Tim was thrilled with the plan for his friend Austin’s 12th birthday party on Saturday night: laser tag at a nearby entertainment facility, pizza and ice cream for dinner, flashlight tag in the yard after dinner, and then hunkering down in sleeping bags with a bunch of his favorite guys. Past experience caused him to suspect waffles and bacon would likely appear at breakfast time, too.
So I can’t use any apprehensions on Tim’s part as an excuse for my own edginess as I locked up our house before going to bed on Saturday. I always get a little edgy when either of the kids is away for the night, even though I tell myself I shouldn’t.
Tim wasn’t far away, and he was in a house I knew well with a family I knew well. He was just as safe and sound there as at home, and I’m not by nature a worrier anyway. Besides, I love the idea of sleepovers. I have so many happy memories of sleepovers with friends from my own childhood. I should celebrate Tim’s opportunity to do this.
And yet when one family member is out of the house for the night, things just don’t feel quite right.
It’s a little hypocritical of me, because in theory I love the idea of the kids going off to do things without us. Not because I want to be rid of them but because I want them to have that kind of life, one replete with outside influences and opportunities to try different options. Growing up, even without traveling far I learned so much about diversity on the most granular level by spending time with families other than my own: families I babysat for, friends’ families, even relatives. I like it when my kids come home from sleepovers with interesting observations about a household practice or tradition different from our own.
But at the same time, it unnerves me just a little when I don’t know where they are or how they are doing. Walking past their empty bedrooms at night gives me a pang of anxiety: why aren’t they here at home in bed? Well, because they’re sleeping somewhere else for one night. And there’s really nothing wrong with that. Some parents whose children cannot experience simple joys like sleepovers, for any of a variety of reasons, yearn for the pleasure of knowing their child has been invited to a slumber party.
So I try to suppress my mild anxiety as I lock the front door and check that the oven is off. Barring unforeseen problems, Tim will be home in the morning, happy and tired, brimming with tales of the party but also glad to be home. I’ll be glad to have him home, too. Seeing your children head out for a night or two is a positive thing, but welcoming them home is even better, and it’s wonderful to know that chances are, all four of us will go to sleep under the same roof tonight.
Showing posts with label sleepover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleepover. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Monday, November 9, 2009
My son had a sleepover - and I got a good night's sleep
I’m starting the work week well-rested and cheerful. The house is neat, the bathrooms are clean, the refrigerator is stocked, my patience is untried.
This is notable only because my 11-year-old son invited three friends to a sleepover this weekend. It was an event I approached somewhat grudgingly, knowing that two months after his birthday we owed him some kind of celebration but still not genuinely enthusiastic about the plan to fill up his room with fifth grade boys for the night.
I worried that they’d be loud and messy and rude – not because any of these particular boys has ever shown any of these qualities to me, but because I had an innate wariness about combining that many male tweens and being responsible for them for eighteen hours.
But I needn’t have worried. Beyond not being any trouble, it was a delight to spend time with the four of them together. They played football in the driveway. My husband took them bowling and out for pizza. They played pool in our attic, raved about the ice cream pie I served after dinner, were kind (or at least exhibited an absence of unkindness) to Holly, played Wii into the wee hours, went to bed at the agreed-upon time (11, so not a huge sacrifice, but still), slept until 7, woke cheerful, raved about the pancakes and bacon I made for breakfast, trooped out to the barnyard to help me feed the cows and let out the sheep, worked on making a poster together, and packed their stuff up when it was time to leave.
They are great boys, and my son is so lucky to have such kind friends. Holly has wonderful friends too, and I feel fortunate on both of their behalves. So much rides upon the question of who your child makes friends with – and there’s so little a parent can do about it. Worst-case scenarios can have unthinkably awful consequences, but even middling scenarios can keep a parent awake at night, stressing out over a child’s dangerous liaisons. My children have both been lucky enough to find peers who are thoughtful, self-disciplined and generous.
