To think parents are not teaching any independence?

When my youngest started university, I joined the parents fb group.

I was absolutely boggled by some of the concerns of parents and the lack of independence they'd created in some students.

Posts in the group included -

Suggesting Buddy Benches around the university for students who haven't made friends yet to sit on until someone comes to talk to them. Like at primary school. The parent even included a photo of the brightly coloured buddy bench her child's primary school had installed.

Parents asking if there was a comprehensive list anywhere that told students how food should be stored (cupboard, fridge, freezer) and for how long it could be stored safely before eating and how to cook it (someone suggested all that info was on individual food packaging).

Parents asking why there wasn't anyone in the laundrette to show 'our young people' how to use a washing machine.

So many people had got their kids through their GCSEs and A Levels, had completed their UCAS forms for them, sorted their student finance for them, applied for accommodation for them and then realised that, once they were living 100+ miles away, they hadn't equipped them with any life skills whatsoever.

Was actually baffling.

I think they need to consider the specifics of each school - not every school is the same.

My kids go to a school in the nearest town but we live very rurally. Some kids are driven twenty minutes to reach the bus stop for the school minibus. You drop your kid at the bus stop and go to work. We’re not talking roads with pavements - we’re talking country lanes with high stone walls or hedges and nowhere to stand if a tractor comes.

If the school minibus doesn’t come we don’t get told. It just doesn’t turn up. At which point one of the kids phones a parent and we all scrabble round trying to work out who could get there to collect them, how many we could get in each car etc. (Thank goodness for parents WhatsApp groups!)
If they had to walk home (no phone boxes) before they could ring, then wait for us to get home, they could easily miss half a day of school for no reason.

Similarly when the bus breaks down they can call me and I can go and get them (and others), or another parent can, instead of them waiting four hours - which is how long it took to get a mechanic out last time this happened. The bus broke down on a road I took when I went out that evening so I saw him sitting there. I need them home for dinner, clubs and homework not sitting in the middle of nowhere because they aren’t allowed phones and the bus company don’t keep in touch with parents.

I like them having a phone. I’d be ok with it being a brick one though. Doesn’t need to be a smart phone.

I think they need to consider the specifics of each school - not every school is the same.

My kids go to a school in the nearest town but we live very rurally. Some kids are driven twenty minutes to reach the bus stop for the school minibus. You drop your kid at the bus stop and go to work. We’re not talking roads with pavements - we’re talking country lanes with high stone walls or hedges and nowhere to stand if a tractor comes.

If the school minibus doesn’t come we don’t get told. It just doesn’t turn up. At which point one of the kids phones a parent and we all scrabble round trying to work out who could get there to collect them, how many we could get in each car etc. (Thank goodness for parents WhatsApp groups!)
If they had to walk home (no phone boxes) before they could ring, then wait for us to get home, they could easily miss half a day of school for no reason.

Similarly when the bus breaks down they can call me and I can go and get them (and others), or another parent can, instead of them waiting four hours - which is how long it took to get a mechanic out last time this happened. The bus broke down on a road I took when I went out that evening so I saw him sitting there. I need them home for dinner, clubs and homework not sitting in the middle of nowhere because they aren’t allowed phones and the bus company don’t keep in touch with parents.

I like them having a phone. I’d be ok with it being a brick one though. Doesn’t need to be a smart phone.

to be honest we need to teach kids how to use phones/technology safely and responsibly, rather than pretend that phones don’t exist and just take them away as if our kids are growing up in some 80s/90s utopia. The 80s and 90s are over, phones and AI etc are here to stay, teach kids how to use them properly.

It depend on how the local area is set up, OP @MrBlobbysNuts

In the area we live in now, I certainly wouldn't have let DD1 got to school without a means of contacting me, as there was one bus she could get, we are rural and it sometimes didn't turn up or broke down en route, or she couldn't get on coming back as it was full. DD2 would have been ok as she went to school locally.

When I was at school there were five school buses I could get and it was a very reliable service.

Mine were allowed to walk the 5 min homes from school, we just had to fill in a form. But the judgemental looks and whispers from the other mums who walked theirs to school and back until year Christmas 6! 😂

I don't allow my dc social media until after GCSEs, after that they can have chose.

I'd go one step further than smart phone free childhood, I think families should not have TVs at all either and parents smart phones locked in these little bags, after 6pm. It's so much better to sit together in the evenings and chat, crochet, knit, draw, sew, read the options are endless.

