13 Year Old and Sleepovers

At 13, my daughter and her group of friends were always spending the night at each other's houses. Otherwise, they spent the evening on the phone with each other or playing games on line. I think a lot depends on what they are spending all their time on and if they are supervised by the other parents. This week she is probably bored staying home, so if she gets an invite and the parents are home from work this week, I would let her go.

My daughter is 14 and is always having sleepovers. She just had one last week with 3 girls and the next day with a different one. She does go to other friends too once in awhile. She even has sleepovers on nights we have to go to work and she is off of school. I never had any sleepovers, but then again I had a family of 12 and didn't have room for anyone. We have an extra guest room, which they only use once in awhile. Otherwise, they sleep on the sofa or use a sleeping bag. I don't mind as long as they are quiet. They normally stay up late too. I hope this helps.

When I was 13 I was NEVER home! It was a running joke that when the weekend came, I was a ghost! I had a really good group of friends and I think we rotated houses every weekend night :) Great memories! I guess I think if you're not going to be home during the day, she's probably bored. 13 year old girls are highly social animals. They have a lot of very 'important' and life changing events to discuss. :) Maybe she could just go spend the day with her friend while you're at work?

as long as grades are good and no dicipline problems, let her stay the night at her friends house...it gets boring being there home alone all day with nothing to do. at least let her spend the day with her friends.

i always had someone over or going somewhere...no harm in it

yes, this is normal! Let her go, let her have fun with her friends.....just make sure you know there's parental supervision & controls.

& this is not just girls.....but the guys do it, too!

Be firm because they can be doing a lot at these sleepovers. There's the internet for one thing. The problem is that they can actually be out but you can always reach them on their cell phones so you wouldn't have any idea. Call the homes of where they are supposed to be staying the night. Ask the parent to put your daughter on the phone. Make some phony excuse for calling so it's not so obvious that you are checking. I'm not saying that she's a bad girl but it's the age and the friends so you have to snoop around a little. I don't like sleepovers, either, and don't encourage them with my kids.

Sounds like she's lonely. Sounds like she has no siblings at home. Maybe she just needs some girls around that are her age (not grandma or mom). I agree that there is no need for sleepovers every weekend. However, it sounds like she just wants to hang out with someone. I am assuming that she is not allowed to have friends in the house when you are not home? Is she allowed to be at a friend's house, during the day, when you and your husband are at work. She is a teenager, boredom can lead to worse things when you have too much time on your hands. Maybe you can make a deal with her to hang out at a friend's house during the day when you are both at work. That might help her ease up on the need to sleepover. Just a thought. I slept over at friend's houses but not every weekend. Definitely more during summer and when we were out of school on break.

I'd be glad she has close friends. As long as you are comfortable with her friends, and have met their parents, let her enjoy time with her friends.

I grew up isolated on a farm and was very shy, with few friends. I ended up staying home alone so many nights. How very lonely.

Middle school is tough.. and I do remember trying to have a sleepover somewhere every weekend... although it usually ended up being at my house most often.

My thought is that you need to have a realistic "rule" about sleepovers. Maybe one night each weekend is fine, but the other night she needs to sleep at home. During vacations... have a 50/50 rule with her as well. It is possible that she's bored. If she's home all day by herself, it may be more fun to be a friend's house. If you trust her and the other parents are also comfortable with it, could she invite ONE friend over while she's home? Rent movies, grandma supervises or helps order lunch, something?

Sleepovers are huge with girls, no matter what the age and your daughter is looking to connect with her friends. Comprimise with her, but remember that time with mom & dad is important to remain connected during these years.

This is definitely the time to try to reign her in and not let things go too far. At 13 sleepovers are all about staying up and she needs to have regular sleep, so I'd be with you that all in moderation. I go thru this with my 16 year-old, too. She'd be gone 6 out of 7 days if we let her! It's a holiday weekend, so there's lots going on at your place, let her know that and you may need her help and it might be difficult getting her places, etc. Sometimes we have to resort to logic, LOL, but they need little does of reality sometimes, too.

Me and my friends had sleepovers pretty much every week. Sometimes my friend would spend Friday and Saturday night at my house. Even on school nights she would sleep over and ride the bus with me.

