To think this is a stupid rule - no calls home on scout camp!

It's a great idea.

I can tell you from a teacher/school trip point of view that we banned phones. We could not police the content kids were accessing, or showing others, or the photos/videos they were taking. It was a nightmare.

Also, my son runs cubs and scouts camps, because he really enjoyed them as a kid, and likes to give back to the community.

But the petty complaints from parents - when the leaders give up an awful lot of their time for free to organise and run events - is making him re-think this after quite a lot of years of being involved. There is never any thanks or gratitude from parents for the fact that he has given up a week of his annual leave to help run these events, or that he's basically on call 24/7. They are very quick to complain about silly things, however.

If your 14 year old son can't cope with being an hour away from home for a week without his phone, then you've gone badly wrong in raising him. God knows how us older folk coped without being traumatised.

It’s always been like that for many years and it is a good idea for a whole host of reasons. It will do them good to have a break from phones and interact with each other.

Completely agree. No phones. I had several DCs at scout camps over the years and no phones.
If there was an urgent message then there is a link person - often another scout leader or a spouse.
They need time away from mummy. Camps are built up slowly according to age (day camp, one night in the scout hut, weekend, week then eventually abroad) and the young person should be doing their own packing and eventually cooking and clearing up.

I have no experience of scouts, but thought this was a normal approach? All of DD’s primary school and secondary school residential trips had a ‘no phone’ rule, mainly due to kids being perfectly content during the day, phoning home in the evening and then becoming upset after speaking to parents. Better to just plough through and avoid the emotional drama.

College trips are a different matter entirely - almost constant photos and requests for more £££ 😆

DH runs a scout group.

They are going on camp over the summer.

Parents have been told any child found with a phone will be sent home.

Why? Because he can't safeguard with phone and the kids are supposed to be busy with activities. If they are on phones they can't.

Plus there's a history of problems with PARENTS contacting kids in the past. DH said never again after that.

It's GOOD for the kids to have no contact with parents. The whole point of Scouts is to build resilience and independence from parents. Phones completely undermine it.

There'd been noises that several children were planning to flout a no phones rule and bring a phone anyway, hence DH deciding to go full on draconian about it to stop anyone thinking about it.

It's a form NO from me.

There's an in touch if any one needs to contact the kids / adults urgently.

And at another scout camp this week two young boys were caught filming a woman in the shower with their phones.

I mean, this isn't new? There was a payphone when I went to PGL about 30 years ago but we weren't allowed to use it, calls to family only for emergencies so kids don't get homesick.

He can tell you all the exciting things he's doing when he gets home.

its Just 1 week of camp!! I am from Spain. In my area all scouts do camps of 2 weeks.. even the youngest ones (6-8 year olds) do 1 week and of course no mobiles. It’s 2 weeks for 8-11 year olds

DS did a week in France aged 15. They were allowed to take phones. I heard nothing from him whatsoever the whole time that he was there but he said that the dramas caused by the phones were unreal and he actually felt sorry for the teachers. I’m a teacher and he never says that!!

50 years ago at the ripe old age of 11 our entire primary school class went to France for a week. Us kids had no access to a phone of any description and we all managed to survive, I'm sure your DC will too. If he gives you a daily bulletin then what's left to tell you when he gets back? Nothing, so you would have taken all the excitement of him recounting his escapades during the week away from him. There's nothing more joyful than a child returning from a week away being full of tales of what they got up to and eager to share them.

Hard no from me - the teachers would never get the kids to do anything, they’d just constantly be on their phones.

It's safer without and tbh how amazing is it to have a week without phones in this day and age? We had the most amazing teen years without them so it's great he gets the chance to experience that and just be in the moment.

I think this rule is in place based on teachers/scout leaders experience. My friends son hid a phone so he could play games on it at night as he couldn't sleep & you guessed it he ended up calling her in tears at 1am & he let his friend call his mum in tears aswell, teachers were woken up & my friend got a big telling off from the school (she knew her son had his phone).

Phones can cause more hassle than they are worth. Simply put, u were aware of the rule, if u didn't like it don't send him. A week without phones will do the participants good

DD(9) is at a PGL residential camp this week. Children there are allowed their phones/iPads for an hour in the evening. DD doesn’t have a phone and we carefully monitor her use of an iPad so that didn’t go with her. Last summer she did a residential camp for a week (with complete strangers) so I thought I ought to call a few days in. DD was annoyed that I was taking her away from playing with her new friends, so I’m not calling this year. If there were a crisis, the camp staff would call me, but I think it’s important to allow her to have some independence and she can tell me about it when she gets home. A few photos might have been nice, but not essential.

