Q: How can I keep my child from UNBLOCKING contacts or numbers I have blocked?

Can you explain what you mean by

How can I keep my child from UNBLOCKING contacts or numbers I have blocked? I know in restrictions when you disable account changes, iMessages and Facetime buttons are greyed out in the settings screen. However one can easily unblock any blocked contact from facetime or iMessages interface even when the restrictions on account changes are active.

Blocking a contact blocks them from calling or texting you. So, not understanding what it is that you are attempting to do, and how you are indicating that they are getting around it?

Cheers,

GB

Two thoughts come to mind:

• Under Settings > General > Restrictions, you can restrict "Contacts" as well as "Accounts" (and "FaceTime" which I assume you already restricted).
• You might consider Guided Access - maybe that will meet your needs.  Use Guided Access with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

iFrustrated_2008 wrote:

 

I do not want my child  to be able to sent text messages to or receive from certain contacts. If I block these contacts it is easy to unblock them on the Facetime. You can try yourself: Block a contact. Turn on the restrictions and disallow the account changes. And then go the facetime. Type the contact info. It will ask you if you want to unblock it. And you will be able to unblock although the restrictions are in place. I hope this clarifies.

The restrictions are in essence to prevent other programs making changes to the contact information when they access it. It does not serve to prevent the user from making changes - as you have discovered

Guided access as suggested by sberman is one way around that if it meets your needs

ManSinha wrote:

 

The restrictions are in essence to prevent other programs making changes to the contact information when they access it. It does not serve to prevent the user from making changes - as you have discovered

Guided access as suggested by sberman is one way around that if it meets your needs

Restrictions, or Parental Controls, offer a variety of things that can be prevented on the devices. For Contacts, it falls under the Privacy control and only prevents applications from accessing and making changes to the Contacts. It's highlighted in this article from Apple: Use Restrictions on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

You can restrict either the camera or Facetime itself to take the Facetime icon off their device. You could also remove SMS from their carrier service.

You may want to see what kind of parental control services your carrier provides. Many of them offer services that allow you to whitelist contacts.

This could help with SMS/MMS, but won't provide any additional benefit for iMessages or FaceTime.

Unfortunately, it seems that Apple does not provide a way to prevent un-blocking a contact and I'm guessing that it is at least partially because that would likely also prevent being able to BLOCK a contact, too.

As unpopular an answer as this may be... I would suggest it's about privacy.

Controlling another's usage of their device is a slippery slope privacy-wise. Parent's who say, "I pay for it, so I control how it gets used" are entitled to that conclusion. "I say how they use it" and so on. They parent as they see fit.

Turn off the features you don't want them using. Technology can't always solve every issue a parent faces.

This battle has been going on since there have been young people who want to do as they wish. And they typically find a way.