Parents ban tween ritual of sleepovers, cite safety

Parents ban tween ritual of sleepovers, cite safety

By Kelli Kennedy
Associated Press

MIAMI - Forget sleepovers filled with junk food, truth-or-dare games and late-night gab sessions that have ushered tweens into teens for decades.

A new generation of parents enforce strict no-sleepover rules.

They call them "sleep unders," "half-overs," "late nights" and "breakfast bashes." Come in your pajamas, bring junk food, play all the games you want, but at a certain point these children will be tucked in under their own roof where their parents know the rules about R-rated movies, Internet use and adult supervision.

"In the old days it used to be that you would build up to a sleepover and you knew everything about that family," says Stacy DeBroff, a Boston mother of two and author of four parenting books including "The Mom Book!"

"But now a more vigilant kind of hyper-concerned parent says unknown dangers may lurk, I don't know every variable ... and so I'm going to hover and basically swoop in and take you out," DeBroff says.

While plenty of families believe slumber parties offer harmless fun, several news stories about molestation at sleepovers - including a Vermont father who was charged in June with drugging a 13-year-old friend of his daughter with a smoothie and then fondling her - have given parents who worry about slumber parties concrete reasons to avoid them.

Gabbie Newsome said anxiety about creepy male relatives is partly whyshe and her husband decided against sleepovers when their daughter was 3.

http://www.leadertelegram.com/story-features.asp?id=BKTMJ6EC0GB

do you send your kid so you are not called "nuts" by someone anonymous on du?

with kids whose parents you know AREN'T asses. You don't need to ban sleepovers altogether. That's a ridiculous overreaction.

maybe three, but oldest son hasnt been invited so i dont have to be concerned. told son, that i question the environment. but there are many parents i know and we are comfortable with it. and we do it often and readily. it is actually taking the time to know the environments we send our kids into. part of parenting.

but

there are concerns out there. more so than in my youthful days.

Junk food, or having dicks for parents?

That is what is worst.

This has nothing to do with molestation and everything to do with parents fearing their children having fun in an environment over which they don't have as much supervision as usual. And they're scared of it because they're lousy parents who let TV, the nanny, and the school raise their child for them.

but it's a fact that my kids sleep better in their own beds. No paranoia, just my own laziness as a parent in not wanting to deal with a cranky, sleep-deprived kid.

somewhere besides their own bed, and that they learn -- bit by bit -- more independence from their parents.

And that the changes in routine that can result in cranky, sleep-deprived kids often (NOT always) leave the kids with some of the best memories of childhood.

Always have, even when I was a kid. However, I didn't have that much experience of it when I was a kid.

or a job that requires travel?

Lots of good things involve changes in routine

I am really not a good example of anything useful.

Nothing annoys me more than these sniveling, anxiety-ridden, overprotective parents.

"Henry Kelly"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTM8iG5rEts

You never know!

:thumbsup:

A few parents may have banned sleepovers, but most haven't.

A handful of anecdotes doesn't indicate a trend. The article is crappy fluff journalism.

They appear to equate 4YOs attending sleepovers with 12YOs attending sleepovers, and that is hardly the same thing. But this is par for the course with AP fluff pieces.

it's at grandmas?

"Newsome, who allows her children to spend the night at a few relatives' homes, recently picked up her kids up from a cousin's and found them watching an R-rated movie that she and her husband deemed inappropriate.

"Lisa Sipes says she can't think of any parents she trusts enough to let her 4-year-old daughter Lainey attend a sleepover."

Again, I don't know anyone who has sleepovers for four year olds, unless it's relatives staying at each other's houses.

kid was 3 not to allow it.

I continue to be suprised at the fairly harmless things my daughters' friends' parents won't allow their kids to do. At the same time, they'll let them have computers with internet access and TV's with cable in their bedrooms. Wacky.

is not justification for all of us to remain in our homes and never go anyplace.

Seems to me kids need the socialization of these gatherings. Maybe the caliber of snacks could be upgraded to satisfy nutritionists.

