...to hold on to teenagers' phones when they are here for a sleepover

[dubmumof2]

Quick background - my teenage DC (15 & 13) are not and have never been allowed their phones overnight in their bedrooms for both sleep and safety reasons. They set their phones to charge downstairs before going up to bed. I have in the past had to charge a phone in my bedroom for a period when I discovered that a phone was being retrieved in secret when the house was gone to bed!

I've always had a similar rule for sleepovers - phones are handed over at 12 midnight or 12.30am and charged in my room (not downstairs from experience). Everyone is informed of where their phone is and told that if they want to talk to parents etc in the night that is fine - they can have their phone from me. I have lots of reasons - concern for what they may watch when I'm asleep, concern for the potential ideas that groups can spur on to film sleeping friends and post them (illegally!), know of middle of the night sorties to meet other groups having sleepovers arranged by phone. I feel I am in loco parentis and those are risks I'm not willing to take.

Had two new 13 year old friends last night for the first time. Group including regular sleepover attendees and new then considered this rule very unreasonable and I spent from 12.30am to 4.30am defending it, preventing numerous attempts to get the phones back by stealth or argument, and addressing charges that I wasn't allowed to keep them from their phones......

I didn't budge and am unlikely to revise the rule but AIBU? Do any of you have similar rules or am I an outlier here?

Please do remember to refer back to this thread in a decade when she’s nearly 13.

Not all of us are so prone to changing our minds, Mummy. This has been my view for the last decade and I have no reason to think it won’t be my view in another one.

I agree with math

To be honest, schools are on very shaky ground confiscating phones overnight.

The problem with phones being confiscated on sight is that a lot of the time kids who really weren’t doing anything untoward (checking for texts at the end of the day isn’t a sign of future deviant behaviour) but leads to more problems ime as kids really fight handing over their phone if they know the school has a ridiculous policy about it.

I wouldn’t support if my kid had been a dick in lessons with it but if they were just looking at it and it was confiscated I would be pissed off.

I had a girl whose dad took our phones, I asked for my phone (I wanted to go home but didn't want to tell him that as he was so moody), he said no, we tried to get my phone to call my mum but he caught us, I threw up everything I had eaten and cried myself to sleep. Never spoke to the girl again! My mum was so angry, I don't actually think the girl had another sleepover!

You might think you are a mum who takes phones but is otherwise approachable and great BUT to children you might seem to scary to ask to go home! Please be mindful, even if you let them write down their parents numbers and you leave them with your home phone?

Not RTFT, only 22 pages of it

YABU to take the phones at a sleepover and keep them in your room. That’s weird and controlling. Asking the teens to leave them downstairs overnight is fine and less likely to cause ill-feeling and rebellion than confiscating the phones.

YANBU to generally have a no phones overnight policy

To be honest, schools are on very shaky ground confiscating phones overnight.

They aren’t. Schools confiscate all sorts of things and are within their legal rights when they do.

Is anyone going to answer pp who asked what the magical age is when DC are judged to be able to have their phone when they want.

SE13Mummy

Couldn't agree more. I'd rather protect my DC against the embarrassment and humiliation of photos/footage circulating amongst "friends" once they'd decided to do something ill-advised in the excitement of the sleepover-moment, than protect them against what is clearly being seen as a brutalising anti-human rights system of parenting...

I'm so easy going. But not when it comes to the anxiety and stress and bullying and stolen friendships that phones can cause when in the hands of excitable young teenagers.

Caveat: my kids aren't teens yet. But i feel that if you & they are comfortable with going to sleep at someone else's house, that should encompass feeling comfortable asking the parent for help if there's a real urgent need in the night.

This use of the word 'authoritarian' is laughable given how many threads are dedicated to parents telling us we all need to be disciplinarians, when it comes to behaviour, food, manners, 'no helmet no bike' etc, yet when it comes to phones rules go out the window

Not overnight or for a period of days, church

Fair enough ‘I’m taking this phone off you and you will have it back at 3 o clock’ (or whenever the school day is over) but some have adopted a 24 hour / 48 / 72 / five days system - that’s very shaky ground, morally and legally.

Mine , now 18 , and any friends who came for a sleepover have always kept their own phones .

Your house your rules. Attending a sleepover js hardly compulsory, if they dont like it then they can go home

Honestly your kids don’t NEED their phones. It’s just silly to think they can’t survive one night without it and seriously lots of kids get riled up and do the most ridiculous things in the middle of the night with phones.
Faffandahaff

And it's not up to the OP to decide what other people's children need or don't need.

The parents sent the kids off with their phones even though they allegedly know the OP's policy (with one late invitee unaware of the phone ban the OP insists on).

And you don't get to the bottom of the appalling behaviour you have witnessed and described by taking phones overnight or not allowing them in school.

Phones are here to stay.

Human nature, bullying, etc existed long before phones did. The slut shaming and all the rest of it went on long before any of it could be documented on SM.

The most startlingly disturbing thing about this thread is the the overwhelming number of parents deluding themselves that a mobile phone is a safety device.

With very rare very specific medical conditions excepted it's no more a safety device than a teddy bear is.

A mobile phone will not keep your teenager safe. Thinking it will gives you a false sense of security.

Astormiscoming

Maybe do a bit of research, Astorm, because that isn’t correct.

No this is just weird. I have my phone by my bed all night - I would hate someone to take it off me.

IMO you're creating huge problems for the future with rules like this. I bet your kids will lie to you when they're older.

On sleepovers yes. The same way we don't give them pizza every night but do when their friends are round.

Pizza doesn’t put anyone at risk. Phones do, and at sleepovers more than, not less than, usually.

Local school has rule that phones must be switched off and out of sight (ie in pocket) otherwise they will be confiscated. Kids then pick up from school office at home time. No parents involved.

Not correct that taking property and withholding it is shaky ground?

Sorry church but it is.

You’re a teacher, aren’t you?

Social media can be insidious and incredibly harmful in ways that are too subtle to detect. Kids even have photos stored on their phones in case they are ever needed as collateral in the future. They live in fear of being photographed or filmed, and a sleepover should be a carefree, fun environment. One person's experience should not necessarily define rules (although it's understandable when it does), but many of the posters on here work with teens who have suffered horribly as victims of the potent clashing between social media and broken friendships. The only time I have ever seen my daughter truly heartbroken it was over something she had seen about herself on social media. Of course humans talk about each other - we are social creatures - but it's not normal that we should have access to what everyone thinks about us - that way anxiety and unhappiness lie.

*Not correct that taking property and withholding it is shaky ground?

Sorry church but it is.*

Nope. Do your research. Yes, I am.

churchandstate Sun 10-Nov-19 06:18:19
I am very concerned by the number of people here saying “Oh well, they’re watching porn anyway at that age.”

Really? You’re perfectly content that your 13 is watching pornography?

Or is that just what you have to say because the alternative - removing the access - is so bloody unthinkable to you, that you have to pretend to yourself that young teenagers watching degrading/ violent/ coerced sex acts is perfectly okay?

Actually, the alternative to watching violent porn is not taking phones away.

It is educating your sons and daughters about sexting, porn and degrading treatment of girls and women, and making them resilient in the face of peers, not by inflicting draconian rules, but by arriving at consensus rules that they understand are based on a stance of respectfulness to all and personal responsibility.

If you think your child will spend the night watching vicious porn and slasher movies on Youtube unless you take the phone away, maybe your approach and rules haven't worked?

As a pp mentioned, the majority of the time, kids watch kitten videos and other light entertainment. A few years back it was vines.

Definition of arbitrary. Was really easy to google.

based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system