...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?

Ok , gin is illegal when you're 13 and your parents aren't present. But I hope you all get the point (?) about phone and the way they are used being potentially harmful?

But it isn't the OP's place to deal with that. These children have parents who have made the decision to give their offspring phones, and probably spent a great deal of money to do so. The OP doesn't get to decide when and how they use their phones, that is for their parents to decide. And the more I think about it, the I'm leaning towards it being a bloody weird thing to do to children who are staying in your house without their parents, especially when they have to go to the OP if they need to make contact with said parents.

Gosh you are an embarrassment. Are your teens allowed to stay at other peoples houses? You know all this stuff will be going on don't you? Your poor kids.

Would like to know what you would do with my friends child. She has a serious health conditions that caused fits and blackouts. She can usually sense them coming a few seconds before. Her phone has a special app on it where she can press in those few seconds and it will sound an alarm, give details on how to help and send her mum a message with the location of the phone (So her).

Would you confiscate her phone too?

The legal arguments are really not that clear cut as being legally allowed to have a phone - afaik here the legal age of consent for social media accounts is 14 and obviously porn/gambling etc have higher legal ages of consent.

Yes, keeping the phones in my bedroom is perhaps the unreasonable bit - but that evolved after two sleepover occasions when I became aware through social media activity of accessing phones in the middle of the night that were downstairs in the sitting room

YABVVVU and incredibly embarrassing presumably the reason you take the phones away is so they don’t stay on them all night - but it’s a fucking sleepover, are you expecting them all to go to sleep at 9 o’clock?? I feel very sorry for your daughter, she’ll be ridiculed over this and no friends will be want to come and stay over again. I’m lost for words really - fair enough rule on a day to day basis but you really need to learn that rules can be put to one side on certain occasions. There’s setting rules and then there’s acting like a crazy control freak - and taking away other peoplel’ children’s phones is totally not you’re place.

YABU. It is up to the individual parents to make that decision and the children should know about it in advance if you are going to do that. I don't think it is fair for a teen to have to wake you at 3am because they want to speak to their parents. I would have been too scared to do that and would have been miserable all night.

I wonder whether those who think teens need mobiles all night on sleepovers let their children go on sleepovers before they were old enough for phones. Didn't they need them at 8 or 9, but did at 13?

My 8 year old's friends ask to use our landline to call their parents to say they've arrived if they cycle over, and he does the same - if the teens friends actually need to make a call rather than WhatsApp they do the same.

PS the move to keeping the phones in my bedroom hasn't preventing those teenagers from coming back for sleepovers - not sure that I'm the monster some of you seem to think!

I have the same rule on sleepovers, the phones stay in the kitchen (because of youngest's health issues someone is awake pretty much 24/7 so there's no sneaking down to get it)

However, if you have that rule then children and parents need to know before the sleepover imo. Then they can make a decision if they want to come and go home or come and stay over.

When I was 14 I was sexually assaulted by my friends older brother in the night when I went to the bathroom. I felt unable to tell my friend or her parents. I was terrified of going back to the bathroom, so much so I wet myself in my sleeping bag.

As a result my children will not be allowed to stay without access to their phone at all times. It's something I check before allowing them to go.

Would the same arguments apply in respect of say caffeine tablets, Monster/Redbull drinks or fireworks that they brought to our home and I didn't allow them to have them in their bedroom between 12.30am and 8am?

You quite clearly would not be unreasonable to confiscate fireworks from them, no. But then I would also expect you to ring their parents and ask them to collect and collect them/explain why their child had a firework.

Cans of energy drink are a slightly different matter. As long as they’re not sharing them with your child I would still say it’s between the child and their parents, because from what I can see online it is currently entirely legal for a 13 year old to buy and consume energy drinks. Most supermarkets have banned it and it will become law soon, but it’s not at the moment

Oh and no one I know has landlines anymore

AgnesGrundy we have a spare PAYG 'simple' phone that my kids took with them. It's useful for places where phones with internet aren't allowed etc too.

YABVU and controlling. Their phones are their property and you don’t get to decide what happens to them. It is irrelevant that the sleepover is taking place in your house.

I am also not surprised your older one is much less social, and with the way you’re going I would be surprised if your 13 year old has any friends left in a year or two.

i wonder whether those who think teens need mobiles all night on sleepovers let their children go on sleepovers before they were old enough for phones. Didn't they need them at 8 or 9, but did at 13?

My kids aren’t that age.