But generally these rituals do far more good and I hope the parents trying to vanquish them will reconsider.

paraphrasing one reviewer on amazon said about the "the mom`s book"...you can find the same ideas on the internet for free...

:eyes:

...you're right. We should probably all be dead my now.


Funny, I don't feel dead...

Seriously, do I have to draw you a map?

I was born later when the safety panic started in the eighties, so I only got to die 2.3 times, and thus didn't have as much character built. Alas.

(Also, I condemn mercury to hell. No element that fun has any business being that insanely toxic. It's just not fair!)

Give it another coupla decades.

:evilgrin:

But I really rather my parents had known what a perv he was and to have not been exposed to it. I only spent a couple of nights there w/o major "incident". None of the Knowles' four children made it out intact--two were dead before adulthood, the two females lived but self destructed.

I loved those kids. Fuck pervs.

Hell, my overprotective mom let me go on sleepovers in the East Oakland 'hood, and I turned out okay.

However, I'm young enough to remember some of the dangerous things we did on sleep overs.

it's the backyard campouts that get em everytime!

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/study_74_of_children_tenting_out?utm_source=a-section">Study: 74% Of Children Tenting Out In Yard Don't Make It Through The Night

What say ye?

And there were at least two adult members of each gender to monitor, supervise, and separate the genders after a certain hour. I would be happy to stay over and volunteer to be a chaperone.

But I'm weird. :)

They had sleepovers, although I tended to favor being the host rather than sending them off to sleep elsewhere.

Sleepovers at someone else's house didn't happen unless I knew the whole family very well.

My own experience was the opposite; I slept over at other kids' house much more often than they slept at mine. I had a working single mom, who was often gone. I was a latch-key kid before the term was coined, and we were poorer than most of my friends; poorer neighborhood, less supervision, and less to do to keep us busy.

I spent most of my youth at other people's houses. My oldest friend in the world, friends since we were in single digits...her stay-at-home mom helped raise me. I spent most of my summers at their place, and went home reluctantly, disgruntled, to visit my mom on weekends.

Most of the families I stayed with on sleepovers, or for extended stays, were great. Some were not. My mom never questioned. She still has no idea what kinds of things happened in some of those homes, or why I became angry, rebellious, and stubborn earlier and more extreme than the norm when I hit adolescence.

Probably why I chose to host my boys' sleepovers myself.

:banghead:

I believe in instilling discipline and responsibility in my kids. Too many kids these days are denied ANY parental involvement. On the other hand, too many are denied the opportunity to learn how to live in society. The above is a great plan if your idea of "life" is to live in a gated community.

Parents like these should watch "Adventures in Babysitting" and chill the fuck out.

My most recent girlfriend has a 14yo daughter and she was constantly having friends over or spending the night over at a friends house. Not that that is any kind of 'proof', but take it for what it's worth.

and there are a handful other families where we are all comfortable with each others parenting.

a parent is given a lot of info before sleepover time

We used to toilet paper houses at 2 am.

Your kid can be molested as easily between 1am and 4am as between 4am and 6am. Instead of "swoopin in" why don't you arm your kid with self-confidence.

part of the the attraction of a slumber party is doing something (mild) you're not supposed to do (like watch an R rated movie) & many times getting away with it. :eyes:

dg

it's impressive that American kids aren't more messed up these days than they are.

sleeps over at someone's house and, say, they decide to get up to a little mischief (as I certainly did at that age), the consequences are insane. Caught peeing in a neighbor's yard? Could be charged as a sex offender. Flaming bag of poo left for the Fundy four houses down the block? Domestic terrorism/arson charges could apply. It's all fun and games until somebody's whisked away to Gitmo...

Makes just about ANY parent crazy with worry.

and tell the parents what they'd been up to?

Not that that ever happened to me. :P

:hi:

God'll get me fer dat one. :spank:

:D

Is this so hard? There is a nice middle ground. It's called knowing who your kid hangs around and knowing their parents. That means actually having conversations with their parents.

It seems like we have become all or nothing. Either be a jail warden or pretending your child is already anm adult who is completely able to make rational decisions all on their own.

I know I went to my first slumber party at age 6.