Every time one of our kids has a play date there is a lot of enthusiastic talk towards the end of it from them about organising a sleepover. “Can (insert friends name here) have a sleepover on the weekend?”, Can I sleepover at their house on Friday night?” and so on. Cue vague response from parent about, not being sure what we are doing on the weekend, or “maybe we can talk about that later”.
A sleepover is one of those things that no-one wants to say yes to straight away. There’s always a great deal of caution about who the sleepover is with. How well do we know the parents? Do we trust them? Do we even trust our child’s friend enough for them to do a sleepover? All of these questions and more are pretty normal, and so they should be. We love our kids, we want the best for them, and most of all we want them to be safe. Sleep is a time of vulnerability and those words sleepover set off some interesting alarm bells because our child is not in our care during a time of their day when they are at their most vulnerable.
Some of the things you need to think about (some things will be more or less relevant at different ages and stages):
- Discuss your expectations of their behaviour clearly with your kids before they go to someone else’s house.
- Make sure your kids know what is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour from others, particularly around their bodies and personal space. You should be talking to them about this already anyway.
- Work out what are the non-negotiables for you as parents. What are the things that you will not accept and be prepared to communicate them with the other set of parents. eg R or MA 15+ movies, or even M or PG movies for younger children.
- When a parent comes to drop their child at your house give them a quick rundown of your sleepover rules so they feel re-assured about the safety of their child and the boundaries you will be sticking to.
- Technology: namely gaming, inappropriate content, internet filtering and mobile phones. Realise that every set of parents will having different boundaries around the use of technology. This is a difficult area to influence when your kids are in someone else’s care. You need to communicate with your kids what’s acceptable to you and what’s not. Also you need to decide how to talk about this issue with the parents of the friend your child is having the sleepover with. When you are sending your kids to stay at someone else’s house often have limited scope to influence their rules and decision making.
- Sleep and bedtimes: Realistically your kids will have less sleep at a sleepover than normal. They’re too excited for sleep half the time. At least have a talk with the other set of parents about bed times so you know what to expect when they arrive home the day after. It can be good to have a chilled day to catch up.
- Ask what kind of supervision they will have during the night. Will they be downstairs by themselves or upstairs close to adults. I guess this becomes more relevant the older they get.
- Do they have a closed door or open door policy. I know when our kids have a sleepover or even playdates the rule is that doors must always stay open so we can at least hear what’s going on.
- Older siblings. Will your kids be mixing with older siblings and how is this going to be happening? We don’t want to be alarmist, but as a parent I am always going to be wary of older brothers if my daughter is at a sleepover, unless I know them really well. Once again sorry to be alarmist and mistrustful, but the internet is messing up our kids. Older siblings also tend to be the ones that are showing inappropriate content to younger kids, most of the time because they think it’s funny. They may not actually realise what they are doing.
- Teenagers: It’s going to be a lot trickier when they are teenagers because they are not going to like you talking to other parents about rules and expectations and “Checking up on them”.
Some other tips include:
- Run through some scenarios with your kids to allow them a chance to pre-plan what they would do if they were sick, or if they forgot something they needed … or even if things happen at the party that they don’t think they should participate in
- Send a mobile phone or at least your phone number with them
- Give them an excuse … we tell our kids that if they want to talk to us they can just say that they need to “Remind us to feed the fish” or “Pass on an important message that they forgot to”.
Lastly, just like every part of your role as a parent, you are entitled to understand the opportunities and the risks and make a call that you think is right for your child. Everyone is different and you can feel free to say no altogether too.
