Aut teen daughter, using social media to solict relationship

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A few days ago our 15yr old teenager used whatsapp to send non sexual pics of herself to get the attention of a boy above her age at school (just cosplay stuff/emo/grunge clothing pics).

He was already in a relationship with another girl (which she aleady knew about but chose to break the hidden social rules) and thankfully she was incredibly forgiving.

So far we have banned all social media as punishment and made her write a sorry letter/card to both of them for trying to wreck thier relationship.

A: was this the right thing to do
B: is there any more advice you can all offer help us to get through this.

She does seem resentful now, but at that present time when she did that, she didnt show much care to what she was doing after going through the whatsapp messages.

I believe the letters are a bit excessive.

As much as not interfering with other people's relationships is a social norm, it's not an uncommon behaviour and you seem to be taking an excessively shaming approach.

^ I agree about the letter writing. It seems like just talking to her about it may have been enough. Well, it would be with my kid. Teenagers do stupid stuff sometimes.

OP, I’m not sure if banning ALL social media as a punishment for autistics is a good idea, either, because it can be a very important social outlet for us. Maybe just banning WhatsApp for a time would’ve been sufficient if you were worried about the behavior continuing. Obviously, I don’t know your daughter or the entire situation, though.

Teenagers need to learn from their mistakes, but you don’t want to go overboard because it could shut down communication and lead to more secretive behavior.

If the three people directly involved have all shown understanding and forgiveness, I don't necessarily think anything else (no letters/cards required) needs to be done at this point.

Lesson learned, life goes on.

The take away here is that she needs to understand the hurt she could have caused in trying to gain what she desired.

Shame, guilt, and remorse are painful yet useful emotions. Most can anticipate the pain that can be caused and act to restrain their desires to avoid that pain. It can be useful for your daughter to learn to consider how her actions would affect others.

My partner pushed for the reconciliation card thing, were pretty in the dark with how to deal with this, not a lot of autism support in the area where we live to have a soundboard to bounce off on, I do appreciate the advice, in future ill/we will take a softer approach.

Its a temporary/punishment ban for social media, i do apologise for not stating that, sorry.

We did have problems before with another whatsapp episode where she was sending thigh shots near her skirt area to her female only whatsapp group which apparently made them feel uncomfortable.

She was innocently only asking for reviews on her style and clothing (frankly she is amazing at creating looks and styles based on personas and characters, i hope one day she could become a stylist/clothes creator) but it was misconstrued by a few girls and led to a full on bullying episodes, its all sorted and did eventually lead to one girl being banned from the local youth club after she sent threatening death messages to her via whatsapp text and voice recordings.

It wasnt great for her and she regressed socially because of the trauma, her confidence is quite low because of it but its slowly coming back.