I was watching an episode of Diff’rent Strokes where Sam invites (the soon to be actress who played “Punky Brewster”) over for a sleepover. Of course Mr Drummond doesn’t realize she’s a girl.
Then the next show Webster came on and Webster invites “Tony” over and “Tony” turns out to be “Toni” a girl.
Now my question is for parents, I don’t care about scientific research or anything, I was just interesting in hearing a few opinions. In my day, (early 70s) parents would never have allowed mixed sleepovers.
But what do modern parents think? I’m talking about kids not into sex yet. I realize that kids are starting out younger and younger.
If you would allow a mixed sex sleepover, what age would you cut it off?
Really? I had overnight stays with female friends several times when I was a young’un in the late 1970s, and my overnight-approving mom was a fundamentalist Christian (if there’s any demographic likely to nix mixed sleepovers, I imagine that’s the one to beat).
That said, personal anecdote /= data, etc., and I’ll be interested to see how the thread goes, but color me surprised that it was a no-no then.
I think I went straight from “boys are yucky” to “bad idea” without stopping at any intermediate age where a mixed-sex, pre-teen sleepover would have made sense.
My best friend was a boy until we were about seven, and he and I had sleepovers all the time. His younger sister and my younger brother, and my younger sister and his younger brother, also had sleepovers until the ages of seven or eight. (Our moms were and are best friends, so the families see a lot of each other. The guy in question and I live in the same neighborhood (not where we grew up) and are still friends,which I think is awesome.) Nobody thought anything of it, and we’re Orthodox Jews, who also tend to be very careful about these issues.
I wouldn’t have been interested in it when I was nine or ten, which is what I guess the OP is asking about. I definitely thought boys were yucky at that point, and wanted nothing to do with them. My Jewish elementary school separated the boys and girls into separate classes in fourth grade (about age 9), and I can still remember the joy and relief we all felt on the first day of classes, having finally gotten rid of those loud, annoying boys.
While I was a nanny, I saw a few mixed sex sleep overs. There seems to be a short window of time where they worked. First of all a kid has to be old enough to sleep away from home. Most aren’t ready until they are at least 5 or 6. Then around 3rd grade kids start to think the other sex has cooties. So you really only have 2 or 3 years to do it.
They worked out fine in every case that I witnessed.
My son would love to have one. He has an equal amount of girl and boy friends at age 5. His small birthday party this past Oct. was half girls and half boys.
I am just way too lazy to do all the work that goes into a sleep over!
I also wondered this. On Dawson’s Creek, Joey and Dawson often sleep in the same bed, and it’s explained as they’ve been best friends since they were five, and oh no, now that they’re 15, what are they going to start doing? But you’d think they’d have stopped…well, a little beforehand, or that their parents would’ve put the kibosh on it earlier.
Wasn’t this the opening of Dawson’s Creek, with James van der Beek and Katie Holmes coming to realize that they’re getting too old to have sleepovers anymore?
Yes! I’m not the only one who watches it on these boards.
I watched the pilot recently, and Joey’s all, “Uh, maybe we shouldn’t sleep in the same bed now,” and Dawson basically convinces her to stay over anyway.
I never heard of it when I was a kid. I think we would have considered it very strange, in a ‘yucky boys’ way.
Nowadays, many people seem much less willing to have sleepovers at all–a lot of families just don’t do them, period. I think among the people I know who do allow sleepovers, the majority would not do mixed-sex overnights, on the premise that it’s not a precedent they want to set for the future. It’s easier to just not allow them in the first place than it is to set an arbitrary cut-off date, and mixed sleepovers aren’t necessary for anyone’s permanent wellbeing, so why go there?
My own 8yo might be happy to do such a thing if she could find any boys willing to come within 10 feet of a girl. She often comments on the way a lot of boys she used to play with now consider all girls to be walking cootie-contamination units, and giggles about how silly they are–she thinks it’s dumb to be ‘scared’ of the other sex. But OTOH she might think it was really weird to have a boy sleep over and see her in jammies–she has a lot of natural modesty and might think that just wasn’t right.
When I go to see my friend in Bama we stay at her house in part because our kids are friends. Mine is a 4 year old boy and hers is a 4 year old girl. They were in daycare together from before they were 1 and they are best friends. The kids usually sleep together. I am not sure when we’ll stop it but we’re both just kind of “go with the flow” kind of people so we’ll see. I think my 7 year old son could have a mixed sleepover and not think twice about it too. After all, he sleeps over at his friend’s house and said friend has a sister that is just a year younger.
Come to think of it, we have had family visits with friends where all the kids tried to sleep together (my two girls, their three boys), which we allowed. My friend and I were skeptical of the kids’ ability to go to sleep at all, and by 10 or so we had tired of the whole thing and I sent my girls to sleep in the bedroom with me. We tried it a couple of times but there was just too much overexcitement. That was when the kids were about 6 and 3 (plus one older boy of 9 too superior for the whole thing).
All our cousins on this continent, except one toddler, are girls, so we’ve never even had boy cousin sleepovers.
My best buddy was a boy through elementary and middle school. We even skipped a grade together. We were in the same “short bus kids” (hardee har har har) program together before we were mainstreamed into a public school – yeaaaah, we were speshul kiiiids we was.
Anyway. We had plenty of sleepovers and yes, well into middle school. 'Course, he turned out gay, but what the hell. I keep wondering if it was my fault…
Sometimes I wonder if it was truly sane on our parents’ part to allow all that, but to be honest, nothing ever happened. We were two peas in a pod, The Inseparables, as it were. No one ever batted an eyelash at it.
I was going to say I never had mixed sex sleepovers, but my brother and I are very close in age and there were plenty of times when we were each allowed to have a friend (or sometimes even two friends) sleep over on the same night, so that would be a de facto mixed sex sleepover.
What I mostly recall is a lot of good-natured “boys v. girls” competition, including board games, or trying to scare each other, or daring each other to do dumb stuff, and then someone would take it too far and someone else would cry. Good times, good times.
When my son was 8 (in third grade) he had a sleepover birthday party. 2 girls, 2 boys, they all stayed up late watching Pokemon and then slept in a big tent in the backyard.
Meanwhile, my gay friends in high school were all having one-on-one sleepovers with their flames and their parents didn’t notice a THING. So same-sex sleepovers aren’t exactly safe either!
My kid’s best friend was a girl and they did sleepovers all the time. He’s 32 now. As far as I know, the practice is pretty popular among the “under 15” group these days.
Not a parent but of parental age, and I’ve helped raise a little sister.
I say let them have their fun. I’m open and liberal about sex so if they want to sleep over, so long as I dont think there will be violence, then its ok by me. I couldnt care less if it descended into blowjobs and fondling
I keep wondering if it was my fault…
:eek: