sleepover

[Anonymous]

over the top re the scary examples. Why is 6 too young? Maybe for you -not all of us are raising paranoid, timid children. These kids are friends and so are the parents.

I'm totally with you, but I think 23:34's point is that even if you have been dear friends with the other child's parents since high school, you attend church regularly with them, and you have them over for barbecues every weekend, you still don't know these people or their kids. If you let your child sleep over, there's a pretty decent chance the family's older child will molest him or he'll be peer-pressured into committing a felony. Better safe than sorry!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS is 8 years old and I don't feel very confortable letting him go for sleepovers.
What do you moms think about it?

With so many things happening in this world,I don't know what to do...

What are you top 3 fears about what could happen to your son over at another kid's house on a sleepover?

What are your top 3 fears about not doing sleepovers?

??? What is this question for?

I'm the person who asked the OP what she was so worried about happening on a sleepover. She posted asking for opinions/advice, and then said something like "So many things can happen these days". To help her, I'd like to know what she is actually worried about, rather than just trying to guess based on nebulous "fears".

Like, maybe OP lives in a very high crime area, and is worried that the other parents don't take appropriate precautions. Or maybe OP is worried, because her kids' friends have siblings who are known drug dealers. On the other hand, perhaps OP is woprried about her child's maturity, and fears that her child would misbehave or steal something, and she wouldn't be around to keep her child under control. There are different types of concerns, and would be handled differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a criminal defense attorney and I will tell you three things that HAVE happened at sleepovers.

Client #1: Teenaged boy with a younger sister. Younger sister and her best friend, victim, have a sleepover at younger sister and teenaged boy's house. Best friend will be going to Kings Dominion with younger sister, teenaged boy, and their family the next morning. The girls are elementary school aged. In the middle of the night teenage boy molests best friend, digitally penetrating her, getting oral sex from her, and telling her not to tell anyone or scream because then he will have to hurt her. Best friend victim skips planned trip to Kings Dominion the next day saying she is sick and has to go home and tells her mom in the car on the way home about the molestation.

In this example, parents knew each other very well for years.

Client #2: Tween boy only child. Tween boy has a sleepover at his house with 3 friends. They watch movies, eat popcorn, and have a farting contest. Then they decide on a night of almost no sleep to sneak out. The walk up to a school and start lighting fires. They burn a hole in some decking. They light grass and ground cover on fire. They destroy a few things on the way back to the house.

In this example tween boy had a single mom who knew every child sleeping over as well as their parents. She and tween boy had been friends with some of the children and their families since preschool.

Client #3: Tween boy who went to a sleepover with his soccer team buddies after a game. Soccer team buddies all stayed up all night. Somewhere in the middle of the night some of the bigger soccer team buddies began picking on the smaller boys -- wedgies, swirlies, bigger boys holding smaller ones down while farting in their faces, etc. Tween boy is a little kid like the size of a 9 year old at age 13 and super sweet, gentle, sensitive, etc. He is scared. He gets a knife from a kitchen drawer and brandishes it from 20 ft away telling the bigger boys to stay away. The bigger boys make a ruckus waking parents who see terrified tween boy with a knife and call the police. Police take tween boy into custody on Saturday night Sunday morning and he stays in JDC for days until we can get him out.

In this example, tween boy's parents had been told by sleepover host that the sleepover would be at his mom's house. They had no idea and nor did their son that the sleepover would be at the dad's house

Thanks for the sobering reminder about how things can go wrong. All three examples could have happened with people that you know and trust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you have any statistics on how common these kinds of tragic stories are?

What percentage of sleepovers go awry this way?

I'd venture a guess that the odds are greater that your child will be hurt in a car accident than that he will end up brandishing a knife or committing arson at a sleepover.

I think PP is not suggesting that this happens often. But it can happen. Will it stop me from allowing my child from having sleep overs? Of course not. But, the point is that often, the sleepovers are not monitored by the host parents. The kids are put up in other parts of the house, like the basement, while the parents are in the bedroom sleeping while this is going on. We would never let group of 8 year olds play unsupervised for 8 hours during the day, so this is why we are uncomfortable about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Do you have any statistics on how common these kinds of tragic stories are?

What percentage of sleepovers go awry this way?

I'd venture a guess that the odds are greater that your child will be hurt in a car accident than that he will end up brandishing a knife or committing arson at a sleepover.


I think PP is not suggesting that this happens often. But it can happen. Will it stop me from allowing my child from having sleep overs? Of course not. But, the point is that often, the sleepovers are not monitored by the host parents. The kids are put up in other parts of the house, like the basement, while the parents are in the bedroom sleeping while this is going on. We would never let group of 8 year olds play unsupervised for 8 hours during the day, so this is why we are uncomfortable about it.

I think the PP WAS suggesting that this happens with some degree of frequency - hence the three different examples. I also don't see a whole lot of difference between kids sleeping in the basement v. an upstairs bedroom if the parents are in bed asleep anyway.

This may horrify some parents, but I let my 3 kids (8 & under) sleep in the basement for sleepovers sometimes, they walk back and forth to the school bus stop alone, ride bikes or walk down the street to a neighbor's house alone, and play in the back or front yard unsupervised.

[Anonymous]

I just am not getting something about the "teenaged boy molests best friend" stody.

Defense lawyer -- where was the other girl in that incident? How did the older brother molest/rape an elementary school aged girl, while his SISTER presumably was in the same bedroom? Did the sister do nothing about the attack?

[Anonymous]

Sister did not know anything happened until after her brother was detained. All 3 played video games together in the basement late into the night. Sister went to bed and best friend continued playing video games with teenaged boy. Sister and parents were 2 floors away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sister did not know anything happened until after her brother was detained. All 3 played video games together in the basement late into the night. Sister went to bed and best friend continued playing video games with teenaged boy. Sister and parents were 2 floors away.

So the elementary school girls were unsupervised even while they were awake? They were left to play in the basement with teen brother, and no one "put them to bed", made sur ethey were asleep before turning int?

The thing is, with parents like that, (and an abusive teenage molester) it probably doesn't matter if it is a sleepover, or an afternoon event. The two girls could be playing in the basement, unsupervised, and the parents could be in their backyard, and the teen boy would have had equal acces to the elementary girl. So I'm not sure how a family could protect a girl against that kind of thing, except never letting your child over at someone's house, ever, if they have an older boy?

Just because you "know" the family, say from going to church together, do you "know" how well they supervise their children?