Mom Wonders How To Tell People Her Daughter Can Have Sleepovers At Her House, But Not Other People's Houses
Is she presenting an unfair double standard?
New Africa / Shutterstock There is a lot of debate surrounding sleepovers and what parents will and will not allow.
Some parents say no to sleepovers altogether, while others allow them with a strict set of rules.
One mom and dad won’t let their kids go to other houses for sleepovers but will host them at their own home.
The anonymous mother asked for advice on Reddit about how to communicate her sleepover restrictions best — and stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the process.
Like many parents nowadays, these two avoid letting their children attend sleepovers. However, they are not against their kids participating in sleepovers in general — it’s fine as long as it’s at their house.
“My daughter and her friend have been begging to have a sleepover for weeks now, and my husband and I already decided we won’t ever be sending any of our kids to a sleepover, but we would be fine to host one,” she wrote.
“How do you explain that to the other kids’ parents though?” she questioned. “I feel like it’s insulting to insinuate that something sinister could happen at their house but not at ours.”
Commenters were not happy with this mom’s explanation.
Redditors did not agree with the parents' perspective at all.
“I think it’s inherently insulting,” one person wrote. “It may be better to just have a blanket ‘no sleepovers’ rule instead of trying to ask kids to sleep at your home.”
“It is insulting, and I wouldn’t allow my kid to sleep over at someone’s house who doesn’t trust me,” another added.
A third user provided a unique perspective as the wife of a detective. “Honestly, we have decided to just not allow sleepovers, period. There are far too many possibilities for something to happen to our kids,” she shared. “But, on the flip side, in my husband’s role as a detective, he has encountered situations where parents have made false allegations against the host parents, and it has ruined people’s lives. Maybe you just need to say no sleepovers at all.”
While the general consensus was that this mom was taking the wrong approach by only allowing her kids to have sleepovers at her own house, some users saw no issue with her decision.
"For me, I’m not bothered or insulted if a parent isn’t comfortable with sleepovers out of their own home," one Redditor wrote. "[There] could be a variety of reasons for it, and none of them are my business (kid could be a bed-wetter, mom could be anxious when away from her kids, dad could be a survivor, for example). You may find that the other parents feel the same way."
It is entirely understandable not to allow your children to attend sleepovers.
Parenting blog Scary Mommy addressed this very topic and said it is fine to avoid sleepovers — many experts even recommend it.
“It’s one thing when your child is spending the night at their grandparents’ house or with an aunt or uncle,” they said. “It’s quite another when they’re with a peer (or many peers), spending the night at a home you either haven’t been to yourself or with a family you’re not particularly close to. That is a very scary thing for a parent.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being very selective about where you let your children spend the night,” they concluded.
The sad reality is that you don't know what goes on in another family's home behind closed doors. You can't guarantee your child's safety, so it's understandable to have rules that prevent them from sleeping at a house that is not your own.
However, it is also reasonable that another parent might take issue with the double standard of allowing sleepovers at your own house, but no one else's.
One Redditor suggested throwing a "no-sleep sleepover" instead. "They put on jammies, eat pizza, have popcorn, [watch] a movie, stay up 'way past bedtime' (by like half an hour), and then the kids go home to sleep in their own beds."
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.