Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2013 18:26:20 GMT -5
I stayed out all night at parties. But you are right, most of the drinking and sex was not at an overnight.
And we had sleepovers that had none of those things.
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taz157
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Post by taz157 on May 18, 2013 19:43:06 GMT -5
The issue is, in a few months your ability to allow him to do stuff will be much more limited. How will he just suddenly be ready to make all those decisions himself... ? Why would a sleepover be ok for 12 and not for 17. Kids like to play games and watch movies half the night. Yeah, sometimes alcohol is involved. If it is, isn't it better they don't try to drive home? Because 17 yr olds are probably much MORE interested in drugs, sex, and alcohol. And, no he won't drive home, we will pick him up. I don't know about you, but when I was 17, I wasn't interested in drugs and alcohol. I did have a boyfriend at 17 and if I was willing, then he definitely interested in sex. For me, I was terrified of getting pregnant so we didn't. None of my friends were into drugs and alcohol. My mom and stepdad (dad lived out of state) trusted me and I didn't do anything to make them think otherwise. Has your son ever done anything to make you lose your trust in him? Is there some backstory we don't know about?
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steph08
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Post by steph08 on May 18, 2013 21:11:08 GMT -5
I wasn't interested in sex, drugs or alcohol at 17, and really not now at 27...well sometimes the sex Sleepovers were good times where we talked about the cute boys at school and watched The Blair Witch Project too late at night. But then, I am a girl and a nerd. Hell, I love sleepovers now. Except they are called "staying the weekend at a friend's house" where we still play poker and other random games and stay up too late at night talking about boys and watching movies. Oh, it's the same thing. I don't think anybody is ever too old for a sleepover. if you don't trust your son and he isn't giving you the full story, just tell him that no he cannot go.
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swamp
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Post by swamp on May 18, 2013 21:16:10 GMT -5
I'm 43 and planning a sleepover with my friends this summer. We'll drink too much wine and margaritas and talk about boys.
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steff
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Post by steff on May 19, 2013 13:24:42 GMT -5
I have a house full of teenaged boys every weekend. We are the "sleep over" house. Sleep over to a teenaged boy is staying up all night playing video games. I've seen it literally every weekend since kiddo was 14. I have teens that basically move in during school holidays & don't see their own homes but maybe once for a check in & clean clothes (and that doesn't always happen).
Here they know that they can stay up all night & I don't care. They can go play yard golf at 3 am as long as they aren't too loud. They can play loud music & it doesn't bother me. My basement is set up wireless & often we'll have several game systems running with everyone playing from the basement & kiddo's room. We added a ping pong table along with the dart board & foozeball table.
Sleep overs aren't really a big deal if you don't create drama around them. It's just teens getting together & hanging out to have some fun. To become veggies in front of a video game for 24-48 hours. To stay up all night & sleep all day. To stuff their faces with Dominos pizza, Flaming hot Cheetos, and mainline Mt Dew & Call of Duty. We've never had a drinking or drug problem because they know my rules & they have enough fun to counteract that "I'm bored, let's get drunk".
I started letting kiddo have sleepover when he was about 7. We lived in 'da hood at that time & I felt better having kiddo's friends at our house. It just carried over once we moved out of 'da hood. It's a great way to get to know your kids friends in a relaxed atmosphere & in fact, I probably know more about some of these teens than their own parents do.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on May 19, 2013 17:08:08 GMT -5
And the government spends all this money studying the causes of the obesity epidemic in this country...
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steff
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Post by steff on May 19, 2013 17:49:51 GMT -5
And the government spends all this money studying the causes of the obesity epidemic in this country... They get outside too. We have a lake, a creek & tons of woods right in our little subdivision. They play football, golf, trek thru the creek, go cow tipping (which is actually a pretty long walk uphill thru a couple of fields), they play "manhunt" (a more grown up name for hide n seek in the dark, outside, and in the woods), they go to the skateboard park, up to the Y to play basketball. When they all park at one house from Friday night to Sunday night, they have a lot of time to kill & are all over the place. But at 4 am, they are mainlining video games & Mt Dew.
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Sum Dum Gai
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Post by Sum Dum Gai on May 19, 2013 17:56:55 GMT -5
I wasn't picking on yours specifically, my friends and I were the exact same way, it just struck me as funny.
