Sleepless Sleepover Nights

See Bobby Sue.

See Bobby Sue go to a sleepover. Have a good time, Bobby Sue!

See Bobby Sue eat pepperoni pizza with chocolate syrup. See Bobby Sue drink 246 fluid ounces of Jolt. See Bobby Sue stay up way too late watching HBO. Oh, Bobby Sue, are your eyes supposed to twitch like that?

Pick Bobby Sue up the next day. Hear Bobby Sue ask what the word slut means before she throws up all over the backseat.

Poor Bobby Sue.

Poor Bobby Sue's parents, who have just experienced some of the messier perils of a precious childhood tradition: the sleepover.

Sleepovers—an event at which two or more friends gather under one roof for a night of conversation, laughter and maybe even sleep—can be the source of lifelong memories. And for many, sleepovers are veritable rites of passage. They can mark a child's first taste of, well, independence. Sure, they're still supervised by parents, but not necessarily their own. They're under new rules for the night, and often, those rules are more flexible than those they've grown up with: They might not have to eat their broccoli or turn out the lights by 8:30. Imagine!

Often, that's just dandy. Sleepovers are supposed to be exciting and fun. A dinner without veggies was probably never a critical step into atheism, debauchery or 20 years of extensive counseling sessions.

But that extra sleepover freedom can also make for a stressful evening—especially for parents.

The Great Unknown of a Neighbor's Home
"When it's your house, it's your rules," says Focus on the Family counselor Tim Sanford. "When it's the other parents' house, it's normally their rules. It's very hard to try to enforce your rules at another parents' house when you're not there to enforce them."

And there's the rub.

After years of raising your children to say please and thank you, to say their prayers and to never watch a film without an animated Disney princess, your little bundles of joy can be thrust into an unpredictable environment with sleepovers. What do the "other" parents think about PG-13 films? Will there be enough supervision to ensure the kids get some shut-eye? Will there be lots of kids there? Are some of them troublemakers? Bad influences? Is anyone likely to abscond with the family minivan?

It's a parental nightmare, thinking you're sending your child for an evening full of Chutes and Ladders and maybe, at worst, High School Musical, then learning the next morning they played with a Ouija board and watched Saw VII.

Sanford says there are some good rules of thumb to avoid such horror stories, though. The first and most reliable solution, he says, is to be the designated sleepover house.

"Something my wife and I did all the way throughout our kids' growing up was to make our house the 'go to' place," he says. "We hosted the pizza and movie parties. We hosted the overnights."

This can take some effort, Sanford admits. "The 'cool house' doesn't just happen—parents make it happen." And they make it happen by bringing in cool stuff: A trampoline, for instance, or an Xbox with family-approved games, or even some guitar amps. Sanford kept his house stocked with lots of food and soda and made it clear that his daughters' friends were welcome.

"For us, it was well worth it," he says. "It was our house, so it was our rules. We got to know our daughters' friends better. And we knew the supervision would be good."

A Life of Letting Go—A Little
But it's not always possible to host every sleepover. When that's the case, Sanford suggests getting real friendly with the host family. Ask lots of questions. Specifically, ask about rules in place for TV-watching. What kind of movies they'll be allowed to see. Whether they'll be playing video games and, if they are, what they'll be playing. And, if you don't like the answers, skip the sleepover.

"By all means, [get to] know the hosting parents, feel comfortable with their house rules and how they will be supervising the children," Sanford says. "Rather than trying to 'enforce' your household rules on the host family, find out what their rules are and—if acceptable—let your child attend. If their rules are not acceptable to you, kindly don't allow your child to attend."

Knowing the number of kids who will be at the sleepover can be an important factor, too. For one thing, more introverted children tend to do better when there are fewer kids attending. But larger groups of youngsters can increase the influence everyone gets from the "group personality." This means that kids "will likely do things as a group they would not normally do as individuals." This doesn't typically become a huge problem, Sanford adds, unless adult supervision is lacking—or if the kids are old enough to drive.

Sanford says such nights away from home can be great opportunities for youngsters to grow. For instance, they give children the opportunity to make good decisions on their own—with, admittedly, some helpful input from Mom and Dad.

"Yes, you still want them to behave in acceptable ways, but when it's at another parent's house, they move from 'rules' to be followed to 'advice' to be followed," Sanford says. "The difference is that there will be no 'consequence' for a broken rule because it wasn't a rule: It was sound advice. From there the parent can use that opportunity as a teaching moment."

Even with the best of intentions, unexpected things can take place at sleepovers, and Sanford cautions that sometimes parents may have to launch into "teaching moments" they'd rather have avoided. It can be hard for a 9-year-old girl to say "no" to watching a forbidden PG-13 flick when five of her friends are all for it. But, while parents may fret that their child's mind was sullied by a bad movie, it still offers a good opportunity to talk about some important issues. They can discuss the dynamics of groupthink, for instance, or ways to say "no" and still save face.

"Kids need to be taught how to be 'street smart,'" Sanford says. "You can't just expect them to get it."