The boys had been hanging out all Saturday afternoon, and Cicely Thrasher was planning to pick up her 12-year-old son from his friend’s house at 7 p.m. But as evening approached, the kids decided they wanted a sleepover. The friend’s father texted Thrasher to say it was fine with him if her son wanted to spend the night.
When the message appeared on her phone, she felt a surge of dread.
“I hate being a party pooper. I want my son to have deep and meaningful friendships,” she says. But: “I also knew that I would be setting a precedent if I allowed it to happen. I wasn’t ready for that decision on such short notice.”
She immediately started Googling: Are sleepovers good or bad for kids? and child development + sleepovers and risks and benefits of sleepovers. She listened to child psychologists on TikTok, scrolled through blog posts and searched newspaper articles. She politely declined the sleepover invitation, and kept scouring the internet. “Mostly,” she says, “I was just trying to find a way to feel good about my decision.”
A sense of certainty proved elusive, but she did find that she has plenty of company in feeling unsure about sleepovers. Among parents who are skeptical of this particular rite of childhood, one question — “Can I spend the night?” — unleashes a slew of others: How well do we know the other parents? Are there guns in the house? What about alcohol or drugs? What is the risk of covid exposure? Are there older siblings around? Will the kids be watching YouTube or TikTok all night? Is it a girls-only or boys-only gathering? (And what about kids who don’t adhere to binary concepts of gender and sexuality?) What might happen if they stay the night, and what might they miss if they don’t?
There are families for whom slumber parties are out of the question; in certain cultures, allowing your child to stay overnight with someone outside the family is not an accepted practice (many Gen-Z TikTok users have meme’d the awkward experience of turning down sleepover invitations because of wary parents).
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