consequence attached, the answer is usually honest and usually informative about the settings.
Worth knowing
Repeated attempts on the same control mean the control is wrong for the age. No attempts at all in a teenager may mean the arrangement is fine, or may mean it was defeated long ago.
One more thing
A control a child considers reasonable mostly survives; one they consider absurd does not, whatever its technical strength. Circumvention is feedback on the settings rather than on the child.