To think parents are not teaching any independence?

I managed prior to mobile phones too, but I got in some stupid scrapes which would have been easier to resolve if I could have called someone.

We live remotely and the school bus service nearest bus stop to us is 2 miles away over fields and down lanes. So we pick her up. Any problem at all and there is no pay phone anywhere in the village where the stop is.

I’ll support school in expecting phones off on the premises 100%. Off premises parenting is my choice and if their rule impacts my child’s safety I won’t support them.

And yet.. on the other end of the spectrum, Ive been getting the side eye from various parents this week ( Half term!) And red hot for allowing my 9.5 year old to knock about in my rather Naice village on his bike, with oi.. Yell if you need me and if you aren't there or there, come tell me.
Its actually been lovely, reminds me a lot of ym own childhood!

At my son’s school they hand their phones in in the morning to form tutor and get them back at the end of the day. No kids using phones in the day and they still get them on the way home, everyone’s happy.

My mum wouldn’t have known if I had missed the bus as she didn’t get home from work until 6. During that time I would have got myself home and she wouldn’t have worried as she wouldn’t have even been aware. And it would have been absolutely fine. Cases where it sadly is not fine are still very rare.

My DSS’s mum recently went ballistic because we let him and his friend get the train home from the shopping centre they had been in all afternoon. It’s a ten minute train journey, we talked him through what he needed to do, and we picked him up at the station our end. He is almost 14. It was fine and passed without incident and actually he was buzzing with the independence of it when he got off the train. She told us (and worse still managed to persuade him) that we had ‘endangered his life’. So now we have a child that is scared to use public transport on his own and who we will be driving around until-presumably-he is 18, because heaven forbid he actually does anything independently. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And in my view it’s incapacitating him as he is losing out on a valuable life skill.

It's not a ban on phones. It's a ban on SMART phones. Children would be allowed brick/dumb phones that they can use to call or text. Smart phones are SO damaging to children's mental and physical health. Please have a look at https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/ if you don't believe me, plenty of research and evidence on there.

But society wasn’t built around needing a phone for things then

The problem is is that we now need to use our phones for lots of things. I didn’t have a phone for 2 days and found it challenging. If the bus doesn’t show you can’t now go use a pay phone to call someone like you could in the past

And they managed prior to mobile phones too.

Haven't RTFT yet but my DM contacted my employer recently. WITHOUT my knowledge. I had moaned to my DM about some issues at work. Didn't ever expect her to step in on my behalf. Was just having a moan about work! I was furious when I found out. I'm 30!

My dcs school allows dumb phones which i think is a good compromise

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/mums-horror-daughter-12-beaten-27327867.amp

This happened in my childhood hometown. Even if this was a one off incident..... which it isn't depending on what area you live in - would you even want to risk this being your child? It isn't safe for a lot of children these days, it's a fact

She clearly didn't use a phone to call for help, but mobile phones being present meant the crime was recorded, had to be taken seriously by the police as there was evidence ( depending on area police can't do much without evidence )

At least when she got off the bus she would of been able to phone her mum if she had a phone, the area is very hilly and it's not unusual to have to walk 5/10 mins up a long hill or path home, imagine being battered like that and not even being able to contact your parents until you walked through the door 😭

In many areas the transport tickets are digital. Even if most children catch school transport, there's likely to be at least a few pupils from further away that rely on other transport.

And as others have also stated, not all children will be going straight home, or straight to school from home. It could make it very difficult for those with more than one house, or who travel to none school-based clubs or work on the way home.

Banning phones entirely has always seemed a sledgehammer option to me - block them, make them hand them in, put them in pouches. However, school's can't really control the pupil's journey unless they are transporting each pupil to and from school themselves.

My journey to school was more than 15 minutes by coach nearly 25 years ago when I left - and I had my mobile phone back then if I did need it.

It’s a bit odd to read this thread on MNs where many people don’t open their doors to strangers & wouldn’t dream of leaving their house without a phone.

The world has changed. Phones are integral to our lives and I would never leave the house without mine now. Catching a bus requires a phone. I don’t even have a bank card anymore . If the bus is cancelled I want to be able to find an alternative route, using citimapper. Or call someone in an emergency. It feels safer as a woman to carry a phone. I like to listen to music or read books on public transport on my phone. My daughter used to do revision flashcards on her phone. I’d be really really annoyed about this.

Agree

i think my DCs have the right level of independence. I grew up with both parents working living on dodgy estates, my parents didn’t have a clue where I was or who with let alone a fraction of what I was exposed to as a child.