The person I was quoting was saying most adults, not school kids, would have trouble if a bus didn't turn up. Hopefully there's at least one parent waiting at those kind of bus stops. My mother used to wait with us in the morning, though we'd find our own way back in the afternoon.

I did it from 6! Left an empty house and came back to an empty house. Do I win a cookie?

that's just an example of a stupid human, in whatever context

You can do both. I did.

100% on board with phone use not being allowed in schools - but my DD only has the independence she has aged 12 because she has a phone and we have a tracker on it! It means she’s allowed to go to the shops after school or hang with friends for a bit without having to constantly check in with me and she’s allowed to go for walks etc on her own which I might not otherwise allow. I do realise phones have a lot of drawbacks but I can only see this as a positive and if they had been around 50 years earlier those parents would have been tracking their kids too!

Early 90s, North Yorkshire. Ours was well maintained and usually worked but brick mobiles phones were definitely welcomed. We could get ourselves home but some children I know were run over on the road (one killed, one permanently disabled). Most people drive like complete morons on windy back roads these days so I wouldn't want an 11 year old walking down there. That feels like an unnecessary step back in time. I work in IT and advocate for smart phone free childhoods but I think sometimes a brick phone can avoid putting children in real danger. I feel the strongest voices on here live urban lives and have always been babied by reliable public transport, that's why their soluation is wait fpr the next bus to come along and swoop you up. Most rural people don't have that.

If children are not independent by secondary school then their parents are to blame. That isn’t criticising children.

If the children are still unable to function independently in the workplace as adults then it is also their responsibility.

Around my way bus companies still offer bus passes, not least for reasons of accessibility.

Oh the smell - they were always vile.

They were disappearing long before smartphones became common simply because most of them were unusable and. more people had phones at home.

Where and when? Our buses were unreliable and the one phone box on my journey home was invariably vandalised. We had to learn to be more independent.

We were proactively taught about staying safe in the absence of known adults, knew every bus route, knew which roads to use when walking etc. Over time this has proved rather more useful than an instruction to “phone home” every time there is a problem.

Yes you were buggered if the phonebox had a 2p jammed into the slot.

People forget the phoneboxes all smelt of piss, were often smashed up and covered in vile graffiti and numbers for prossies too.

Me and a freind were once trapped in a phonebox by some older kids for half an hour. My friend wet herself as she was so scared.

'The good old days'

Surprised - though pleased - to hear things like Faraday pouches are working so well for some schools. A local one had a rash of students bringing in old phones for appearances' sake, handing those over and carrying right on with their "real" ones

Detentions followed, as did ranting and raving parents threatening school with the police and god knows what else

A pity some just weren't prepared to instil any kind of discipline in their kids, but then they appeared to have little themselves so it probably didn't occur to them

Yes that was my reaction - only one phone box on the whole urban journey and that was broken most of the time. Most villages had one at most and nothing in between villages.

I’d love to know where all these functioning phone boxes were.

In my kids example it is just an agreed school bus stop so you would be waiting 24 hours for the next school bus to arrive. When my kids go to secondary they will be waiting at a cross roads on a 60mph road nowhere near any villages. Like I said when I caught the bus there we had a phone box but that no longer exists.

Yup I had one of those too! Used it to ask my dad to collect me from the train station after I’d been out all day, many a time! It was so annoying it was about 20 numbers long and inevitably you’d punch one in wrong and have to start again 🤣

lol! We used to walk to and from primary school, starting at the age of 7! It was about 20mins away. This is nuts!

I agree ! If you could find one the chances of it working were slim . Also I’m old but I seem to remember button A and button B , if you got it wrong it took your money but didn’t put you through. Completely unreliable!

I'd just wait for the next one. I can still read a paper timetable and I made sure my kids could too before I allowed them to use the phone, so they would have both skills.

Crazy. Loads of kids here get the train to school from age 11.

At 14 I would have been going shopping with my friends to the nearest town using it.

My workplace offers 2 weeks work experience for secondary school students - usually Year 10's. The schools normally ask them to write a letter telling us a bit about themselves and why they are interested in our placement. I would say over the last few years at least 30% are written by Mum or Dad. I get helping but these are written by the parents and normally start with My son/daughter"would like to apply. Sadly these kids are not even considered.