To be annoyed this mum took DS's phone

What is so different about it that a child now needs a mobile phone on a sleepover?

I think she is just being sensible and reducing risk. Even though your son’s phone is restricted can he still use the camera? Your son is probably not the type of kid to misuse the camera on a sleepover but this mother doesn’t know him as well as you do and is probably just ensuring that all risks are minimized.
Perhaps you could reach out to her and compromise on the phone being left downstairs in an accessible place for your son? I get your point of view as well in terms of being able to call you in an emergency at any time. I would want that too.

I think it reasonable to put phones away at bed time. Mine put their phones in the charger next to my bed at night. If I had DS friends over the same rule applies but I am not a fun of sleepover so mine don't have them.

I just want my DC to have 8 to 9hrs of uninterrupted sleep or they can't function well.

Not the point of the response at all but ok.

Sorry I must have misunderstood what you meant by mentioning the 1980's when even simple mobile phone technology wasn't commonly used by anyone. I would argue that the World is very much the same in all the basic ways as it was then, there are still wars/famine/natural disasters/man made disasters, the whole four horsemen rigmarole !

This is not the same as just confiscating the phone though. It is being very clear about how the phone might be accessed if necessary.

You have absolutely failed your child if you haven't taught her to reach out to the nearest adult during a medical emergency.

Well you should've mentioned it beforehand. Lesson learned.

Her house her rules but she was wrong to not inform you beforehand.

I would not let my child sleep over again if they could not easily access their phone to contact me without having to request permission from another adult.

What do you mean? You would ask your friend's mum to call your mum in the 80s, but not now? Why?

Yeah that’s the sort of thing tweens/teens look at and even if you have child locks, a lot of them will still allow unrestricted web access through some apps and with incognito mode and stuff like that you wouldn’t know. Anyone who thinks their kid isn’t interested in social media and hardly uses their phone is likely to be deluded.

YANBU and it’s ridiculous that she doesn’t allow her 14 year old to have a phone / go out alone/ be independent.

But if something happened in the night that was serious enough for your daughter to need to contact you then surely her friend's parents would be involved anyway?

I think most children would be thoroughly embarrassed if their parents were texting them late in the evening.

I would very much support any parent who banned mobile phones, laptops, tablets etc from events like sleepovers. I still remember with horror when my daughter and several others had a sleepover with one of her closest friends when she was 10. She described the next day some of the websites that her friend was showing them on her phone when her parents thought they had gone to sleep, and it was clear that they had been looking at hardcore porn

Not the point of the response at all but ok.

People used to be stuck in shitty situations.

Well if he wasn’t going to use it anyway, what’s the problem? If he wanted to contact you, I’m sure she’d have let him. Btw my DP thought he’d locked his 9yo sons iPad down so he wasn’t able to access adult sites on the internet - not so, despite him spending ages trying to do it so don’t assume your methods are foolproof.

Fuck me what are you raising

That is true.

However she doesn't allow her 14 year old to go anywhere alone? That is also neglect in a way how is she expecting him to cope when he's an adult?

I would be livid! I text my daughter when she's on a sleepover (and often it can be after 10/11pm) she's a similar age. If she didn't reply around 10pm I would be thinking something had happened.

Equally, if something happened in the night (severe illness, period, accident, an incident within their family, fire etc etc etc) I would want her to be able to contact me asap for help- not for it to be in a cupboard somewhere!!

I have taken phones off kids at sleep over.
However for text parents to say I've now taken the phones for the night. So they not trying to contact them.

God I feel old !

It’s not 1980s. World isn’t like that anymore.

Most people didn't have a mobile phone in the 1980's , most children didn't have one in the 1990's either, I didn't get my little ( non smart ) Nokia until 1999 and no child at my son's primary school had one at that time. The first real smartphone didn't come onto the market until 2006.

Or perhaps we could raise children not to bully, how’s about that?

She's not judging you, she has her own house rules and if your son is staying there he has to abide by them. It sounds like you took this as some sort of criticism of you or your son which is an overreaction imo.

I think this is a better solution than just confiscating the phone. Then if needed the child could get phone in night and text/call parent if needs be

It would have been better if the other parent had let you know her house rules beforehand so you and your DS could have factored that into the decision about whether or not he would go.

My DC1 is 19 now but until the end of Y11, the sleepover rule here was that phones had to be out of the bedroom overnight (we usually said at midnight). The friends that stayed over knew this in advance, as did their parents. Phones weren't confiscated or handed in; the friends chose to charge them on the landing outside DC1's bedroom or in the empty bedroom next door to DC1's room. Any friend who needed to contact their parent had less than 1m from the bedroom to their phone. It was a way to create a space in which they could all relax and sleep without worrying they'd be unwillingly photographed in their pyjamas or when asleep. DC1's friends understood the house rule wasn't about preventing access to their phones but just not having them in the bedroom. They still stayed over regularly.

I completely stand by the this rule*. If parents or teens aren't happy about it for their child, they can host sleepovers instead.

*if a friend had an insulin pump that was controlled by phone, that's a bit different. I'd probably ask the parent to disable the camera and apps not needed for the pump though.