A Minute for Parents

Summary

What Goes On at Sleepovers?

Article

By JoAnn Hibbert Hamilton

What goes on at sleepovers? Is it about fun, friends and a little more freedom? Plugged In Online asked people to share their own sleepover experiences. They discovered that most encountered their first R-rated film during overnight stays with friends. Some got physically ill from the quantity and kind of food that was eaten. Many added distress about the tiredness of the next day. (Plugged’N, Focus on the Family, August 2008).

My own experience years ago at an outdoor sleepover included the fact that some of the girls slipped off for awhile with guys. I don’t think the parents involved ever knew.

Lynn Skoresby, Bringing Up Moral Children in an Immoral World, comments that sleepovers are a place where inappropriate pictures are passed around and inappropriate touch may take place. As a professional counselor, he became aware of this problem. It is also possible that drugs could be experimented with.

I hear that the latest development in our permissive world is co-ed sleepovers. In Plugged’N Magazine the editor said that this modern phenomenon has become more commonplace than most parents realize. In a Teen People survey, 83 percent of adolescents said their peers were “fooling around” at co-ed slumber parties. Worse yet, many parents aware of the trend simply shrugged it off as a sign of the times. This is the environment our children will mix in as they leave our homes.

Some parents think that there is safety in numbers if everyone is sleeping in the same room. Christine Perkin, the wife of an English vicar, told The Times of London that this is naïve. “By allowing our teenagers to sleep alongside each other we’re creating an unnaturally forced intimacy that sends the signal that parents probably aren’t too worried if it goes one step farther, from sleeping alongside each other to sleeping with each other” (Ibid.).

So what do I recommend? Many youth are delighted with a “Late-over” or in other words with a “Stay Late.” That means the youth stays for the fun and at a designated time, depending on the age of the child or teen, you pick them up. After all, sleeping is just sleeping, and they surely do feel better the next day. This might be an idea you could plant early with children so it is no surprise.

Also if your home is the “place to be” because there is frozen pizza in the freezer, cookie dough in the fridge and a supply of pop, then your rules and standards are the ones in effect—as well as your supervision, your video games and your videos. If you are allowing a “Stay Late” at someone else’s home, it is wise to check out the video list, games to be played, supervision, etc.

We all know that it can be hard for an 11-year-old girl to say no to a forbidden PG-13 flick when five of her friends want to watch it, but this can be a great time to talk ahead of time about how she will handle the situation. As parents you can suggest ways to say “no” and still save face.

One teen named Moriah, as told about in Plugged’N Magazine, said she opted to sit in the hallway and read while her friends watched a video she did not want to see. Her comment was, “It felt really good to stand up.” Another teen, Rose, elected to play with her friend’s kitten rather than see an R-rated DVD. Now in college, she’s glad that happened. A third teen decided to go home. It is a valuable trait to learn to assert yourself with peers was the consensus of the group (Ibid.).