Then you walked past the laptop and there it was, open.
What is actually happening
Almost every free blocker stores its list the same way the browser stores everything else, and puts no lock at all on its own settings page. So the button that adds a site and the button that removes it are the same button, one click apart, sitting in a menu your child can open.
Nothing was hacked. Nothing was got around. Your child used the feature.
The second thing that happens, and it is the one parents miss: a rule that can be turned off does not have to be turned off for long. Ten minutes on a Wednesday afternoon, then back on before you are home. You will never see it in the off state, so the tool looks like it is working, and you will conclude your kid simply spends a lot of time on that site with the block enabled — which is impossible, and which is exactly the confusion this produces.
You can check this in about a minute, and it is worth doing before you change anything. Open the tool on their computer as they would, and count how many clicks stand between the list and an empty list. If the answer is fewer than three, and none of them asks for something only you know, then what you installed was never a lock. It was a bookmark with opinions.
The three places this goes wrong
1. The settings are not locked. If changing the rule takes no more than opening the extension, then the rule is a preference. A preference is not a boundary. Whatever you use has to ask for something your child does not have before it will change anything.
2. The lock is a password they watched you type. Six digits typed at a kitchen table in front of a ten-year-old is not a secret. Whatever holds the rule has to be entered where they are not, or often enough that one glimpse does not matter — and it has to be recoverable when you forget it, because you will.
3. There is nothing stopping them removing the whole thing. This is the real one. Every lock in the world on the settings page is decorative if the extension itself can be deleted from Chrome's extensions page. That page belongs to the browser, not to any extension in it, so no extension can guard it. The fix is not software. It is giving your child their own account on that computer without administrator rights, which takes about five minutes once and shuts that door for good.
How to make it hold
In Parentech, every one of those is behind a six-digit PIN. Removing a site needs it. Opening a blocked one needs it. Changing any setting needs it, and the dashboard locks itself the moment it is closed rather than staying open behind a tab.
Your child can see the list. That is deliberate — a rule they can read is a rule you can discuss. What they cannot do is edit it.
The one door outside any extension's reach is Chrome's own extensions page, so do the account step too. It is the difference between a rule and a strong suggestion, and it is the same five minutes whatever tool you end up using.
The part that needs you not to be there
Here is the thing that decides whether this actually works: the unblocking happens while you are somewhere else.
That is not incidental, it is the whole shape of the problem. If restoring a rule means walking to their desk, then the rule is off for however long you are out, and "however long you are out" is most of a working week.
So the rule has to be changeable from where you are. In Parentech that means signing in at parentech.app on your phone: lock the dashboard from the shop, close a site from the bus, open one for an hour because it is Saturday. Changes reach the computer within half a minute.
That is what the family plan buys, and it is worth being straight about it: everything on this page works free on one computer. What you pay for is your phone, and the second and third computer. If there is one laptop in your house and you are always next to it, the free version is genuinely the whole product and you should just use that.
What this still does not reach
- A phone or a tablet. Parentech guards Chrome on the computer it is installed on. Nothing else.
- A different browser on the same computer. Which is exactly why the non-admin account above matters more than any setting.
- A desktop app that is already installed. Blocking a site stops the browser. It does not close a program.
Questions parents ask
Will they know I have done this?
Yes, and they should. Install it with them watching. This is not spyware and pretending otherwise is how trust breaks — a rule they know about is a rule you can talk about when they push back, which they will.
What if I forget the PIN?
You sign in with the same Google account you set it up with and choose a new one. It is stored as a salted hash, so nobody can read it back to you, including us.
They are going to be furious.
Probably, for about a week. The argument you are having now happens every single evening. This one happens once.
If this is happening to you, one of these usually is too
They deleted the extension · The rule is off whenever you are out · A new Chrome profile beat your blocker
More on how blocking works: Block websites. Free on one computer, for good — what it costs if you want the rest of the house.