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?

@BunnyLake
They ask the adult they are staying overnight with?

@BunnyLake I assume you would have done due diligence with the parent and at least would have met them at that age. They can always have an agreed safe space or just find the parent.

@gowednesday I would make it part of your message/. Confirmation etc. ‘we have loads of fun plans organised for mini gowednesdays birthday and we would appreciate (due to safeguarding
) phones left at home or in our care. Let me know if there are any issues.
(or medical diabetic)

Ah this makes me a bit sad. My daughter is 17 and she had a lovely sleepover for her 10th birthday. Doesn’t seem that long ago but none of the girls had phones and it wasn’t even thought about.
I suppose they did start getting them the next year but that was Covid so no sleepovers for a while.
I’m trying to remember what happened when they restarted again at age 13 or so. My daughter wasn’t allowed her phone over night until she was older and I think I did used to ask guests to leave theirs downstairs too. Never had any issues.

I think looking at it as completely unrestricted access to the darkest corners of the Internet is a good way to think of it - brick phones aren't the problem- but I have been so shocked since my kids reached the tween and teen ages just how much Internet exposure they get - it has to stop at some point but at the moment so many kids are being terribly damaged by it all

Madness!

All of which can also be done during the day, some even in school.

ds and 6 of their friends watched a Netflix horror porn film (the human caterpillar - don’t google it!) when at a (ex) friends house age 11 in the middle of the afternoon. The friend was the school secretary’s son, she was mortified when I told her.

Kids need education (from parents) on these things, day or night,

That's the batshit part

How will children ever gain resilience?

Completely agree with all this and that sounds like a horrifying experience. But I don't think the fact that awful things happen in the day is a good reason not to restrict access at night. Surely there's room for both?

The reason my kids have phones is for this exact scenario! I wouldnt let my child stay over with that rule

I get where you're coming from and why you'd want to do that but if my kid sleeps out she has her phone so she can get in contact with me at all times. If she didn't have her phone then she wouldn't stay over.

@PullUpYourBigGirlPants
What scenario?

@Tdcp
If your child came home utterly traumatised having seen footage of 3 day old calves and lambs being gang raped by men, what would you think?

Its a shame people can't see the dangers of this in both their kids and other kids at sleepovers. Ultimately if your child can't go to a sleepover without having a phone in their hand and being unable to let the responsible adults know if they want to contact their own parents, then I would err on the side of the child not going to sleepovers.

Education alone isn't enough for young children. Handing them the worst parts of the world and expecting them to handle it themselves is fucking stupid.

Them accessing it at school is irrelevant when the case in hand is a sleepover where the adult in charge is trying to be, quite literally, responsible for multiple children in her home.

Trying to frame normal, responsible action to prevent unmonitored access to anything via smartphones overnight as 'creepy' is shameful.

I let my daughter have a friend over (8) it never occurred to me for one moment that the child would bring a phone! She wouldn’t go to sleep and my daughter was trying to get to sleep and the other child just kept putting music on and messing on her phone. I really didn’t know how to handle the situation. My child fell asleep quite quickly (we have a very good sleep routine) so her friend had no choice but to go to sleep but I won’t have another sleepover ever. It sounds dramatic but I just felt so out of control that I don’t think I could risk it again. The whole time I was thinking how a device in the room is just an added level of things to worry about! She had made a couple of video calls during the day and even that made me uncomfortable because she’s walking around my home and her Dad (who I’ve never met) can see everything in my home, including me doing whatever I’m doing in that moment lol. But you can’t really tell them they can’t use their own phone when their parents obviously said it was okay. Even something like taking photos that I wouldn’t be able to see had me worried to be honest and don’t get me started about me having no control over what level of parental control the other parent has put on the phone (if any) we don’t do devices in bedrooms. Incidentally the child also wanted to have a drink in bed (totally normal) but we don’t do that because mine would just drink too much right before they go to sleep and then wake me up to say they need the toilet (one is neuro diverse) so even that caused a problem because mine wanted their drink as well 😂 nope, no sleepovers here ever again.

