Are kids just all disrespectful?

[Anonymous]

My DD begged to have a sleepover party for her 9th birthday and we said no but agreed to a sleep under. I had 12 girls over from 5-9pm and seriously thiighy I would lose it. The plans for the evening included two art projects, pizza, dessert and a movie however no one was really interested in doing anything and instead they tore the house apart and acted crazy.

I had hoped to keep everyone in the basement but they keep “escaping” and end up all over the house causing trouble. There is trash and food everywhere - no one threw a thing away despite me showing everyone where the trash cans are multiple times. Someone managed to rip the toilet paper holder off the wall in our guest bathroom. At one point a couple girls snuck into the kitchen to get ice and decided to do an ice fight which meant throwing cubes at one another and one person got hurt even though we put an end to it quickly. While eating pizza someone started a game of crewing and letting your food fall out of your mouth that everyone got in on. And because they kept wandering around the house (I spent most of my time going from room to room and herding oriole back to the basement) someone snuck into our upstairs playroom and destroyed the Lego structures my son built and he will be livid when he wakes up tomorrow.

Is this normal with kids this age? We have had many of the girls over for play dates and they have never acted like this one on one so I was very surprised.

Never again!!

[Anonymous]

You needed to be more strict and expect them to clean up and set limits but some of that is parenting. 12 kids is a lot ot manage. No, its not normal.

[Anonymous]

Neither of my kids would ever act like this.

[Anonymous]

That is not normal. If my DDs friends destroyed property and my sons Lego structure I would be livid. My kid would have some explaining to do, those girls wouldn’t be allowed over again and depending on how well I knew the other parents I’d probably email them about it.

[Anonymous]

I would have called the parent of the first child that was in any way disrespectful and shut it down

[Anonymous]

Are they special needs?

[Anonymous]

Absolutely not. Most kids are respectful. I say that after working in an elementary school for many years.

Your party sounds like it was destined to be a shit show from the start. Twelve kids is way too many. About four or five would have been fine.

Your inability to strike authoritarian fear in the guests and to control them to any degree indicates you should never attempt such a thing ever again.

[Anonymous]

You say yourself the kids are fine one on one. I think you had a group situation that got out of control and the kids got swept up in it. My kids know to listen to adults, throw their things away, and act respectfully. However, I’ve heard tales of parties where everyone started throwing cheese balls around and they got in on the action and thought it was all great fun (there’s one particular sleepover I still hear about years later that I can only imagine was hell for the parents; I think I’m still hearing about it bc it was such a departure from how kid usually interacts with the world and he thinks of it as best.time.ever). I’ve hosted enough parties where I’m well aware that too many kids without enough structure is a recipe for disaster. I think PP is right that at 8-9 you either need highly structured party games with an adult leading (and adult is willing to firmly step in and say “stop spitting out your food or dinner is over”), a venue where kids can go crazy (yard party or trampoline park), or a much smaller group of kids.

[Anonymous]

This seems pretty unusual.

Usually there is a ringleader for this type of behavior and then the others follow along. Depending on where your DD stands in the pecking order, I would tell her to either shut it down (or at least not follow along). My best advice is to sit next to the biggest troublemaker - let your DH handle all party logistics and you just stay right by this child.

The other issue is that these kids are 9. A lot of them are probably going to bed at 9:00, school has just started, they were probably overtired and ready for an early bedtime. And overtired kids can get wired. Plus you may have one or two on medication that wears off by dinner, you have just never seen that side of them.

[Anonymous]

My guess: most of them were obeying the queen bee(s).

[Anonymous]

12 is nuts

[Anonymous]

12 girls was way too many. They all fed off each other’s excitement and things got out of control.

[Anonymous]

I think the issue was having 12 9 year olds at a party held at your house. There’s a reason that so many kids at that age have parties at places like SkyZone. If you’re going to do a party at your house I would keep the guest list in the 5-6 kid range at that age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:12 girls was way too many. They all fed off each other’s excitement and things got out of control.

This is what I was going to say. It's a mob at that point. Half that number would have been better.

[Anonymous]

I have had 7-8 kids at my house for a sleepover, and I made it very clear that misbehavior will result in being sent home.

I think there was a Queen Bee in that group of girls and your kid was not it. What you have described is pretty unusual.