Call us crazy - plenty of others have - but our family lives in the NO SLEEPOVER zone. We made this decision long before our kids entered the sleepover years. Luckily, most of our friends and our kids' friends parents are fine with it. A few will give us weird looks while others will blurt out, "REALLY!?!?!?" when we say our kids aren't allowed to do sleepovers.
We are an equal opportunity NO SLEEPOVER zone - we neither have them nor allow our kids to attend them. Not having them is partly because I simply don't want to deal with them and part of it is because we feel like we want to be consistent with the rule. It's like taking a donated organ but not believing in donating them. You can't have it both ways.
Why do we do this? Well, there are several reasons.
We are an equal opportunity NO SLEEPOVER zone - we neither have them nor allow our kids to attend them. Not having them is partly because I simply don't want to deal with them and part of it is because we feel like we want to be consistent with the rule. It's like taking a donated organ but not believing in donating them. You can't have it both ways.
Why do we do this? Well, there are several reasons.
- The unknown - you just never know who's at someone else's house. Older siblings, visiting relatives, other kids sleeping over - you don't always know them well. I have too many friends who were either molested at sleep overs or experimented with sex and/or drugs during sleepovers.
- No need - what's the big deal about SLEEPING at someone's house? All I ever did was stay awake all night with anxiety. N already has some anxiety in his life - I think he would probably have night-time crying issues and other people don't need to deal with that
- The unknown: Part 2 - Mark had plenty of times where he and his friend left the house after the friend's parents went to bed. And, mischief followed them into the night. I can't be sure a parent will keep my kid IN the house. We have plenty of junk done in our neighborhood by kids in the middle of the night where I think to myself, "WHERE ARE THEIR PARENTS?!" - probably home in their Sleep Number bed sawing logs.
So, what's our solution? LATE OVERS! Last weekend N went off to a sleepover birthday party and the mom was like, "Do you want us to drop him off after the movie?" The boy across the street has sleepover birthday parties and N stays until bedtime and then comes home. Sometimes he even goes back for breakfast the next morning.
We have had kids over until 10pm at night watching movies and hanging out. It's actually nice to never have to struggle to get 6 boys to go to sleep. It's nice to put them in the car and take them home or wave from the front porch.
Our boys are starting to fight us on our rule -they want to split hairs and try to get us to let them stay a few select homes where we know the families well, but really, we can't budge - that's a slippery slope to start down. Suddenly, everyone's house will be an exception in their minds.
So, call us crazy, but we just can't imagine our kids sleeping anywhere but our house or their grandparent's house. I sleep better at night knowing my kids are safe in their beds and not out running around the neighborhood, smoking their first cigarette or crying themselves to sleep because this really wasn't as good of an idea as they thought it was.
I'm not saying that if you let your kids do sleepovers that you're a bad parent - I'm just saying that for us, this makes sense. Everyone has to decide what's best for their family.
We have had kids over until 10pm at night watching movies and hanging out. It's actually nice to never have to struggle to get 6 boys to go to sleep. It's nice to put them in the car and take them home or wave from the front porch.
Our boys are starting to fight us on our rule -they want to split hairs and try to get us to let them stay a few select homes where we know the families well, but really, we can't budge - that's a slippery slope to start down. Suddenly, everyone's house will be an exception in their minds.
So, call us crazy, but we just can't imagine our kids sleeping anywhere but our house or their grandparent's house. I sleep better at night knowing my kids are safe in their beds and not out running around the neighborhood, smoking their first cigarette or crying themselves to sleep because this really wasn't as good of an idea as they thought it was.
I'm not saying that if you let your kids do sleepovers that you're a bad parent - I'm just saying that for us, this makes sense. Everyone has to decide what's best for their family.
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2 comments:
You KNOW I'm on your side of this issue! We started that mid-older kids and held on strong with the younger ones. Nope, we're not popular with the kids but when they hit the teenage years they DO understand. They don't like it, but they DO understand. It is an extremely rare thing when a friend has spent the night for various reasons. (Usually family emergency)
Great post. This is exactly how I feel about sleepovers. There just isn't much good that would come out of them even if the worse thing would be just tired children the next day. Late overs are a great idea because they can still have all the fun.
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