Anonymous wrote:As an expat mom, I HATE sleepovers. I personally don't care if my kids don't fit in. But I also don't want my kids to accuse me later of being the reason why they did not fit in or feel excluded or feel that I was never with the program etc,. So my aim has always been to make sure that others don't have sleepovers at their home.
I am well aware that sleepovers can go wrong in so many ways. I have watched enough American TV to know that there is a reason why around the world people don't allow sleepovers. My 2 cents is - Avoid sleepovers. Do half-sleepovers where the kids go back to sleep in their own homes at midnight after watching movies, taking group pics for momentos, stuffing their face with food etc. Heck, the half-sleepovers is the one occasion that everyone comes dressed in their PJs. Highly recommended for all the other parents.
Don't get me wrong. I was able to successfully navigate three or four times with my DD (hosting) (somehow my DS was never into it)...but there were so many tricky things I had to do to let the sleepover proceed without any incident 🤞🏼 . And I did make it somewhat over the top in terms of hosting so that no one else in my kids orbit even thought of hosting sleepovers.
I am going to list it down and you can pick and choose what you care about. Keep in mind that since I am foreign...my cultural sensibilities may not 100% align with yours.
- Safety. Make sure that you do not have unsecured guns, alcohol, vape, tobacco, porn, drugs or dogs (I will include snakes, spiders and scorpions too) at home. Make sure that you have an alarm system and kids are not allowed to open windows or doors to sneak off at night to meet other people. Let them know that beforehand. Also, show them the CCTV too - inside and outside the home. Make sure that your alarm system company signs are prominently displayed in your yard.
- KTP (Know the parents). Meet them. Chat with them. Invite them in for coffee. Take their contact address. Do this in front of all the kids. Give the impression of being the strict/snitch parent because that will prevent a lot of misbehavior. After the sleepover is over...send them some group pics next day.
- Access to inappropriate digital viewing and internet interactions. You have zero idea what the kids are viewing, showing others, how they are interacting with strangers on the internet, or how they are doing online bullying. Make sure that at least what you are providing at home is curated. My kid knew exactly what they could watch on pay-per-view. The other kids could still be sexting with their own phones while in the bathroom and there is very little you can do to prevent that.
- Access to the rest of the house. Make sure that the kids are not going to the upstairs bedrooms or the rest of the house. If you need to lock the doors (with a bolt and lock) in places that they should not be in, make that happen before the sleepover.
- Where the rest of the family is. If you are hosting a bunch of girls, then there can be an issue of something inappropriate happening with male members of the hosting family and the girls. I guess the same can be with boys... Also, some girls/boys can also make false accusations. So, to protect my family members - DH, DS were told to eat their dinner and then take everything they needed for the night to their room - water, meds, school bags, electronics. They were told not to come downstairs for the night. This was also something that our whole family decided together.
- Where the guests are. To prevent some kids from sneaking out to meet someone they have been chatting with, or smuggling in alcohol, or anything else inappropriate - make sure that there are at least 3-4 kids and they should not all be from the same clique. Add 1 or 2 kids from neighborhood, EC activities, friends and family (these can later be the snitches, also kids are better behaved in front of any outsider)- and everyone is sleeping in the same area. For us...it was the family room in the main level. It was huge, had the game console and the big TV, music system, guitars and keyboard, karaoke, fireplace. We joined several mattresses on the floor, lots of pillow and blankets and facing the big TV. Kids got their own pillows and sleeping bags too and some put it on the mattress that we provided. We had 2 designated bathrooms for just the kids.
- Load them with food and snacks - at least 3-4 times. This is one easy way to incapacitate them with sugar crash. They don't think of this as you being nosy but you can get a good bead of if any bullying etc is going on. Throughout the night, I would come down to check up on them and then load them with a whole bunch of food, pizza, caramel and cheesy popcorn, loaded nachos, quiche, dumplings, wings and dip, nuggets, cupcakes, chocolate milk, soda, croissants, juice, pastries, candy...
- Entertainment. Mostly horror movies, cartoon or comedy movies are good. Make sure to also provide board games, nail-polish and nail art, hair accessories and makeup for the girls and some craft stuff that they would like and could take home. Also, take a few group pics of the girls doing all the activities.
- Early lavish breakfast. Wake them up. Cook bacon and sausages, hash browns, waffles, yogurt with fruits, croissant, orange juice and coffee. As their parents come in to pick them up, make them also sit and eat the lavish breakfast. Let them see what others are serving at sleepovers.
- Goody bags. Send them off with goody bags and send the parents the group pics.
The kids should be completely wrecked by this time because of endless movie watching, eating lots of snacks throughout the night, interrupted sleep, lots of activities and the fancy hotel style breakfast. They will not recover sufficiently until a couple of days have passed.
The parents are sufficiently intimidated because now they cannot match this level of hosting. All the kids (including you, Mama Bear. You worked hard!!) are absolutely tired. The parents have decided that sleepovers are a lot of work and not worth hosting.
The kids continue to rave about the sleepover and tangible proof of their good times remains only in their memory of endless eating, the nail art on their fingers and toes, the group pics, and the goody bag loot.
Everyone wants to come for your sleepovers but only one person ever had a small sleepover where my DD was involved. That was that. I basically made sure that sleepovers were killed.
Don't get triggered, DCUM. There are some words of wisdom and common sense hidden here.
can you share why you hate them? you just instead shared why you made yours very over the top- i slept over at my childhood bff's all the time as a kid... sure survivorship bias but had so many sleepovers at so many friend's and was a great part of childhood (and not usually with many kids-- sure occasional bday party, but often just one on one)
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}