However this misses the point. Their parents get to decide what’s an appropriate age to have a phone (which also gives them more independence in a sleepover situation to contact their parents direct) not the OP.

At a younger age, I’d only be sending DC for overnights with parents I knew very well. When older and more independent, i would be more relaxed.

DD has had quite a few sleep overs, one friend has anxiety and had never stopped anywhere until she stopped at ours, another has a lot of health issues and is on a lot of medication, again she hadn't stopped with anyone else. There is no way that I would prevent them contacting or being contacted by their parents.

I raised at eyebrow at you leaving the phones charging overnight. I would have thought that the cheap cables and chargers used by the teenagers would be even more of a fire risk than usual.

As a Mum of 2 teenage boys I have found that trusting them produces trustworthy behaviour. You sound incredibly controlling - if my child had come to your house I would have been upset that you had broken the safeguarding that I put in place with my child to text me if they are uncomfortable and want to go. They would have respected your rule but I would not have allowed them to come to your house again as you sound unstable and would have advised my child to be kind to your child but lessen their involvement. They would not have wanted to come again either. Mine both stayed up all night at the odd sleepover, found they felt like shit and the novelty wore off. Lesson learned by themselves. Your house your rules absolutely. Mine both have their phones in their rooms and both are asleep by 10.00-10.30 every night when at home, my 16 yr old may be later if weekend.

how many households have a landline these days? I don't. And even if they did, this would be in the centre of the house, without any of the privacy

I only know one person without a landline, and I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't have cordless landline phones, and normally 2 or 3 of them rather than just the one, so easy to just take yourself off somewhere private. Maybe it depends where you live I guess. It's very rural here so often no/bad mobile reception inside houses.

What are they going to access at night that they can't access in the day. That's like monsters only come out in the dark !

I'm not sure if you should keep someone else's property from them.

This rule should have been discussed with their parent to make sure they were happy with it. Then the decision if the child sleeps over happens.

You keeping the phone made this whole plotting and arguing for it happen.

Unless your child has been bullied , has bullied or accessed adult sites etc There needs to be some trust.

if under 16s could have stripped down content so that they could be better protected from the bucketloads of shit, from insta influencers selling diet tea to predatory sexual content - while also being less protected in other ways, e.g. not tied in to reporting home so much more than earlier generations ever did.

I really feel sad for people who have been at the vanguard of growing up with tech. It will be fascinating to see how this post would be answered in 15 years + time from those who did grow up with 24/7 phone access.

Maybe they will say, never did me any harm, all good, let them have those phones in the bedroom all night....or will they say different?

I could never truly feel comfortable if my child was staying away from home & the adult confiscated their phone & neither would ds. The children & their parents only have your word that you are trustworthy & by confiscating all phones it must feel like they are being held hostage, plus you are taking someone else's private property. If I was one of these children's parents & I found this out when my child returned home, I would never allow my child to sleep at your house again. Plus your children are going to be a laughing stock at school after the weekend. Get off your high horse & relax your rules.

You’re giving your kids and their friends the message loud and clear that you don’t trust them. And you sound scary and very controlling. Watch out for your kids rebelling before long. I never felt the need to impose draconian rules on my DD and she’s grown into a mature, responsible 19 year old who doesn’t feel the need ( and never has), to hide anything from me.

not sure that I'm the monster some of you seem to think!

I'm sure you're not a monster but you do appear to be incredibly arrogant and inflexible

I'm quite glad I apparently live a decade or so behind most on this thread. I like everyone locally having a landline.

The move the mobiles has depressingly reduced the independence skills of the pre teens locally in the interval between my teens being 8 or 9 and my youngest being that age. Even 5 years ago 7-10 year olds used landlines to call classmates if they'd forgotten what the homework was, or what to bring for a school trip the next day, or to invite them over to play.

Now the parents WhatsApp spam one another - or more accurately the mothers WhatsApp one another. Which is irritating when I'm not the adult at home and have to ask them to call the landline at home as I'm busy at work (shifts) and out of the loop/ not going to be home til the next morning.

I miss the kids calling each other, even though parents were around to be consulted.

I encouraged my 8 year old to phone a classmate about homework last week and the mum in the background told her son to tell ds she'd WhatsApp me. Useless if I'd been at work and actively making the children more helpless and dependant than necessary for no good reason.

Mobiles have their place but I'm quite glad to live in an area with patchy reception so people all still have landlines. Sometimes you want to call the house, not an individual who might be at work/ elsewhere.