That’s not to say we won’t face any friendship problems going forward. Tim already seems to be quite effective at deciding whom he wants to hang out with and whom he wants to stay away from, but Holly is immersed in more of a typical girlhood, and no doubt there will be drama along the way. In fact, I fully admit it’s likely she’ll be the one causing the drama sometimes. I try to teach her to be a good friend, but as Rosalind Wiseman writes about in Queen Bees and Wannabes, girls find their way into a quagmire of social issues despite our best intentions.
Be that as it may, right now I’m still ensconced in a cheerful glow from our wonderful weekend with Tim’s friends. They played outside; they left the bathroom neat; they didn’t keep anyone else awake at night. They complimented my cooking. (Ice cream pie and pancakes: you could argue that those are two can’t-misses, but still. They could have eaten and kept silent rather than complimenting.) Almost every day I feel grateful for my own kids. Today I feel additionally grateful for the terrific kids with whom my children surround themselves.
This is notable only because my 11-year-old son invited three friends to a sleepover this weekend. It was an event I approached somewhat grudgingly, knowing that two months after his birthday we owed him some kind of celebration but still not genuinely enthusiastic about the plan to fill up his room with fifth grade boys for the night.
I worried that they’d be loud and messy and rude – not because any of these particular boys has ever shown any of these qualities to me, but because I had an innate wariness about combining that many male tweens and being responsible for them for eighteen hours.
But I needn’t have worried. Beyond not being any trouble, it was a delight to spend time with the four of them together. They played football in the driveway. My husband took them bowling and out for pizza. They played pool in our attic, raved about the ice cream pie I served after dinner, were kind (or at least exhibited an absence of unkindness) to Holly, played Wii into the wee hours, went to bed at the agreed-upon time (11, so not a huge sacrifice, but still), slept until 7, woke cheerful, raved about the pancakes and bacon I made for breakfast, trooped out to the barnyard to help me feed the cows and let out the sheep, worked on making a poster together, and packed their stuff up when it was time to leave.
They are great boys, and my son is so lucky to have such kind friends. Holly has wonderful friends too, and I feel fortunate on both of their behalves. So much rides upon the question of who your child makes friends with – and there’s so little a parent can do about it. Worst-case scenarios can have unthinkably awful consequences, but even middling scenarios can keep a parent awake at night, stressing out over a child’s dangerous liaisons. My children have both been lucky enough to find peers who are thoughtful, self-disciplined and generous.
That’s not to say we won’t face any friendship problems going forward. Tim already seems to be quite effective at deciding whom he wants to hang out with and whom he wants to stay away from, but Holly is immersed in more of a typical girlhood, and no doubt there will be drama along the way. In fact, I fully admit it’s likely she’ll be the one causing the drama sometimes. I try to teach her to be a good friend, but as Rosalind Wiseman writes about in Queen Bees and Wannabes, girls find their way into a quagmire of social issues despite our best intentions.
Be that as it may, right now I’m still ensconced in a cheerful glow from our wonderful weekend with Tim’s friends. They played outside; they left the bathroom neat; they didn’t keep anyone else awake at night. They complimented my cooking. (Ice cream pie and pancakes: you could argue that those are two can’t-misses, but still. They could have eaten and kept silent rather than complimenting.) Almost every day I feel grateful for my own kids. Today I feel additionally grateful for the terrific kids with whom my children surround themselves.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Slumber parties, sleepovers and other rites of passage
Holly invited her friend Samantha for a sleepover. As the hosting mom, I got off easy: we were all at the same multi-family dinner party earlier and didn’t get back until 9, so I didn’t have to plan dinner for them or any early-evening activities. Now it’s late-ish and they should be in bed, but I’m having so much fun listening to them chatter and play that I can’t bring myself to enforce any sensible rules just yet. They set up a spa of sorts (proving, I suppose, that the spa concept is archetypal, since I don’t think either of them necessarily knows what a real spa is) for stuffed animals. They laid out a bath towel on the hall carpet and arranged some jewelry, hair accessories and art supplies on it; now they’re giving each stuffed animal a bath in the bathroom sink. “You can rent towels, soap and Q-tips,” Holly told Samantha. “It’s $100; that’s all.” “That’s ALL?” Samantha gasped, certain that $100 was unreasonable for some soap, Q-tips and a crayon or two, even at an upscale spa. “Well, it’s only pretend money,” Holly said, showing Samantha a sheaf of bills that she’d removed earlier from the Monopoly game.
