To take away phones on sleepover

[gowednesday]

10 year old dsd, hosting first school friend sleepover next weekend.

is it unreasonable to say no phones or that we’ll look after them and they can ask to use them?

Pretty standard nowadays - whether you agree with it or not tbh

DD and friends (then 11/12) had their phones taken away on a sleepover by a pair of overly neurotic parents. They weren’t pleased that the girls were up past their 10pm ‘bedtime’. Funnily enough nobody ever went back! I was absolutely fuming to be honest, it’s not acceptable to leave a child in a stranger’s house with no form of communication with their parents. It was one of DD’s first sleepovers, she was an anxious child at that point and I’d spent all week telling her that if she wanted picked up at any time I was only a text away. To have this taken away really didn’t sit right with me, never mind the fact that the phone wasnt the other parents property to take!

There’s no way that my shy child would’ve felt comfortable asking other parents (effectively strangers) to phone me. DD was always told that if she ever felt uncomfortable or unhappy at sleepovers then all she had to do was text me and I’d come to pick her up, no questions asked.

10 years old and they have phones? Of course they don’t have them at your child’s sleepover. Tell the parents this rule before they come. But any parent who allows a ten year old to have a phone probably won’t like the rule.

YANBU. You cannot monitor them. Your house, your rules.

I hope you are right, my dd has just tuned 10 and only one of her friends has a phone. But the replies here are a bit disturbing, suggesting that progress on the issue is slower than I thought.

This. I don't understand why they can't have fun without their phones either?

I think this thread makes it clear parents are divided on this issue. I agree it’s entirely your decision, but the thread highlights the importance of making clear your intentions to the parents and children. They can at least prepare their children so they aren’t blindsided.
Hope the sleepover goes well and you actually get some sleep!

People really do get mad about phones being restricted for young children. Insane.

I’m sorry but are you having a laugh? The issue here is sending any child, let alone an anxious one, to a strangers house!

it’s not acceptable to leave a child in a stranger’s house with no form of communication with their parents

How do you think we all managed before smartphones existed?

Look, it’s fine to do what you want to do with your own child, but I won’t have your child turning up at mine and expecting to have access to a smartphone all night when I have no idea of the parental controls, what sort of thing she looks at on there, if she’s accessing social media, and so on. I’m responsible for other children as well as my own, and I don’t want to send them home with a breezy ‘Oh sorry, Lilah might have seen an erect penis at some point on a another girl’s phone, classic 10yos eh?!’

If it’s really about staying in contact, then why do kids that age have smartphones and not a child appropriate dumb phone that can only call and text? Or something like a Karri?

And the strange over-reliance on phones to mitigate strong emotional reactions.

Remove phones - all to a box downstairs.
Explain to their parents that this will happen and that, if they wish to call their parents, their phone will be available for use straight away.

No need for phones, photos etc. for ten year olds at a sleep over.

https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/alternatives

Loads of suggestions on here for basic phones that allow contact and are a fraction of the price of smartphones generally. So why do 10yos need smartphones?

A pair of trustworthy strangers, both medics who I’d known for years through work before DD became friends with their DD. The point is that my child wouldn’t have felt comfortable talking to them if she had an issue

Umm...making bullying videos and circulating them? Taking innocent images that are still inappropriate to be shared (little girls in nightwear at a sleepover, even if all covered up) and sharing them? Watching inappropriate content on YouTube? Pretty much anything involving an unsupervised group of young girls on social media? Prank phone calls (or ding dong ditch type calling a boy then hanging up from overwhelm)?

None of that is stuff I'd be OK with happening under my watch with primary school age children on a sleepover!

@Cappuccino5
Why did you allow your child to spend a night in a strangers house?

My child is in her 20s now so I’m fairly sure you don’t need to worry about her turning up to your house anytime soon armed with a smartphone!

Yes, this.

No matter how sensible you might think your child is, they can get carried away and silly with their friends. The stuff I ended up looking at with my friends sometimes is shocking!

@Cappuccino5
If your child didn’t feel comfortable talking to the parents then you should never have allowed your child to stay overnight.

Do you honestly believe this? I'm not the OP, but my son wants a sleepover, he is 10 and in year 6. Some of his friends have unlocked phones with no parental restrictions. As it stands, if I let him have a sleepover and those kids bring their phones, they could be showing my son porn at 3am and I would never know. They could be talking to strangers online. They could be chatting about suicide on Snapchat. There are so many non sinister reasons that I want to restrict phone use overnight in my house.

See my above reply: A pair of trustworthy strangers, both medics who I’d known for years through work before DD became friends with their DD. The point is that my child wouldn’t have felt comfortable talking to them if she had an issue

They were pretty much strangers to DD, not me however. I don’t know many Y7/Y8 kids who are particularly close with their friends parents?!

Wrt 2 - the OP isn't proposing selling off the phones, just leaving them downstairs overnight. She is probably going to get the girls to leave their coats and maybe their shoes downstairs overnight too - is that "taking" their coats? There is no intention to permanently deprive.
Wrt 1 - She has already said that if you phone your child or your child wishes to phone you, access would be immediately granted no matter what the time is.

Does your ten year have a phone?
What do you usually do regarding phones in the evening?

And I’m not a dinosaur. We are actually a very tech forward family. My husband is an IT consultant (who does work in education institutions, so perhaps that’s why we are united on this!), we have consoles, we play video games together. But free access to the internet and social media for young children is disastrous. And I don’t trust other parents to have the correct controls and safeguards to the extent that I would allow children that age to come into my home and have unrestricted access to devices. I’d rather cause an eye roll from a parent or have someone decide not to come than have my own child or another child I am responsible for see something that could cause longlasting damage.

It’s interesting that people keep using the ‘stranger’s house’ argument, as if the phone is a safety measure, when I would suggest that smartphones being allowed at a 10yo’s sleepover upstairs and overnight without supervision makes it a far less safe experience for everyone.