Screen Time Manage Contacts Pending (Apple Watch)

OK, this isn't a question. But after scouring the apple forums, the broader internet and apple support, I thought I'd post what worked for me.

The issue I had is exactly as described here: Screen Time: contact management request n… - Apple Community

TL;DR

Turn off manage contacts.

Turn on Allow contact editing.

Create a new contact for the child in the childs iCloud account.

Select Make This My card within iCloud

Turn off allow contact editing

Turn on manage contacts.

Restart any logged in devices.

Devices:

my iPhone 13.

daughers Apple Watch SE.

My daughter just got a second hand Apple Watch SE. In preparation, I created her a child apple id and linked it to my account via familly sharing.

I set the watch up from my phone, and tried to enable contact management but it just said it was pending. I expected to get a notification on the watch to approve the request but it never comes. I could toggle the setting on and off but to no avail.

It did however manage to sync some contacts (through downtime contacts) but it would not remove them if I removed any.

It dawned on me that this is really nothing to do with the apple watch. You can manage contacts for any child iCloud account, regardless of device. It's an iCloud setting. Curiously though, her Apple watch though I was the owner. i.e. Hey Siri, what's my name? It returned my name, not my daughters.

So I logged in to my daughters iCloud account and could see that it had a contact for me (parent) but it had the person icon next to it. I worked out this is the contact that it thinks is the owner of the icloud account.

So in ScreenTime settings for my child on my iPhone, I set "Allow Contact Editing" to on.

I then created a contact in my daughters iCloud account for her (her name and new icloud email address).

Click on the contact in the list to highlight it, then from the elipses drop down, select "Make this my card".

After I did that, I went back to the screen time settings on my iPhone. Toggled off the "Allow Contact Editing" setting.

Toggled on the Manage Contacts setting and voila, it no longer said pending. It showed that I was now syncing 2 contacts. I could then add more contacts.

Hope this is useful for someone else who is pulling their hair out like I was.

Side note: restarting the Apple Watch now shows my daugher as the owner, not me. Winning!