Actually, now that I think about it, I was more active than I usually give myself credit for. Sure, we could sit around for three days straight eating junk and playing video games, but we'd also hike 20 miles in a day on a whim, walked freaking everywhere, played bizarre games like bicycle polo with old golf clubs for hours and hours at a time. We ate crap, but we were all in pretty good shape.
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steff
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Post by steff on May 19, 2013 18:07:02 GMT -5
They go out and do goofy stupid shit all the time. Dodge golf is a favorite lately, I have no clue why. They use ping pong balls instead of golf balls at my request. They also had a weird ping pong, yard golf, trampoline, foozeball, darts speed competition going on last month.
Then there are days I walk into the basement to find them all geeked out with headsets on & hands glued to a controller yelling at each other from the basement to kiddo's bedroom (also in the basement). The only movement I see is them all coming upstairs to forage for food.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2013 18:18:37 GMT -5
Shoob, why don't you offer to host an overnight... Get a Better idea of what goes on...
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Malarky
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Post by Malarky on May 19, 2013 18:29:20 GMT -5
DS doesn't have friends stay here anymore. Most of his friends are college age and have their own places. As long as he lets me know he won't be home, I don't mind him staying over. He's 18 and I know he has an occasional drink. Maybe more than I know. I don't want him driving. He's proved himself to be responsible.
DD and her friends sleep over each others houses frequently. It could be a weekend marathon movie night, an early rise to get to a game or a competition and someone lives closer to the field or is driving to an event. They could be studying followed by exhaustion and it just being easier to just go to sleep rather than go home. Sometimes they just aren't done talking. Or they just want to hang out.
LOL, we are a family of 4, but we have 14 toothbrushes in our bathroom.
I hated how my parents tried to control my every thought and action and I rebelled by smoking, drinking and sneaking out of the house. I don't want that for my kids.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on May 19, 2013 18:39:22 GMT -5
Shoob, why don't you offer to host an overnight... Get a Better idea of what goes on... I have.
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Malarky
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Post by Malarky on May 19, 2013 18:57:09 GMT -5
Shoob, why don't you offer to host an overnight... Get a Better idea of what goes on... I have. Still not your thing? I guess it's not for everyone. It truly doesn't bother me to have a houseful of kids here day and night. I find that I know more about these kids than a lot of the helicopter parents. I'm not naïve enough to think I know everything, And there isn't anything they can do on a sleepover that they couldn't have accomplished before I get home from work.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on May 19, 2013 19:05:03 GMT -5
I have kids here ALL the time. But at some point, i like them to go home. And, i also have a young daughter (11) so she doesn't need her home turned into a YMCA. So, i usually allow my sons have a sleepover on their birthdays but like i said, it is a CONSTANT thing here.
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steff
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Post by steff on May 19, 2013 20:40:42 GMT -5
At age 17 it's time to let them start to spread their own wings & turn them loose (and I know it sucks). You have to trust that all the things you tried to teach them & all the lectures over the years have sunk in. Trust them that when they are out with friends that they know the "stupid line". They know enough & have good enough judgement to do nothing so stupid that they will get themselves or a friend arrested, hurt, maimed, or killed. If you've raised them & taught them well, then you can turn them loose for days with their friends & they can have a blast, but not cross the stupid line. And being a teenager is all about being stupid with your friends. The weight of the world will be on them soon enough, gotta let them go so they can have fun while they can & see their judgement in action.
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sheilaincali
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Post by sheilaincali on May 20, 2013 9:31:03 GMT -5
DS is 15 and he and his friends have sleepovers quite frequently. I'd say 75% of the time they are at our house. DS is an only child so no younger siblings to deal with. Plus DS is on a different floor of the house from us. His bedroom is huge- has his queen bed in there plus a full size sofa, desk, 60 inch flat screen and all of the gaming consoles. He also has an attached bathroom. They stay up late playing video games and watching Monty Python movies. No worries. When they are at other people's houses they do the same thing. They have added girls into their group of friends but no co-ed sleepovers. DS and his friends are good kids and I have no worries yet about sleepovers. HOWEVER- when I was over the age of 16 and having sleepovers they were not innocent "let's braid each other's hair and watch movies" sleepovers. They were more of the- "let's sneak out and go to this party and get drunk" sleepovers. Lots of co-ed sleepovers too. My parents really should have been paying more attention but I wasn't going to enlighten them and ruin a good thing. With your son being so vague my answer would be NO as well.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2013 9:52:59 GMT -5
My kids are 6 & 7 and the only sleepovers they have had have been with the grandparents and their cousins.
