...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?

Wow, you sound so warm and nurturing. I can't foresee any possibility that a visiting child would feel unable to approach you!

Teach your children to seek out an adult when they need help, or expect them to come to harm. Just don’t blame me if that happens - I’ve been clear about what I expect.

Yes but lyra it isn’t their place to do so. I can understand why parents slap or swear at a child but it’s still wrong!

By all means, disagree with me. I don’t mind.

Oh I can see that, you appear to be having a ball

I know i'm an unfashionable parent but we parent in a way that we think is positive and we explain our decisions to our kids - this doesn't mean decisions are always liked but they are accepted.
We stick to age limits (films, computer games, social media), limits to screen time, no screens in bedrooms at any time , in fact they have to be used in a 'public' room, the kids understand that phones, iPads, computers are not a right, they are a privilege that they can lose for not helping out, bad behaviour etc we will check what they are doing online for their safety but also that they must tell us if there are issues. Phones can be left to charge overnight on our family hub in the family room.
This applies to my kids and any visitors and it's never been an issue or even questioned - they have found other things to do and we have loads of kids that come to regularly visit, they have always had a good time and come back - the bloody older boys seem to eat us out of house and home!

I personally don't think kids 'need' mobile phones although I understand why they like to have them and some parents feel the need to give them to them.

I don’t see the point. At first I thought you were worried about what they might be searching etc but I then realised they can do this at any time during the day. I get you have rules and that it’s your house but why didn’t you make these rules known to the parents at the time of invite?

math anxiety, 10.29, brilliant post. Exactly how I have raised my boys too.

Oh I can see that, you appear to be having a ball

It’s not upsetting to me that people whose views I don’t respect think I’m wrong.

Teach your children to seek out an adult when they need help, or expect them to come to harm.

The point is not that the child isn't seeking out the adult but in how the adult then chooses to react. Can't you understand the difference?

My children knew to go to the adult in charge. What if that adult didn't realise the severity of the situation but tried to reassure the child, give them a drink of water and sent them back to bed? That is what math was saying.

If a child asks the host to call their parents but the host refuses what can the child do?

My dm was the ‘cool’ one who let me and friends do as we wished

Wish she had been much stricter. Result was many instances of getting into danger, rape, sexual assault, alcohol poisoning drugs... I wish that had never happened but I had no framework given to me literally no boundaries.
When staying with us other kids got in trouble which I will never forget
Well done for being a good parent and looking after all the kids

Church, you seem to have a habit of lifting parts of others posts you don't like, and highlighting them to show your disagreement. And you ignore the rest of the post that might show you in a bad light.

Are you a politician by any chance? 😁

I think you’re a bit out of your depth here tbh

I’m not feeling it, Mauritius

😂😂😂😂

*The point is not that the child isn't seeking out the adult but in how the adult then chooses to react. Can't you understand the difference?

My children knew to go to the adult in charge. What if that adult didn't realise the severity of the situation but tried to reassure the child, give them a drink of water and sent them back to bed? That is what math was saying.*

I understand what math is saying. When a child is in my home I am responsible for them. That’s the calculated risk you take when you send your children to sleepovers. It is very flawed thinking to suggest that, because you can’t trust the adults you have entrusted your child to to act appropriately in an emergency, you will encourage your child not to seek help.

Just your inability to debate rationally. I can understand why you impose rules on visitors really, you just can't seem to get your point across clearly. Confiscation is maybe easier for you?

I think you are confused about what “debate rationally” looks like. Warm and nurturing I might not be, but I am as rational as they come.

@Astormiscoming Yes but lyra it isn’t their place to do so. I can understand why parents slap or swear at a child but it’s still wrong!

You can't compare a school removing phones to someone assaulting their child. That's a ridiculous comparison

The bit I find most baffling over this rule school wise is that there are two secondaries that have places here. One is known for being strict. People send their kids to strict school, then complain about strict policies

One of my DDs lost her phone for 24 hours at school recently. I don't agree with the policy particularly, however the fact I was hacked off with DD having to travel home without a phone is an issue I took up with her. Not the school. I didn't remove her from the school when they announced the police. She hasn't lost it since because she knows not only will be she phoneless for 24 hours, but I will hit the roof with her for doing it again.

