Family Sharing Screen Time requests arrive as MMS/email instead of system notifications

Hello,

I'm having a frustrating issue with Family Sharing and Screen Time. When my two sons send a request for more screen time, my wife and I do not receive the standard system notifications. Instead, the requests arrive as MMS messages sent to our Apple ID email addresses.

Here is an interesting detail: if I bypass the request and manually enter the Screen Time passcode directly on my son's phone to give him more time, both my wife and I immediately receive a normal system notification on our iPhones stating that the passcode was used. So the system can send notifications, but the requests themselves are stuck as MMS.

Our Setup:

• 4 family members in Family Sharing.
• All iPhones, iPads, and Mac are fully updated to the latest OS 27.2.

When it started: This issue began when we tried to update the Screen Time features. My wife has an Apple Watch SE (Gen 2) which doesn't support the newest OS. We temporarily unpaired her watch, enabled the new Screen Time features, and then paired the watch again. Since then, the requests only come as MMS to our emails.

Troubleshooting steps we have already tried:

1. Permanently removed the Apple Watch SE (Gen 2) from my wife's iCloud account.
2. Disabled "Send as SMS" on both kids' iPhones.
3. Turned iMessage and FaceTime off and on across the devices.
4. Verified in iMessage settings that "Start New Conversations From" is set to our phone numbers, and both phone numbers and emails are checked for receiving.
5. Deleted all old message threads containing these MMS requests on all devices.
6. Turned off "App & Website Activity" (Screen Time) for the kids, waited, and turned it back on.
7. Rebooted all iPhones multiple times.

The requests are still coming as emails/MMS. Has anyone experienced this specific issue and found a solution? Any help would be appreciated!