All these people saying “hey what’s wrong with sleepovers” must have had a different childhood.

A short list of things I encountered at sleepovers:
1. Finding out my best friend’s dad had molested her cousin and they were afraid of him. We hid after he got drunk.

2. Got put in charge of a baby all night til morning, mom partying. I was 9.
3. Sexual jokes, teasing, innuendo, porn, flirting from various family members often directed at me I had no capacity to understand.
4. The friend with the photographer dad who took weird pictures of me.

5. The swimsuit photo shoots we did with said photographer dad where he gave us silly directions and did his own photo development in his darkroom behind his office.
6. Drunk adults.
7. Finding out my friend’s dad peed on her when he was mad and had to be interviewed by CPS.

Things I did as a teen at sleepovers my parents knew nothing about:
1. Drinking, drunk driving
2. Once in high school two guys from school tried to rape me at a party. I was drunk. One of them held me down. We had been bus buddies in 1st grade. I was ashamed and never told anyone

3. Made out with a 34 year old at 14. He wanted me to come back to his place. I had a friend with me that was being flirted with by his friend. They went off into the woods together. I ran for help. They had to get a search party to find her. They did and those men disappeared.

I’ll stop here hopefully you get the point.

I didn’t run with a “bad crowd”. I had nice friends. I had caring attentive parents. They just trusted the wrong people and trusted me and my own judgement too soon.

Key points for parents now that we grew up and lived a little:
-very nice kids with good manners and fun attitudes can come from profoundly dysfunctional homes. They seem mature because they have to be to survive. Don’t assume good kid=safe home

-the adults you see at pta meetings that seem normal might be drunks. Have you been in their house? If you haven’t ever been in someone’s home you probably won’t know if they’re a massive sloppy drunk.

If you don’t know the parents at all your child is not safe sleeping in their home.

I made one exception with my daughter last year for a good friend, old woman with a granddaughter my kid likes. Total mistake. Ate sugar all night, didn’t sleep at all, she was MISERABLE the next day, napped from 12-5. Never again, nothing devastating just unnecessary for her.

My kids go to bed in their own beds early every night they can’t hang after 9 pm they don’t know what to do they’re toast. “Late” to them is 9:30.