So they cant have them all day as the point is to engage in the activitues. They cant have phones in tents or unsupervised due to age range, possible safeguarding concerns, etc. If they had to hand out and collect all the phones every night for 10 mins to call home, just imagine the hassle. Phones being lost. Parents not answering during that short slot and children upset. Phones charged out with nowhere to charge them. Phones not turned off fully when given up and Scout leaders with bags of phones pinging and ringing. Phones getting mixed up. Leaders being blamed for damage or lost phones.
I say all this because I work in a school and we take children away overnight, we allow them to have their phones in a common area for 15 mins after dinner each day abd it is such a hassle. All the above. They fight over sockets to charge them. Plus all the kids in one area talking on their phones at once so nobody can hear properly. Checking everyone's handed theirs back, not hidden it away.
I've been on both sides, as a teacher in situ and the parent at home with my child on the trip and I honestly think its not necessary and causes more upset than benefit.

Poacher is the experience of a lifetime for so many Guides and Scouts. 6 years on, DC still talking about it fondly.

Having no mobiles is essential - for safeguarding, for digital detox, for actually reducing homesickness. I have nothing but gratitude and appreciation for the wonderful volunteer men and women who hold that line and give young people such an incredible experience.

We live in the Netherlands and my son's recent scouts camp was in Bath.

Even though they were all abroad (and most of the kids don't speak English) they still weren't allowed to take "any devices with internet capability."

Honestly, it's great, and even though my son moans about it before he goes, he always enjoys it much more without his phone.

And he tells us all about it when he's back.

It's great to have a chance to miss each other, we don't have that feeling much any more.

(He's a strapping 15 yr old though, I would have felt very differently if he was still small and physically vulnerable).

If you don't like the policy don't send him.

Im a scout leader and our group has ha hard ban on mobile phones too.

personally I don’t agree with it and think that at scout and explorers age they should be allowed their phones.

but the group leader is adamant so no phones

We've got so used to being in constant touch it's become a comfort blanket - in this case for the OP. Look forward with excitement to hearing all about it when DS gets back home. Leading a scout camp is hard work. The last thing the adults need is to have to manage phones and their fallout.

Having been a Guider ( now retired) for many years and veteran of many camps I can assure you there are very good reasons for this rule
If your son doesn’t want to comply he doesn’t need to go to camp

Mumsnet in general at the moment has a few threads about kids at camps messaging home that they’re homesick and want to be picked up.

I was a 70s/80s child and absolutely would have probably done the same. But there were no mobiles and I had to stay and I always ended up having a good time. Or at least a not too terrible time and learned some resilience.

For this and lots of other reasons outlined by other posters, no phones makes perfect sense to me.

Kids were going to camps before mobile phones existed! Back in my day pre mobiles there was a landline for the campsite office for true emergencies, and the campsite manager (huge site accommodating 1000+ at a time) would bring a message to the leader if a call was received, my friend lost her grandmother whilst we were at camp and it was managed really well, my friend was told about 30 minutes before her dad was due to arrive to collect her, and we were retold to support her and we packed up her stuff, knowing travel times they must have waited an hour or more, until after dinner and the campfire, it meant she didn’t have to wait long. Kids do not need a phone themselves

Guide leader… we have always said no phones at camp and will continue to do so. Aside from the breakages and nowhere to charge them, some (but not all) reasons….

Older Guide (14) shows younger Guide (10) something she shouldn’t see and her parents would definitely not want her to see. You can’t ever put that back in the box and ultimately I’m responsible for it.

Homesick Guide constantly messaging parents - parents turn up to collect Guide and leaders know nothing about it. Miraculously, Guides are a lot less homesick when they can’t contact home all the time. And we as leaders are very experienced at dealing with homesickness and know when to make the call as to whether they will be ok or they are really not enjoying themselves and need to go home.

Over dramatising issues at camp and causing panic - messaging home saying there’s been a mass outbreak of food poisoning when actually one child over did it and was a bit sick.

Photos - so many possibilities for where Guides could post photos and they don’t know who has photo permissions and why. We have a password protected Google drive where we put ‘safe’ images and parents are explicitly asked not to download and share.

No control over who they are messaging and what they are watching when ultimately I am their parent for the week.

It’s just good to be away from screens and interact for a change!

I am also a secondary school teacher and it baffles me why we allow phones on some trips. My two worlds don’t always collide harmoniously.

PS. Edited to add that I’m surprised he has time to even think about you at Poacher!

Also that we still give the campsite address to parents so that they can write a letter, or they give us a letter to give midweek, and the girls love it.