This half term my 14yo has met up with friends on 3 occasions in 3 different towns doing their own things, granted one parent or another did the pick ups or drop offs but we were just as happy for her to catch the train. We know where she is as she has her phone. At 14 I think she’s got the right amount of trust and independence.

My 12yo has done similar but mainly in our home town and hanging out at the park. She also likes to wander down to the supermarket after tea sometimes on her own to buy herself something. She’s had less opportunity to navigate the train on her own but right now most of her friends are still local primary school ones, as she makes new friends in different areas she will be given more independence.

I’ve said YABU. My dd has a medical condition. Being able to get hold of me is something she needed to feel reassured enough to be able to get the bus and go to school.

My kids are adult now but we live quite remotely. Bus stop is well over a mile away with no lighting or footpath (or grass verge, often single lane width) and there are 4 buses a day. School was 10 miles away. If they missed the bus after school (happened a lot when lockers were the other end of the building) the only other bus left at 6pm when it was dark in winter. I'd like to know.

The major thing that concerns me is that stealing phones is a massive issue and if a young person is so dependent on their phone and then it gets stolen or lost etc - how would they cope.

How do you know the bus journey is 15mins for every student?

I do agree that kids need to be taught more independence and not be so dependent on their phones but some kids do travel far to school if they’ve moved etc or they have after school clubs or they stay with their other parent etc and so I can see why parents would complain if they had no phones.

My niece gets the bus from school to the train station on a Friday to stay at her dads for the weekend and then he takes her to school on Monday.
If she wasn’t allowed her phone on school premises it would be a massive pain as she wouldn’t be able to have it all weekend and the public transport is terrible so is often cancelled or really late so misses her connection.

I don't know about independence, but I think that we have to acknowledge that the world is different now. We can't expect children today to live as if they exist in the same word as children from a few decades ago.

This

And many other reasons

My children’s bus passes are on their phones as guess what, we live in a digital world

one of my DCs likes to use the 30 min bus journey on back rural roads to do their homework, which is done on their phone. Far better than me scribbling my homework on the way to school the day it’s done.

Sometimes they may want to do something after school with friends, with no pay phone and only 1 school bus they need to ask permission as their school is in a different town. We need to coordinate pickups or if they make their way home by train, in which case they need their phone to pay for it as it’s all automated and no option to pay for a ticket with cash.

They also pay for food and drinks on their phones.

They have emergency cash i make them carry as I’m so old but the reality is they need their phones for everyday life just like adults do.

Phones are banned on school grounds at my DCs school, they can be in the bottom of bags but not as allowed in pockets or to be seen. It seems to work perfectly fine. My friends DS goes to a school where all phones are put in faraday pouches at the start of the day and given back at the end of school, again works fine.

it also wasn’t all that great “ back in the day” kids bullied and attacked with no way of calling their parents. There was a pervert who hung around one bus stop grooming young girls getting off my school bus, plenty of other sleeze bags harassing kids at bus stops or walking home. At least now kids have the extra security of feeling they can call someone or take pictures. I once missed my bus, my ticket was only for a certain bus company, I lived 9 miles away in another town and only one way to walk through rural roads, sometimes with no pavements, I’d been walking about an hour it was getting dark when a teacher pulled over, it as a risk getting in but I was lucky. I never told my parents, just like all the other dangerous shit that happened in the good old days.

Forgot to add: practically everything can be done on phones now and we are moving - rapidly - toward a paperless society as well. Look at Sweden which uses less than 1% physical money now. In such a changing world it is bizarre to ban phones and deny what has become essential. Rules for public use make much more sense.

It blows my mind when parents are hyper involved in their kid’s choice university. There was a woman here in tears because her son wouldn’t let him drop him off at university.
When I decided university course in the 80’s my parents were not involved.. although my Dad did say you’ve chosen something too hard. 😂😂
Parents dropped me off at bus stop with all my luggage and waved me good by.
Mind you, no student loans then and the government paid me to go to uni.. not much , but still. Maybe parents over invested because it costs so much !

This is an excellent point

I agree with you that children should be able to
get a bus without a phone, and it’s not unsafe.

But I think the school has gone too far in banning them entirely. So the school’s assumption is that everyone goes straight home on the bus after school? No-one goes anywhere that they might need a phone like a part-time job, an after-school activity, to visit a relative, etc? That’s not my experience of most high schoolers.