Mom horrified after reading teenage daughter’s text messages

Photo by Denis Trushtin

Teenagers are easily distracted by things that aren’t rewarding due to the immaturity of their prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that makes plans and decisions. They also find rewards alluring, even if they’re small.

Whenever they’re frustrated, insecure, worried, and experiencing intense negative emotions, they switch to using their phones for temporary relief. Also, 8 out of 10 students agree that social media distracted them from their studies.

This topic was highlighted in a recent Reddit post in which a mom catches her teenage daughter cheating from her text messages, possibly because of her immense interest in social media.

Mom ruins her daughter’s friendship by bringing out her secret shenanigans

The author starts the post by saying that she and her husband have two kids, a 13-year-old girl, and a 13-year-old boy. Her kids have the same classes and teachers for a few subjects.

The author explains that her son and his friends are so into sports that they don’t talk about anything else. Whereas, her daughter is more into fashion and social media and loathes sports.

Having said that, the author got a call from their algebra teacher about an assignment in which students were asked to write 25 word problems and answer keys related to their last unit. It was counted as a test even though he gave a week and a half to complete the handwritten project.

The teacher told her that her son didn’t submit the assignment because he couldn’t find it. The teacher then read a few of the questions her daughter wrote. The author was horrified because all were sports-related and she understood what the teacher was implying. He sent her the PDF of the assignment her daughter submitted.

When the kids got home, the author asked them about the questions they wrote in the assignment. While her son was able to say what was in the assignment, her daughter struggled. The author showed her kids the PDF and her daughter admitted to erasing her son’s name and writing her’s instead. The teenage girl also agreed that she hadn’t read the questions.

After letting her son go, she took away her daughter’s phone thinking that her social media and other mobile activities were distracting her from her studies. But her daughter refused to hand it over, so the author told her that they wouldn’t take her to Disney (annual family trip).

Upon going through the phone, the author was horrified to find that her daughter and friends texted test answers and cheated together. So she called her daughter’s friends’ parents and told them about it, and the school decided to suspend them for a week.

Now, her daughter says that her friends don’t talk to her and accused the author of ruining her friendships. The author’s mother called her regarding this and blamed her for everything that happened because according to her, cheating doesn’t matter in middle school.

What do you think? Did the author handle the situation wrongly? Share your thoughts below.