It's not like they are removing them for not getting all their spellings correct or because they got a French verb wrong. It's not difficult to put your phone in your bag at the gate and leave it there until you've left the gate at the end of the day.

Church, you seem to have a habit of lifting parts of others posts you don't like, and highlighting them to show your disagreement. And you ignore the rest of the post that might show you in a bad light.

I’m probably not the only person guilty of that. But I don’t think any of the posts are “showing me in a bad light”.

My kids are definitely being brought up to believe that a strict rule borne out of love and concern for safety is not embarrassing parent behaviour!

And yet your perfectly brought up children were sneaking into your bedroom to get phones back & have previous firm fir sneaking them back from downstairs.

You really should get off your high horse!

I definitely do not take phones off if visiting children.

As for the ‘new’ sleep over kid whose parents didn’t contact you, that’s pretty normal at Senior School and their expectation was that their daughter had her phone if they needed to contact her.

I think your rule is batshit. It’s a sleep over - ridiculously babes so! It’s a wake-over. There’s nothing they can do after midnight that they can’t do before midnight, so your ‘logic’ is seriously flawed.

If someone confiscated my DC’s phone overnight I’d think they were a little batshit, but if they do that I’d expect them to provide my DC with an overnight contact number to pass on to me.

You don’t get to decide whether your kids are teased and mortified at school. You shouldn’t expect you children to have to defend your batshit authoritarian parenting and they won’t, they’ll just stop inviting friends around. I think it’s better to have them ‘under my roof’ having a good time than elsewhere.

Your sociable 13 year old is at risk of becoming the ostracised 13 year old. They need to make their friends aware of your rules when inviting them, rather than imposing your rules on them when they’re ‘stuck’ in your house

No lyra - it’s really not.

Schools do not supersede the law. They have absolutely no right to remove property and withhold it beyond the school day.

Strict can be good. It’s when strict is unreasonable and silly I have a problem with strict!

I have to say I do find this kind of intransigence worrying in a teacher. I'm not surprised by it having been through the SN/SEN mill of varuoos mainstream schools. There's a few of you about and they made life really miserable and much harder than it needed to be for dd. At the risk of being accused of "rudeness" again, I really hope you're not like this in a professional capacity, though I suspect you are sadly

Who is saying that the child is encouraged not to seek help? Nor is anyone saying they don't trust the hosts. If you don't trust them you shouldn't send your child to sleep over.

The point is that sometimes people don't do the right thing, often due to ignorance rather than malice, but that it's best if a child has an independent means of contacting their parents. They can still alert the host but also call their parents themselves rather than rely on the host to try and deal with it and only call for help when they finally realise they are out of their depth.

When would you call a parent? Literally as soon as the child asked, regardless of reason or would you try and manage the situation yourself?

I didn't realise I needed to qualify far this as it was quite clear that I meant clueless in the context of how it would be to parent a teen when your child is only three

Yeah right Wendy, of course that is what you meant!

This thread is starting to feel like bullying and is making me feel uncomfortable. Pretty appropriate in the circumstances

OP took mobile phones away from a group of 13 yos staying overnight as per her rules (for, what she believes, are safeguarding issues) and two of them make a fuss. Think that about covers it. Some posters need to get a grip.

@astormiscoming It really is

Schools wouldn't do if it they didn't have the law behind them. They are not intending to permanantly deprive the child of the phone. Plus in the majority of cases if the legal owner of the phone (the parent) came down they'd be given it back.

Schools only get silly strict when they need too. If parents bothered to back the school over phones before it got to that point then there would be no need for that rule to come in

School staff don't want a collection of phones in the office

This thread is starting to feel like bullying and is making me feel uncomfortable. Pretty appropriate in the circumstances

I'd report it then if I were you and feeling that way.

At the risk of being accused of "rudeness" again, I really hope you're not like this in a professional capacity, though I suspect you are sadly

Pretty much.

Who is saying that the child is encouraged not to seek help? Nor is anyone saying they don't trust the hosts. If you don't trust them you shouldn't send your child to sleep over.

I am. I am responding to Math’s posts, in which she says her child would not seek help from the host, and would instead text her to call the parents. And this is according to her instructions.

So, relying on her actually picking the text up, then on the host picking up a call, before help is sought. Whereas the child could just seek help immediately, from the adult in charge.

And this is given as the irrefutable reason why the child needs a phone.