Reply to If your child is gay or bi..how do you handle sleepovers?

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "If your child is gay or bi..how do you handle sleepovers?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is not a sleepover party where there is a group of girls in attendance.  You are talking about 2 girls.

The point is most people will not let their child have a sleepover with someone with whom there could be potential mutual attraction. I am not sure why the rules change b/c the child in question is gay.

Would I let my straight daughter have a sleep over with a boy, even if she said she wasn't attracted to him.  Nope!  Therefore how is it homophobic to say I would not let her have a sleep over with another lesbian, even if she wasn't attracted to her.

It has to be the same rules regardless of sexual orientation.  [/quote]

You are correct, sort of.  What you're missing is that just because your kid hasn't told you they're gay, it doesn't mean they're straight.  Your 14 yo son could be having circle jerk sleepovers with his buddies and you'd never know.  The difference here is when a kid comes out at a young age- should all sleepovers be off limits?

I'm not sure, tbh. [/quote]

I agree.  I have heard all sorts of stories about girls experimenting with other girls at sleepovers, however as parents we have to work with the information that has been provided to us and our own observations in an effort to make reasonable decisions about what is right and wrong for our families.

No one said sleepovers should be banned but I think one-on-one sleepovers needs a little more investigation.  It is not just an easy answer.  Just as you would not automatically (if at all) let a boy sleep over with heterosexual DD, there is nothing wrong with asking more questions if DD believes she is homosexual.  As a parent you have the same right to ask questions.  For example if heterosexual DD wanted to have a sleep over with a homosexual male I would probably say yes more easily than I would if my lesbian DD wanted to have a sleep over with her lesbian friend.  I don't thin there is a one size fits all answer for all kids and all families.

As for this situation, as I mentioned in a previous post maybe a sleepover in the living room might make more sense than a sleep over in the bedroom.  Even though you would do your best to give the kids their privacy, they know someone could walk on them at anytime.  See how it goes from there and re-evaluate if the sleepover with the same person comes up again. 
[/quote]

Bingo. While I see the OP's point for a specific scenario, it's also pretty amazing to see the number of parents who think that no sexual conversation/experimentation happens at sleepovers with kids who aren't interested in dating or who aren't gay/bi/other.

On the one hand, the age of the child in question makes me wonder why it's on an elementary school forum thread, but on the other hand, my niece (age 9) talks about kids in her class who "mess around" at sleepovers and the various things that can mean. They bring their phones and look at porn, look up sexual terms on urban dictionary, and apparently compare personal development with each other. And that's the part she's told me about - who knows what else goes on when the grownups finally leave them alone. I just read a comedian's memoir who said that she was 8 when a friend taught the group of friends to masturbate at a sleepover. Do I think that's all kids? Probably not, but all it takes is one kid with information and there is going to be a very interested audience taking it all in.

Each generation seems to get amnesia as adults about how curious and persistent kids are about learning anything they can about sex and maybe even trying it out, regardless of whether an adult decides that they are ready for it. Even if it's not happening at sleepovers, it's happening. Kidding yourself into thinking your kid doesn't care about it yet AT 14 YEARS OLD is simply naive. Even my childhood before the internet - my sweet friend since kindergarten brought a hustler magazine to a 10th grade sleepover and we all read it with great interest. No one did anything with each other at that sleepover, but boy were my eyes opened to things that had never even occurred to me despite assuming I knew a whole lot. There were a group of us, and we were camping out in my family room. Could my parents have walked in at any time we were reading that magazine? Sure, but we would have had plenty of warning to hide evidence. We were good kids - definitely the last ones parents or school would have pegged for that activity, but boy was it fun.

Does my kid go to sleepovers? Yep, and I think it will be ok. We've tried to make her so much more informed about her own body, male gaze, consent, etc that she'll hopefully have a much more robust and clear set of options that I didn't have from my own very well intentioned but very "in charge" parents. I guess my point is that in the grand scheme of things, it's wise to make sure kids in your care are protected. At the same time, this hawk-like hovering seems to be giving many of you a false sense of having provided adequate insurance that Nothing Will Happen.[/quote]

AND , for this very reason I detest sleep overs ! I have heard horrible things  about brothers and cousins and dads at the hosts house...who looked all so nice [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics