To think parents are not teaching any independence?

Our ten year old either has a 30 minute walk to school or he takes two metro trains depending on how he feels/what the weathers like. On the way home if the weathers okay he often goes to the park before he gets home.

All without a phone, he does have one, well he has two actually, one stays on charge at school over night and one is on charge at home as the battery is used very quickly with his hearing aids as at school his phone acts as a microphone for his teacher.

If he needs to phone us before he leaves school he can go to reception at school who will phone one of us. If he loses his travel pass he can just walk home. If something happens at the park he can just walk home and tell us.

I have to agree that i do judge parents who contact employers on behalf of their kids.

I think the smart phone issue is tricky only in the context of bus passes, as i believe it is cheaper for bus passes if you have the app. Which from a business perspective i absolutely get. So from that perspective, parents can’t win.

Nothing wrong with having a phone, that's not what I mean. I'm just meaning that an over-reliance on the phone isn't a good thing. Kids need to know what to do in case they don't have time to call or have to act very quickly. I'm glad my kids have a phone but I also want them to be able to manage without it.

We also once managed without showers and washing machines, doesn’t mean we can’t have them now because Sue used to manage in a Tin bath in 1920

I do think this generation is less resilient but I don't think anxiety is unique to any particular generation.

I remember marching in a parade back in the 80s. No political issues around it at all. My father with what I now recognise as an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and OCD made me carry coins in my hand the whole parade - in case a riot broke out so I could go to a phone box. No-one else's parents went to these lengths. I think that's pretty terrible because that could have passed on anxieties to us. Needless to say, there was no riot.

I still can’t see the relevance. You didn’t have a phone ( I also had a period of being out independently without a phone ) I still do not understand your point. There is negatives to phone culture more so the access to constant internet than the actual phone function but this I can’t see being the issue.

I was at school 27 years ago and still had a phone just for emergencies when i got the bus to school.

The bus pass is digital and on the phone.

So how will children use their bus pass without their phone?

We now live in a world where people constantly Catastrophizing
dome of the replies to thread on hear are ridiculous it’s always what if and extreme examples of what could of happened

were raising a generation that are scared of there own shadow

Did you grow up without a phone? If you did, maybe you'd see the difference. If you always had access to a phone, then I can see how you can't imagine the difference. Especially if you did grow up in an area where there was always a phone box in close proximity, which I didn't have.

In the end, as long as our kids know how to sort themselves in sticky situations phone or not, that's all that matters.

Well yes but the difference there is a higher chance you would know faster if one your child is missing 2. Have a better chance of you or police tracking their locations or at least recent locations.

I thought the thread was about mobile phones

Still makes 0 sense to me why a phone impacts this.

The question is whether parents are teaching self-help so stringently now knowing that they can be contacted.

Everyone saying phones should be switched off and in bags do understand their kids just use them in the toilets at break times don’t they? 😬

Because contacting someone to tell you what to do rather than working it out and acting successfully isn't the same as when you rely on someone else to do it for you.

That said, I am glad my kids have phones. It is reassuring to know they can get in touch.

Im pretty sure most kids mobile phone or not know to go into shops or to an adult for help this isn't something special you was taught

In my DD10 year group so many kids are not going on the year 6 residential because they cant cope with being away from home its unreal

At the school my friend’s DD goes to they hand their phones in at the start of the day and then collect t them in their way home. It must be a nightmare doing this with 1200 students!

More likely money back then. I think the group that wanted to rob us was probably after our bus money. There are always things, but recently I've been aware of a few incidents specifically around phones. We didn't tend to carry such high value items when we were young. Kids just didn't have them because they didn't exist.

not sure why having a phone would have prevented you from doing this. It doesn’t disable you.

I’m early 40s and had a phone in secondary school, and not everyone’s bus journey is only 15 minutes. I don’t really see how having a phone in case of emergency, or to let me know they are going into town with their mates after school, or using it to pay for something etc is not being independent. That’s the world we live in now.

Not true though we could of just got robbed for different things 🤣 there has always been trends , designer belongings and bad people. I actually think now phones are more of a common thing and very easy to access phone theft is less of an issue here.

The good thing about this kind of experience was that I took initiative, I grew in confidence, I knew I could handle things. I'm not sure that would have been the same if I'd had to call my mother to work it out for me.

What about the kids getting robbed and beaten for their phones? At least we never had to deal with that one.