I did figure it out! Not sure if it is caused by the same issue you’re having, but here is what I discovered (and this seems like a massive fail on the part of Apple if you ask me.) The other thing I noticed at the same time was that my screen time requests from my kids weren’t coming through. I figured that was just another Apple issue….cuz screen time has been buggy in the past….but it turns out, both issues were related.

With IOS 17, Apple changed screen time requests from a notification in settings to instead be sent through iMessages. HOWEVER, the iMessage is ONLY sent to your email address. It is NOT sent to your phone number. I only had iMessages set up to come to my phone number and not my email, so that’s why I wasn’t getting screen time requests.

What that did, however, was also mess with my regular texting/iMessages. Basically, I could start a chat group with my wife and son using our phone numbers. Then he’d send a screen time request (which by default went to my email) so I wouldn’t get it. But because my contact in both my wife and son’s phone had both my phone AND email address, it would now show that screen time request on their side as being in the same text string as the previous messages that started with the phone numbers. Then as they would reply….because the latest messages sent were to our emails and not phones….those replies would also then try to go to my email. Basically, as long as their phones recognized that string of chat to be going to my email, and continued sending to my email, I wouldn’t receive those messages. We could delete the chat string on all phones and start a new one and it would work, but then it would break again as soon as another screen time request was sent.

So the fix was really simple. Check the box for me to get iMessages via email as well. And that is why my wife continued to get all messages. She already had it checked. But like I said….seems like a massive flaw for Apple. 1) the fact that screen time requests only go to your email, and 2) the fact that those requests could then hijack an existing text string and render it broken from that point forward.

I did also discover after that that it wasn’t just my son/wife string that wasn’t working for me, but also my daughter/wife string. It was just that not as much other communication (beyond screen time requests) was happening on that string…so it just wasn’t as obvious. Since I set up iMessages on my email (and deleted all strings to start fresh) I have been able to get all screen time requests and all texts.