DD school trip in 2 hours. Woke up to a lot of ranty msgs from another parent

[BackwardsGoing]

Who has just twigged that the kids are not allowed phones for their 2 nights 3 days away.

School has communicated this in emails, letters and F2F meetings for most of the year.

Ranty parent (RP) wants all parents to stand in solidarity against the no phone rule. This morning. While the kids are getting on the coach!

AIBU to say this is (a) bonkers (b) far too late and (c) bonkers.

BTW children are year 6 / 10-11 yo and the school has promised regular updates via Facebook.

Hilarious. All the year 6 kids I know have phones. They mostly use them for sending photos to each other and for chatting with their mates.

I expect some kids will hide their phones in their luggage somewhere.
Does the ban on mobile phones extend to the teachers accompanying them?

Mine walks herself to dance classes after school, and texts to let us know she’s there

The problem with relying on a text though is if your child forgets to text, you're going to immediately panic that something has happened. Either you trust your child to make a journey themselves, or you don't.

@InterestingShipNames I'm curious as to the circumstances that your dd could be missing between school and dance?

@jessie94 there are all sorts of reasons why 10yrs need phones and they can even have them without reasons.

Mine got his as his dad worked away for 2years and if I got in accident while they were at school or came home and found me dead on the floor they’d have a way of contacting someone for help.

If the child forgot to text when they arrived at dance the mum could either

Call the child to check they had arrived
Call the dance school
Call another parent who is there to ask if they have seen their child
Look on find my phone for the child’s location
Get in the car & drive to the dance school

Does the ban on mobile phones extend to the teachers accompanying them?

I doubt it

I bet the lazy bastards don’t have to go to bed at the same time or wear school uniform either

Also at dds old dance school there was an occasion where the teacher had an emergency or was ill and had to cancel classes putting a note on the door. If the child arrived and found a locked venue they could call a parent.

My DC is also Yr 6 and on a residential trip at the moment. She doesn't even have a mobile phone yet! (Well she does have my old one but it has no SIM card so she can't use it to make calls).

What is the world coming to where pre-secondary kids even have such things? OK maybe one or two need them if they walk long distances from school or to clubs etc, but so many of these comments assume it's perfectly usual, even if we all agree they don't need them on trips.....

How did we ever cope in the 70s, eh ?

Does the ban on mobile phones extend to the teachers accompanying them?
Yeah, the people who are giving up their evenings unpaid and leaving their own dc behind in many cases, should not be allowed to contact home/go on mumsnet in any downtime they have. What a stupid comment.

You know teachers are adults and do not have to follow the same rules as the kids.

In the 70s we coped by having phone boxes everywhere and by people being where they'd said they'd be and not changing their minds. Life was much more rigid and it was nowhere near so easy to keep in contact with people. I met people on holiday in the 70s that I definitely intended to keep in touch with, but because it involved writing a letter, buying a stamp for overseas, I was flaky and allowed the friendship to lapse. That doesn't happen nowadays.

Always some fool...

My daughter is year 6 aged 10 and will be away next week mon-fri and also have various disabilities including autism and some physical ones. I am more than happy that the rule is NO phones for any of the children!

Hope the kiddies have a great time!

Does the ban on mobile phones extend to the teachers accompanying them?
Yeah, the people who are giving up their evenings unpaid and leaving their own dc behind in many cases, should not be allowed to contact home/go on mumsnet in any downtime they have. What a stupid comment.

Exactly.

It’s perfectly possible for one’s child to have a mobile phone and still support the lack of them on residentials.

DD has had one since she was 8, we certainly don’t regret the decision because she’s never abused it. Conversely her peers who only got a phone in year 7, do seem to have a tendency to go a bit crackers with them

@twosoups1972

I’d add to comefromaway’s list and add:

• helping dd sort issues out herself, for example the time that the doorbell was broken and the teacher didn’t hear her buzzing for admittance and she didn’t know what to do (she called me, I suggested knocking hard and waiting for some other students to arrive)
• noticing when I hadn’t received a text and phoning her to check why she wasn’t there (major roadworks, she had carried on walking on the wrong side of the road for what she needed until she found a working pedestrian crossing, I reassured her this was the right decision, even though it had made her late)

As to how she could be missing between school and dance, I’m thinking the possibilities are:

• forgot she had a class and went home (and nobody there because we’re both at work)
• some sort of accident (twisted ankle, or hit by a car)
• met a friend and got chatting (unlikely, she’s very reliable about stuff like this)
• some horror scenarios that I don’t want to think about, but in which it would be good to know ASAP that she was missing

She is very reliable about texting when she gets to places - I think she’s forgotten twice in the last two years. And if she doesn’t answer, I can call her (local) grandparents and / or the school office and / or the dance teacher to see if she’s there, and to get them to look for her if necessary

The RP's kid sounds like a right piece of work.

My DD10 doesn't even have a phone and I won't think about getting her one until she is in seniors. I'm not having this unsociable behaviour/obsession with games/social media going on - get out and play!

My son didn’t even have a phone at this age🙄

That's fair comment @InterestingShipNames thank you.

I suppose with your scenario and other scenarios when parents need to keep in contact with their dc, a non smartphone would be ok wouldn't it? I think the thing that bothers me is children getting smartphones younger and younger. And that leads to getting this app and that app and before you know it, they are on SM before they have the maturity to handle it.

My youngest dd is in Year 7. In the last year of primary, some of the children were staring to get phones and start using SM such as musical.ly and instagram. Dd got her first phone (hand me down iPhone) at the end of Year 6 but I said no to any SM other than WhatsApp (and I know the min age for that is 16 but it seemed a bit extreme to exclude her from our family group). Now she's at secondary she is starting to nag for SM but I am standing my ground and saying no for now. It's just too much too soon.

And I think that's why there is so much judgment about kids having phones. If it's a non smartphone for calls/texts fair enough but in reality who has one of those? And I'm not sure why not; if it's purely to keep in touch with your child, then why a smartphone? Those old Nokias are making a comeback!

And that leads to getting this app and that app and before you know it, they are on SM before they have the maturity to handle it

But it doesn’t have to if you are clear on the rules and set up the technology to prevent this happening.

Helicopter parents do their kids no favours.My daughter was going on a french trip.Aged 13.A parent was annoyed that a teacher wasnt going to be in their bedrooms at night and stated that someone could take them.She was shot down by other parents .

My son went on the same length trip and they are year 10 and 11. So 14/ 15 / 16 years old. They were told that they can't have phones. Parents and students kicked off

Bluerussian
I expect some kids will hide their phones in their luggage somewhere.

Yep. And generally children that are that stupid tend to get caught.

Does the ban on mobile phones extend to the teachers accompanying them?

Speaking of stupid...

But it doesn’t have to if you are clear on the rules and set up the technology to prevent this happening

Agreed.....but some of dd's friends' parents have reluctantly said yes to SM due to pester power! So now dd is saying she is left out. These are her primary school friends with whom she is still very friendly. But they can use WhatsApp to keep in touch. Luckily her secondary school friends seem to come from a wide range of strictness so she's not the only one not allowed SM.

Mine had Nokia’s in primary. They didn’t have smartphones until secondary when they needed the apps for school related things.