I know they should go to bed soon, but they’re having so much fun and it reminds me that for all the activities our kids do that I could not even imagine when I was their age – the Wii games, the movies-on-demand on TV and DVD, the Build-a-Bear workshops and pottery painting parties – there are simple pleasures that need no frills, and a sleepover is one of them. Girls are happy just to have the novelty of spending the night at each other’s houses.
I have wonderful, cozy memories of sleepovers from when I was growing up. I remember the homey security of my friend Carol’s house, where we’d play with her guinea pigs and be teased – in an altogether welcome way – by her brother. I remember my friend Jennifer’s yearly slumber parties, at which we’d eat mini Milky Ways from the freezer all night long and play Truth or Dare out on the lawn. (The other girls always chose Truth, because they had spicier tales to tell. I chose dare, because I didn’t, and usually ended up running down to the riverbank and back in my bare feet.) I remember sleepovers with my friend Julie in high school when we’d stay up so late and get so tired that we’d start hallucinating while we were talking, and other times when we’d get the notion to go walking in the woods behind my house in the wee hours, scaring ourselves with the strange shapes of tree stumps and branches. (Wandering around outside was not uncommon at sleepovers when I was growing up. That’s the one thing I did that I can’t imagine letting my kids and their friends do, but at the time, we’d never heard scary stories about kids getting hurt in the woods.) I remember the party when my friend Hope turned twelve: her mother brought us to the movie “Grease,” and then we stayed up all night watching Saturday Night Live and reading Seventeen Magazine and I was as happy as I could possibly imagine being.
So if Samantha and Holly end up with cozy memories, friendship memories, from tonight, it’s fine with me if they stay up a little later than they should. They can sleep late tomorrow. They’re still so young and may have a very long friendship ahead of them; if this is one of the steps along the way, I’m happy to be a part of it.
***
Running Streak Day 769: I spent the whole day writing and finally fit in 1.4 miles, up to the soccer fields and back, at 5:45. Hoping for longer runs this weekend.
I know they should go to bed soon, but they’re having so much fun and it reminds me that for all the activities our kids do that I could not even imagine when I was their age – the Wii games, the movies-on-demand on TV and DVD, the Build-a-Bear workshops and pottery painting parties – there are simple pleasures that need no frills, and a sleepover is one of them. Girls are happy just to have the novelty of spending the night at each other’s houses.
I have wonderful, cozy memories of sleepovers from when I was growing up. I remember the homey security of my friend Carol’s house, where we’d play with her guinea pigs and be teased – in an altogether welcome way – by her brother. I remember my friend Jennifer’s yearly slumber parties, at which we’d eat mini Milky Ways from the freezer all night long and play Truth or Dare out on the lawn. (The other girls always chose Truth, because they had spicier tales to tell. I chose dare, because I didn’t, and usually ended up running down to the riverbank and back in my bare feet.) I remember sleepovers with my friend Julie in high school when we’d stay up so late and get so tired that we’d start hallucinating while we were talking, and other times when we’d get the notion to go walking in the woods behind my house in the wee hours, scaring ourselves with the strange shapes of tree stumps and branches. (Wandering around outside was not uncommon at sleepovers when I was growing up. That’s the one thing I did that I can’t imagine letting my kids and their friends do, but at the time, we’d never heard scary stories about kids getting hurt in the woods.) I remember the party when my friend Hope turned twelve: her mother brought us to the movie “Grease,” and then we stayed up all night watching Saturday Night Live and reading Seventeen Magazine and I was as happy as I could possibly imagine being.
So if Samantha and Holly end up with cozy memories, friendship memories, from tonight, it’s fine with me if they stay up a little later than they should. They can sleep late tomorrow. They’re still so young and may have a very long friendship ahead of them; if this is one of the steps along the way, I’m happy to be a part of it.
***
Running Streak Day 769: I spent the whole day writing and finally fit in 1.4 miles, up to the soccer fields and back, at 5:45. Hoping for longer runs this weekend.
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