When I was a kid, my parents only allowed one sleep over per year. Granted I was able to squeeze that into 3 or 4 for the year. I will say they were only doing this because the were strict parents, NOT because any other reason.
Many parents are forbidding sleepovers because of safety concerns. Social media platforms are full of Millennial and Gen X parents who have deemed these once-cherished get-togethers totally off limits.
Many parents cite a fundamental lack of familiarity with other kids’ parents as the main concern, with some admitting full-on distrust. Others say that hosting a sleepover feels like an invasion of privacy. Perhaps the biggest concern among parents seems to be the risk of their child being molested or assaulted in someone else’s home.
But others can’t help but feel that this is all a bit overblown— and that this level of oversight of a kid’s social life might even be detrimental.
Many experts say unsupervised playtime is crucial to kids’ development, both as individuals and as members of society. A study at University College London, for instance, found that kids who were allowed unsupervised play time were, more active, confident and had richer social skills than those whose parents took a more helicopter-parenting approach.
If you ask me, sleepovers were the best! Maybe take the time to get to know the parents of your kids friends. It was a different times, but for the kids of the future, we can’t lose sleepovers!