i would talk to the parents and ask them to turn off internet access in their parental controls. This is what I did when my 10 year old DD (who doesn’t have a phone) had her 2 friends over for a sleepover - they both have phones. I said it was because I wanted them to enjoy each others company. I presume they could still phone their parents if they wanted .
DD then went for a sleepover at her friends house - they were all asked to bring a device and they stayed up all night playing Roblox - that was the host’s choice and my DD definitely enjoyed playing Roblox as it’s not something she gets to do at home .
The taking photos is worrrying - DD is in girl guides and they don’t allow devices on their sleep overs for this reason (cameras and safeguarding).

I think if the parents trust you to let their child sleep at your house you can talk to them and lay out some ground rules.

We've never allowed phones in the sleeping room (usually the living room if it's a larger group) on sleepovers as we don't have phones in bedrooms normally.

Always been very open with other parents - phones go in bags in the bedroom upstairs. Everyone writes down their Mum/Dad's number on a pad of paper next to the house phone in the hall so if they want to contact them without asking for their phone they can, but otherwise once it's bedtime phones are out of the room and they let us know if they're going to get them.

Of the 5 kids we've had doing sleepovers so far (our kids are now aging from 22-9) we've only ever had one child whose Dad opted to pick them up at bedtime rather than have them without a phone. We've had two kids allowed to stay here when they're not normally as we are strict on it.

There was an incident at a sleepover of some high school kids locally about 6/7 years ago that still gets mentioned so lots of parents here are very cautious/strict with phones.

As long as the other parents know then they can make their own decisions about their child attending or otherwise.

Again. Not welcome with their parents attitude so it wouldn’t never be an issue for either of us. Probably would be for your kid as I do the big sleepovers with dd’s friends and they’d be left out.

FYI I don’t ever confiscate phones or tablets but I certainly won’t be told by another parent what I can or cannot do. Especially if they tell me it’s abusing their child’s rights. Simple. Uninvited.

This

Well firstly, if DD or any of her friends were going to look into that they could do that at any point during a visit to any one of their houses during the day. Not that they would because they're not fucking psychopaths.

Yes I know, accidents happen etc etc but you have to go down a pretty dark fucking road to come across shit like that and then you have to know how even access that in the first place, you can't just google it you know.

I am first generation internet, no filters, privacy or parental supervision internet, I know what the risks are. I have taught DD about being safe on the internet, her friends are taught to be safe on the internet, it isn't 100% when they are unsupervised but that's what you do isn't it. Teach them.

DD is still having her phone available during sleepovers. If something happens to her, she's uncomfortable, wants to come home for any reason then she can call me and text me. She was sick at her friend's house last year, she didn't know what to do and was petrified of waking up her friends parents when she'd thrown up on the bathroom floor. She called me and I called the mother, I then went to collect her. That's more important to me then some fucked up internet search that she has an almost zero percent chance of doing.

It's really weird the way people are basically hanging kids' friendships over other parents' heads. When we hear about kids having problems with smart phones and social media and internet access - that's you guys. When schools are struggling to control phone use in school and classes re continually disrupted because parents insist wee Jimmy can't go a day without his in his pocket - that's you guys.

Completely agree. And I don’t buy the need for a phone if a child is anxious either. Much better to teach a child to deal with the anxiety in other ways rather than be dependent on a piece of tech. May give short term anxiety relief but the long term risks are much greater.

This level of naivety is almost laughable. I would suggest everyone reads the recent thread from the poor woman who's 14 year old son was targeted by scammers. She also thought she had 'taught' him.

You're all putting your own child and the children of other people on harms way because you essentially can't be fucked teaching them how to interact with other people competently enough for them to handle a sleepover at their own friend's house. So you'd rather pretend your child is uniquely capable of handling the online world.

I agree. If a child is too afraid to break breath to adult at the house they're staying at, they're shouldn't be staying at that house.