As a rule, I don't think it's odd for HS aged kids to want to have a sleepover. Because your son is unwilling to give any details about the sleepover I would also say no. But only because he's being vague.
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muttleynfelix
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Post by muttleynfelix on May 20, 2013 10:11:16 GMT -5
My kids are babies, so no sleep overs yet. My coworker's 19 year old is about to move out of the house, but he has sleepovers all the time. Mostly at my co-worker's house because her son had the walkout basement all to himself while the master suite is the second floor of the house.
I didn't have or do a lot of sleepovers as a kid. Mainly because I was in different activities than my friends. My parent's allowed us to go to all night parties for special events - prom, cast parties after plays, things like that. My brother hosted a couple cast parties (that was his thing, not mine). No booze, no sex, they were co-ed and a lot of people spent the night. I did all night after-prom parties both my junior and senior years. One was a school sponsored party. The other was at a friend's house. No booze, no sex. Had a blast.
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sheilaincali
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Post by sheilaincali on May 20, 2013 10:44:52 GMT -5
In April I went to a ladies scrapbooking weekend with a good friend of my from high scholl. Back in the day we were BFF's but lost touch and have now reconnected. Her SIL happened to be with us (total of 11 ladies). So C (The SIL) says "Oh R, you'll have to tell your parents again how much I love that couch from their family room that they gave us for our family room. That thing is so big and comfy!" R and I looked at each other and just started laughing. C was demanding to know what was so funny. We rattled off a list of parties and co-ed sleepovers and things that had taken place in that family room. After C found out how many people had had sex on that couch she called her husband and said "Burn that couch Sheila and your sister had sex on it!" he says "Together?!?" She said "No, seperately but the list of teenagers that did it on the sofa or threw up on that thing is growing by the minute and I want it out of the house before I get back home". Poor C she was not amused to find out the history of that couch.
In the end that had it professionally cleaned but she was still bitching a month later. Said every time they try to sit on the couch to watch a movie or tv all she can think of is horny teenagers.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on May 20, 2013 10:58:44 GMT -5
I asked my sister and she said when her kids were late teens they would often sleep over, or have friends sleep over. But, it wasn't like a big party thing, it was more like a "I don't want to drive home" thing - even if it was set up in advance. My nieces and nephew went to a private school that was quite a few miles away, and drew kids from a pretty big area. So, their friends may have lived 25-30 miles away, all city. I can understand why not having your kids driving long distances at 11 or 12 on a Saturday night makes sense. So, just sleeping over after the movie makes sense.
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Wisconsin Beth
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Post by Wisconsin Beth on May 21, 2013 9:00:40 GMT -5
My sister's girls (now 18 and 20) did sleepovers until recently. The 18 year old (holy hell, she's graduating this weekend!) would have a pack of girls over after Prom parties and dances too.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on May 22, 2013 8:00:53 GMT -5
My girlfriends and I did huge sleepovers until about the end of freshman year. DD was the same way. Then not again until the very end of hi school. DD did a senior sleepover with a ton of her girlfriends.
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perhaps
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Post by perhaps on May 22, 2013 9:17:39 GMT -5
I went to a catholic high school in the city. My friends were all from different suburbs. One friend lived 30 minutes from me. We did sleepovers almost every week-end thru highschool. It was alot easier than driving 20-30 minutes home at night.
We also did this when we were home on college breaks and over the summer. When we get together now we have great times remembering all the stupid, silly things we did.
As grown adults with our own families we try and have a girls week-end once a year. That reminds me we didn't get to do it last year......I need to make some phone calls.
I can't wait for DD to be old enough for sleepovers. She is 7 and only likes sleeping in her bed or in the same hotel room as DH and I. I think for her 8th bday I might try letting her have a few friends sleep over.
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