I agree with you OP. If I felt the kids were overly distracted and it was seriously negatively impacting the family vacation I’d bring up the topic with my sibling and see if we could switch things up.

You can’t run around on vacation making rules for other peoples families, hiding peoples belongings etc

Either the kids find their cousins or friends more interesting than their phones or they don’t. If the kids are more interested in their phones, fine, but don’t invite them back. I’d say people vote with their feet, but in this case, they vote with their fingers.

I think SIL announcing, when seeing all of the kids on devices, "hey, you guys should all go watch a movie together or run around outside or something that humans should do when in the presence of one another" is a different thing than taking away devices of kids who aren't their own (who are 12 and 15 no less, that's ridiculous) and hide them.

Neutral location, SIL house, whoever's house. Taking away things from kids when parents are there and able to be alerted to the situation is overstepping.

My DS is 15.5. When all of his friends are over, I'll make a comment if all of a sudden they're sitting around in a circle on their phones but I wouldn't take anyones phone away from them. Really weird. DS would be mortified.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My house, my rules. I don’t want kids bringing phones/pads over and just playing on them the whole time they are at my house for a playdate. What’s the point of that?

1. It is not SIL's house.
2. It is not a playdate.

She was referring to another poster not OP.