No, no, no. Not again. Not for a very long time.
That’s the sound coming from Chicago-area parents fed up with hosting children’s sleepover parties, or sending their kids to sleepovers only to have them return the next day sleep-deprived, sugared up and all-around crabby.
One Lincoln Park family even sent out a behavior contract for their son’s guests to sign and return before his sleepover party.
“A sleepover is a definite privilege,” says Jacqueline Thams, a Chicago parent whose 9-year-old daughter, Maita, hosts and goes to other children’s homes for sleepovers, but only if she’s behaving. “That’s the first to go in my mind,” says Thams. “It’s purely fun for them.”
For parents, fun is simply not the word for it. Hosts resign themselves to not sleeping at all, as children stoked on snacks either stay up all night or wake before dawn. Normally well-mannered children, in a group, turn plastic bats into swords and seek out play places that wouldn’t occur to them during an afternoon playdate.
At one home (OK, mine), while the other guests were packing up to leave, two 11-year-old boys were found three floors away. They were in the master bathroom, armed with our $1,000 video camera, plucking personal products and medicines from a drawer for on-camera display and comment.
Too, cultural differences play a part: A Lincoln Park mother doesn’t allow her children to go to or host sleepovers because it wasn’t done where she grew up in Puerto Rico. And families in violence-prone neighborhoods have extra safety issues to consider.
Parents aren’t the only ones who are soured on sleepovers. Educators are too. “Monday morning is the worst,” says Donna Branson, a former grade school teacher in Chicago who now tutors. A group of sluggish children changes the tenor of the entire class, she says. “It’s the same as a large group being out sick; on a certain level they’re just not `there.'”
It’s in the contract
On the other side of the debate, of course, are the kids, who savor an all-night adventure with their buddies. They’re not ready to give back the night, and their reasoning is as simple as a basic math equation: More friends over a longer period equals more fun.
But getting parents to agree to such an event is becoming downright herculean. Consider the case of 13-year-old Nicolas Hybel, who had to sit down at the kitchen table with his parents, both attorneys, and hammer out a behavior contract for his friends to sign and return before a recent sleepover party.
“It was tongue in cheek, but at the same time, we were trying to make a point,” says Paul Hybel, who expected to get calls from other parents wondering what had led them to such extremes. They didn’t, but Hybel said the children behaved far better than in previous years. “I think the contract worked: The kids knew we had asked them follow those rules.”
Nicolas thinks otherwise. In the days before the party, he spoke to each of his guests and asked them not to be rowdy.
“I personally think it’s better if the kid is the one to request good behavior,” he says, “instead of an adult acting superior and ordering it.”
Even parents who allow sleepovers find themselves making case-by-case decisions. A Highland Park mother wouldn’t let her boy sleep over at a home where the parents smoked and the children played with BB guns. “My son was not too happy,” says Susan Berman, a public relations executive.
Parents who send their children to other homes have to ask some hard questions: How many guests will there be? Where will the kids sleep? What movies will they watch? Will they have Internet access? Are there guns in the home?
“It’s a huge responsibility,” notes Thams. “Do you trust the parent in an emergency? You never know what could happen.”
Huck Finn without the risk
Experts sympathize with sleep-deprived parents who feel run over by their children’s friends, but warn against heavy-handed tactics or zero tolerance when it comes to sleepover parties. More than ever, they say, children need a safe place to have an adventure with their peers, and a sleepover is the ideal vehicle.
“Kids today aren’t going off on a `Tom and Huck’ adventure; they can’t do it, it’s too dangerous,” says John A. Friedman, a child psychologist in Chicago. “But staying up later than usual–that’s an adventure kids can have together, without their family.”
House rules are the key to a fun time that doesn’t spin out of control, psychologists agree.
First, keep the guest list short. The Hybels started enjoying sleepovers again once they capped the crowd at three or four guests. “It’s more manageable,” says Paul Hybel.
Host parents should gently review the rules with their child and his guests early in the party.
“Set any rule you like, and stick to it,” advises Friedman. “But if you’re going to wreck it, don’t host it. It’s their little adventure in the city or suburbs.”
For overwhelmed hosts, Highland Park author Judith Loseff Lavin suggests asking relatives or adult friends to lend a hand. “These are not bad kids, but it’s a lot of entertaining,” she notes. Plan something out of the ordinary that will be fun for children and adults, she suggests, recalling an Oscar-themed sleepover she hosted in which guests were greeted at the door with “bubbly” and everyone dressed outrageously.
With sleepovers, children learn how to be a good host, says Linda Rubinowitz, a clinical psychologist at the Family Institute and director of the master’s program in marital and family therapy at Northwestern University in Evanston.
“It’s a growth opportunity for children,” Rubinowitz says. “How do you have people over? What does it involve? Are you serving soda or fruit juice? Parents should bring children into the whole experience, have them help with buying the food.
“If it’s done in the spirit of adventure and fun, and the guidance is there, parents can make this work.”
Coed party? `Please, I want trouble’
As if parents and teenagers didn’t have enough to disagree about, the coed sleepover has become popular in recent years.
Kara Daley, a 17-year-old senior at New Trier High School, received her first invitation to one when she was 14. Her parents’ response: No way. And with two younger daughters, now 16 and 14, the Winnetka family’s house rule regarding coed sleepovers hasn’t changed.
“It mostly happens around dances,” says Kara of the invitations. “The big issue is that there’s always drinking, and parents having the party say, `You have to stay. No one’s driving home.’ But there are a lot of parents who aren’t comfortable with boys and girls spending the night.”
Kara’s mother, Kathy Daley, doesn’t buy the keep-them-off-the-road argument. “There are other options to get home,” she says, and even with parents in the house, all-night supervision is unlikely. “You’re creating an opportunity,” says Daley. “You’re asking for trouble.”
Her concerns are not unfounded. A recent survey of 879 teenagers by Teen People magazine found that just over half had attended at least one coed sleepover, and 83 percent said they’d seen or heard about shenanigans between the sexes at such parties.
Experts suggest that sleepovers should be single sex by the time children turn 8, because their interests are already worlds apart.
“It’s like inviting people who speak two different languages to a dinner party,” says psychologist John A. Friedman, who also strongly cautions against coed sleepovers for teens. “You’re saying, `Please, I want trouble.'”
Adds Judith Loseff Lavin, a parenting expert and mother of two Highland Park teens, “Everyone complains about sex in the media. Are we trying to give our kids a head start?”
Other parents and experts disagree, and say older teenagers can spend the night in a group without resorting to sex.
“If they’re in homes where there’s supervision, it can be a very positive social experience,” says psychologist Linda Rubinowitz of the Family Institute.
But even those in favor of coed sleepovers say there’s an age–roughly 12 to 15–when such parties are inappropriate. (Older teenagers, many say, have more self-control.)
“Some kids will have sex in front of their friends, but these are usually the junior high crowd and younger high schoolers who have sex on buses and in the back yard at parties,” says Barbara Cooke, a Deerfield parent who allowed her three children, now 23, 21 and 16, to attend coed sleepovers, and hosted one herself. “Juniors and seniors in high school are mature enough to curb their impulses.”
Cooke, who writes a column on teen issues, offers these sleepover guidelines, which she used for her children: Host parents have to be home; the sleepover has to follow a major social event, such as a homecoming dance; and children have to be “of age,” either a junior or senior in high school.
At her own home, she checked on her daughter’s guests numerous times during the night. “They were sound asleep,” she says.
–A.M.
