My five-year-old daughter has been invited to a sleepover for another little girl’s 6th birthday. It’s supposed to start at 5:30 pm and end at 5:30 pm on the next day. She’s very excited about the idea.
I think it’s a horrible idea. She’s just too young. I have suggested that she go for a few hours, but certainly not overnight, or 24 hours straight. My wife’s on the fence.
Keep in mind that we know jack about the parents hosting the sleepover.
What do all y’all think? Is 5 years old too young for a sleepover.
I’m not a parent, but five does sound too young for that long a visit to anywhere but, say, Grandma’s house without her parents. Especially if you don’t know the parents who are hosting the party. At that age, I’d think a couple of hours max would be appropriate for a birthday party.
Is it really 5:30-5:30? That’s friggin crazy! Unless you know the family well and your daughter feels comfortable with their family I don’t think she should sleep over; she might freak out in the middle of the night and have you pick her up tearful at midnight. I’d let her go in the evening, possibly stay over if she’s ready for it, but not till 5:30 p.m. the next day. That’s just too long.
Our son went on a sleepover party when he was six, but it was at the house of **Rhiannon8404’**s best friend, who she has known quite a bit longer than she has known me. But if we didn’t know the parents, no way.
I was about 5 (perhaps even 4) when I went to my first sleepover. I had fun.
I do, however, think 24 hours is a bit long for anyone to host a bunch of 5-6 year olds. Are those parents insane? I wouldn’t host it on a double-dog-dare.
If you don’t know the parents? Wouldn’t let my (potential) sprog do it. My first sleepover was at seven, but the children belonged to my mother’s best friend; one of my ickle cousins, who just turned six, recently slept over at a friend’s house…but the friend was living next door. A few hours seems doable, though.
The only reason that I could think of for a five-year-old to pass on a sleepover would be if the child is liable to get homesick at 10:00 p.m. (or 2:00 a.m!) and demand to go back to their own bed. If your child has any experience of travel or visiting grandparents or cousins when you are not there, that issue resolves itself. (I spent several nights away from my parents before I was five with no problems. I have also been present when other people’s young kids spent the night without problems.)
The 24 hour party, however, seems a bit much. I question the sanity of any parents who believe that they will successfully herd a group of other people’s five- and six-year-old kids for an entire day.
Which leads us to the final point: there may well be parents who could handle a motley assortment of other people’s children for 24 hours, but since you do not know the parents, you do not have a good way to assess their abilities.
I’d beg off on this one unless you think you can meet and assess the hosting parents between now and the party.
24 hours is out of the question. We’ve never even considered letting her stay the whole 24 hours.
My wife does know the parents, but only slightly. I do question the wisdom of hosting a large sleepover with several 5 to 6-year-olds, and therefore, am a little reticent to let my little girl stay with people who would be such gluttons for punishment.
My main concern is that she’s just too damned young. She hasn’t had any experience sleeping at other people’s houses without me or my wife. She slept with her grandparents in their camper the last time they came down until about 3 in the morning, when she begged them to take her back into the house. I am very concerned that she would, sooner or later, beg to come home.
I think we’ve decided to just take her for a few hours, and that’s all. Circumstances could change, I guess, but for now, that’s all we’re planning.
I was sleeping over with my best friend at that age, but the general rule of thumb at that time (not just with my parents, but with everyone’s parents) was that the whole thing ended between 9:00 and 10:30 a.m.
This was for the kids AND the parents’ sake. Get 'em up, feed 'em doughnuts, get 'em out the door. Whether it was one kid or twenty. (We had Brownie sleepovers at that age.)
IMHO, I would let her spend the night but come get her at her normal waking hour.
I agree with everyone else – too young. Sometimes you see the “half-sleepover” variant, where the kids wear their pajamas and stay up till ten o’clock at night, eating garbage and fooling around – and then the parent picks them up and they fall asleep in the car.
No good then, she’s already given experience of wanting to come home. It all depends on the child - like others, I was staying over as soon as I could, and actually never wanted to come home. But I remember girls who cried in the middle of the night to be take home. All they did was spoil it for everyone else, anyway.
Bah. The kid is 5, not 3. I say let her go. I’d just make it clear to her that if she has to be picked up at some obnoxious hour, she sure as hell is not going to another one for a while (unless she has to go home because she gets sick or something.)
Granted I don’t have children, so I’m not seeing the protective side of this and am instead mostly just remember how pissed I would have been if my parents had insisted on second-guessing me and deciding I couldn’t handle it (when I could and did.) It still has plenty of chance to become a complete disaster
BTW I agree that those parents are nuts. 24 hours of 5 and 6 yr olds? My head would explode.
I’m pretty sure I had my last sleepover party when I turned 11. By that point they were starting to turn into a “that’s what little kids do” sort of thing. This is not to say there wasn’t the occasional one at a friend’s in later years (hell I remember I went to one in highschool.)
Sorry, but unless I really knew the parents very, very well I would never even consider it.
I think you might have a problem, however, when you pick up your child and the other kids are all up having a grand ol’ time. Would you want to go home if your friends were all still having fun - even if you were only 5?
I’ll agree that the parents hosting the sleepover must be mad, but I don’t think that there’s necessarily any problem with a 5 yo at a sleepover. At the very worst, the kid will wake up crying at 3 am and want to go home, at which stage you get rung up, and pick them up to take them home. But that’s hardly the end of the world.
My mom always had this “too much fun” theory. I’m still pretty resentful of being dragged away from parties and the like (or forbidden to go for reasons stemming from some wierd algorith she had about the last time I did something fun and the duration of fun I had) while everyone else was still having a great time because my mom felt like I had passed some special point on the fun meter. I also think my social life suffered- I missed out on a lot of stuff because of my mom’s wierd ideas about what I could handle and I never really made up the social ground that I lost.
My daughter is 5, and I would not let her do it. I would say that the absolute earliest age for a sleepover would be 6.5, and then only with someone we know very well, across the street or something.
Those parents must be crazy. And I quite like 5 and 6-yo girls.
My daughter went to her first sleepover when she was five. She told me she was afraid that she would get homesick, and was considering backing out. I told her that if she needed to come home at 3 am then I would come and get her. I then told the hosting parents that I would appreciate a call to come and retrieve her regardless of the time, in front of my daughter. That reassurance allowed her to go to the sleepover and enjoy herself.
A few hours seems doable, though.
