Reply to do you let 10yo go to sleepovers?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a criminal defense attorney and I post every so often when these sorts of threads pop up.  To all the people rolling their eyes at the fear of abuse at the hands of an older sibling or other relative in the sleepover host's home, it happens quite a bit.  I have had some pretty ugly cases of abuse come out of sleepovers.  Sometimes the perpetrator is the older brother.  Sometimes it is the uncle.  Sometimes it is the older brother's friend.  You get the picture.  It happens more than I am comfortable with.  Then there are the cases where the kids are up too late and get too crazy.  In one extreme case, a little boy was bullied by his soccer team and got scared of them in the middle of the night.  He took steps to defend himself (like the equivalent of making fists and getting into a fighting stance), started yelling, woke up the parents (who did not know him particularly well), and the parents called the police.  That little boy wound up in the juvenile detention home for several days.  I am not often moved by my clients' families fear of a loved one being in jail or a detention home.  With this little boy I was in a near frothing panic to get him out.  In another, a group of boys snuck out of the sleepover house and went up to their school  and set fire to things like grass, small piles of paper, etc.  They wound up charged with arson.  There was no property loss.  Many of them were held in the juvenile detention home over a major holiday weekend.  When school starts my sleepover business increases dramatically.[/quote]

But this is the thing -- these scenarios may seem typical to you because it is your job, but they are extremely rare in the real world.  For those who roll their eyes at the examples of kids who cannot separate from their parents because they've never been given the opportunity to, you should roll your eyes equally at the parents calling the police on a screaming child.  Seriously, would anyone on these boards do that?  No, those were some cuckoo parents there.  I'm not saying they don't exist.  But we can't raise our children based on extreme situations.  Thats an excellent way to transfer anxiety to them, a lasting gift that will haunt them into adulthood.

Parents need to use their judgment.  Rather than bright line rules, ask yourself if you are comfortable having your child spend the night in this particular situation.  If you do this, you will find that in most situations you are fine and in some you will say no.  When you exercise judgment you teach your kids to exercise judgment because if all they have to rely upon is a bright line rule, they have nothing once the rule doesn't make sense.[/quote]

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