Reply to Hosting my first sleepover .. what do other parents hate about sleepovers?

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[quote=Anonymous]We host sleepovers regularly and also take my daughter’s friends with us for long weekends at our beach house multiple times a year. I mostly love it. I won’t host more than 3 at a time. It is a great way for kids to do things in person and not just be on tech all the time.

First, some people hate it because they are introverts and the kids are loud and it is just too much. My husband and I are extroverts and don’t mind this. We also have a second child with profound SN who cannot communicate so hearing kids communicate is mostly pretty joyful for us.

Second, the kids can end up way too tired and miserable. When we host for multiple nights in a row, I tell the kids they need a reasonable bedtime on the second/thurs night. For a one nighter, we make sure we don’t have important plans the next day and have to understand our kid will be extra tired and goes to bed early.

Third, we don’t feel the need to clean the house for kids to come over. We don’t live in filth, but I don’t care if there is a sinkful of dishes when 14 years old come over (same when they were young). Some people feel a lot more pressure around perfection in hosting than we do.

Fourth, some parents hate it because the kids are terribly behaved. This has not been our experience. My daughter’s friend are lovely, say thank you, help shut down the beach house when we leave, etc. I have no problem asking them to clean up, etc. They are also totally fine with our SN kid who is wearing a bib, making noise and drinking from a sippy cup (at age 16) when we all go out to dinner. If a particular kid was obnoxious, we definitely would not take them with us for a weekend again — but that hasn’t happened in 3 years of kids going with us. We also don’t care if something gets accidentally broken. I mean, we don’t love it, but we understand things happen. Years ago, a small child doing cartwheels in our living room put their foot through our wall. This was like a 2 hour play date. It was annoying to get fixed and not cheap, but stuff happens. And that is the only significant thing I can think of in 16 years of having kids.

Honestly, I think keeping kids together in person as much as possible is good for them. Now that they are teens, they are on their phones together. But they are also baking brownies, going swimming, taking over our master bath to have a “spa” night, filming themselves doing dances, etc. As my daughter heads into high school, we are removing all alcohol. We have very little, but anything we want to keep will live in the master bedroom closet. 
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