This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/frieden7 on 2026-08-04 15:49:27+00:00.

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I'm not OOP. This is u/ThrowRA-MamaBear who posted in r/AIO and r/whatdoIdo . It's against reddit rules to contact OOP or to participate in their old posts.

Triggers pro anorexia, child possibly feeling abandoned

Mood spoiler troubling

Glossary: Pro-ana = pro anorexia, AIO = Am I overreacting. NOR = Not overreacting, YOR = you're overreacting

I found concerning things on my (27F) daughter’s (11F) phone; how to talk to her? July 26, 2026

For context, I take my daughter’s phone every night at 9pm sharp on weekdays, 10:30pm on weekends and never go through her cellphone since I’ve never seen a reason to.

However, last night when I took her phone, I noticed a lot of notifications coming from TikTok (which she isn’t allowed to have) and she has notification previews turned on. I thought it could be something urgent, so I decided to read the message previews and saw messages from someone asking my daughter what she ate, how much she ate, telling how much she ate, etc.

I know it was an invasion of privacy on my end, but I did end up going through my daughter’s TikTok account and all of her messages and found a lot of posts about food, videos of very thin girls, messages between her and other (presumably) young girls around her age talking about not eating.

I did notice over the last few weeks that she’s been eating a bit less and losing weight, but I summed it up to puberty and growing, since I had a bit of a growth spurt around that age (tall and skinny) but seeing these messages and her account is making me concerned.

How do I bring this up with her? Is there a proper punishment for her having an app without permission? I’m just very unsure of what to do, any advice would be helpful.

The top response was:

It is not an invasion of privacy. An 11-year-old should not have unsupervised access to a cell phone. She's not even old enough to have any social media. You should be going through her phone regularly, and it should be linked to yours so that you receive her messages.

Punishment should not be your focus right now. Support should be. She needs to know that she can talk to you. If you lead with punishment, she's just going to shut down.

AIO for packing up my daughter’s things & sending her to her father July 28th, 2026, two days later

27F, daughter is 11F. Before the comments start, I know that I was 16 I’m well aware.

A few days ago, I caught her on TikTok (which she isn’t allowed to have) and she was looking at “pro-ana” content and talking to other young girls about this as well. So, I took her phone last night and we had a conversation about what I had seen on her phone, how I was concerned, etc.

This led to a huge altercation between us where my daughter proceeded to say that “her dad would let her” and how she “hates being here”, so I called her father and told him to come and get her while I packed her bags. I didn’t include any of her devices (iPad, cell phone, laptop, etc) since I pay for them and a very limited amount of starter clothes, anything expensive or designer stayed with me.

Her dad just came to get her about an hour ago and I guess during that timeframe between her saying that and him showing up, she had calmed down because she was kicking and screaming over it. She was fighting me and pleading not to go, but I just put her bags in the trunk of the car and let them leave.

Now, obviously, I’m not relinquishing my rights and yes, I know she’ll likely be back within about a week or so, but I feel slightly bad now since she seemed so genuinely distraught over it.

So, AIO?

OOP made a number of comments. Snippets of the posts she's replying to in italics:

NOR Sometimes kids are brats. Sometimes brats need to FAFO

OOP:

That’s kind of what I was thinking, it’s a temporary arrangement in all honesty. If she genuinely is distraught and wants to come home, I won’t force her to stay anywhere.

Was this the first time she was caught doing something really wrong in your eyes ? Seems you are over reacting personally.

OOP:

In all honesty, it wasn’t even about the wrongdoing, it was more of me showing her the natural consequence of throwing her father in my face.

I’ll likely let her come back home sometime this week, but her leaving wasn’t the punishment at all.

Punish the eating disorder away, that will work.

OOP:

That is not at all what I’m doing, if you actually read what I wrote, the “punishment” is the lack of phone and the fact that she’s staying with her father temporarily.

The reason she’s staying there is to teach her about the consequences of her words and actions, not because she’s struggling. Everyone is so quick to assume I’m not caring for my child.

YOR. Your daughter is a preteen going through a ton of changes right now where the influence of hormones will be having an impact on her mood and attitude.

OOP:

My daughter also needs to learn that words have consequences and that you can’t throw the other parent in someone’s face. The natural consequence of that was now she’s staying there for the week, her hormones can deal with that.

Hell, at her age, I probably would’ve benefited from someone teaching me about consequences.

Firstly, there's going to be a lot of self-proclaimed therapists saying she needs therapy and that she's "going through something." Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. What I do think was a mistake was sending her to her dad's. If he's less strict, you've now given her unmonitored access to the very things you're trying to protect her from.

OOP:

Oh, her dad is actually more strict than I am. I’m not even strict, in all honesty. I just wanted to show her that her words have consequences, she’ll be back sometime this week I believe.

I’ll try to get her into therapy mostly because I can’t control what she does at school, like you said, and she’ll likely be more open with a stranger than me. Thank you.

Pro ana content is no joke, but you can't fix her interest in it by taking away her devices. She'll just get the content another way, eventually. Meanwhile you've just shown that you'll punish her, reject her, and send her away without ever trying to understand.

OOP:

Thank you for this comment, I’m starting to see where I may have messed up here. A lot of the other replies were quick to cast pure judgement, but this is an honest critique that I’ll try to learn from.

I do admit that my reasoning was rooted more-so in “words have consequences” since she was trying to throw her dad in my face, but I also have to recognize that sending her away (even temporarily) while she was vulnerable, like you said, was wrong to do.

I was definitely raised more “old-school” I guess, because it seemed normal to me, but apparently it isn’t and I do thank you for that perspective.

Sending her to her dad's was a bit much. She is probably reading it as you don't love her anymore. Not saying you don't, but that's just how kids take things sometimes. I would have taken away her devices, but not sent her away. Since it's done, I recommend following up with her and letting her know you love her

OOP:

Glad to hear from another parent here! I do feel as though you’re correct, I definitely should’ve thought about how she would feel in the moment about what I did.

My intention wasn’t to make her feel abandoned, it was to, as I said in previous comments, show her that she can’t throw her dad in my face like that. I realize now that since she’s already vulnerable and struggling, that was probably one of the worst things I could do right now.

I’ll try to wait until things cool down a bit, but I’ll see if she would like to talk to me soon so I can try to apologize.