This is your chance at her age to show her that you will stick to your guns, you will have family time, and that she will follow a path that you trust. Middle school, early high school is when the experiementation is at full throttle. Drinking, drugs, passout type games, suicide, and pregnancy. When you do have her stay home make sure you are a participant in her life and she is in yours, whether it's conversation, keeping her in the family living space and not hiding out in her room, watching movies together. Just making sure she knows, you care, will always be there for her and explaining what that means. I do think that 2 times a month is plenty for sleepovers as it taxes the parents and the kids at this age still need good sleep, which last time I was at a sleep over it didn't involve a wink of sleep, it involved sneeking out of their house and going to another house where the p's weren't home and figuring out what coloring was needed in water to replace the level of alcohol in each bottle. Even if you have the good kid, don't let them fool you.

I agree with a lot of the other moms. Every weekend is too much. And you don't want her to wear out her welcome at anyone elses home. There is so much going on these days that we don't want to expose our children to. I would think maybe once a month should be enough. Maybe she could take up a dance class or ice skating class on the weekend to give her some regular weekend activities.

My youngest does sleepovers all the time (just turned 14). Whether I say yes to a sleepover is mostly based upon what activies are going on with our family. I try to make sure she has a good balance (alone time, family time, friend time, actual sleep time). Of course, this all goes along with the basic rules of school and chores come first.

In your case, if your daughter is going to be home by herself all day, I'm sure she's going to get bored and lonely. If I was in the same situation, I would allow her to have a friend over to spend the night.

I think every weekend is a bit much, but I am old school. When I was growing up I could have a sleep over every once in awhile and I could go to one once in awhile but definately not every weekend. My daughter doesn't get to go to sleepovers especially to houses where I have just met the parents. There are too many strange things that go on in peoples homes that you don't see in a brief meeting and definately not in a phone call. Do they have alcohol where children can get to it, do they have a gun in the house, are there older brothers or other males in the home, and in these times you have to worry about the girls too. Homosexuality seems to be the new thing to do or try. At 13 they are not really ready to handle the pressure of being able to say no or I don't think that is cool. They want to fit in at all cost. You can control what goes on in your house but that is the only house you control.

I have sons. One of my sons was at many sleepovers. I am going to say this, stay firm and don't permit her to be on a lot of them. Fast forward a number of years, he is now twenty and I feel he was on too many of them and the results are not good. I had to have him hospitalized eventually, I suspect drug use at these, actually am pretty sure and he had an emotional breakdown among other things and I feel that my excitement over him having friends did not include the things that happened that I found out about later. If she wants overnighters so much (not saying ever) she can have them later in life and she can complain to therapists about overprotective moms. I am convinced there is no such thing as overprotective.There is oftentimes too much freedom. At first it seemed so wonderful, but as time evolved and he was used to it, it got out of control and worse things happened. Stop it while you can.

My 9 year old asks for sleepovers all the time but askin' ain't gettin'! We allow them once a month if her behavior and school are going well. She doesn't get much sleep when she's somewhere else and she's crabby the next day. For us it's not so much about spending the night somewhere else but more about giving her a reward for good behavior and keeping her from being crabby on weekends.

I never had sleepovers or went to them. It just wasn't something we did. But my girls want to do them all the time. At 11, they think it is the best thing, and my son loves it when they sleep over somewhere else. Friday they wanted to sleep over at their friends' cousin's house. They had fits because I told them no. I don't know who the people are or where. Or who would be in the house. They want to sleepover or have a sleepover all the time and don't quite get that there is a point that it is too much. They have their fits and move on from there--the fit doesn't last too long. With tweens and early teens, it seems like parents have their own "just say no" campaign going on. And I totally agree that it is important to know who is in the house and meet the parents when a sleepover happens.

It is apparent, not only from the pressures teenagers put on parents but also from thousands of text and Facebook messages supplemented by hundreds of smart phone calls a month they generate that they are irresistible target for our profit-seeking corporations as the latest fad (from this and that music group and this and that clothing outfits) is inevitable end of all this "must be part of/must have" shaping of future consumers and workers.

When enough is enough? We are taught to be permissive, sorry, accommodating, as long as safety etc. seem to be assured. Being alone, on a top of that away from electronic media might even suggest lack of being accepted by peers, a mortal sentence to many.

I (we) prefer to stick with one (maximum two) sleepovers a month, unless there is summer or other school vacation (in such case 1 a week seems reasonable). One pragmatic reason for that is that not too much of sleeping actually takes place during these sleepovers and teenagers are notoriously known for sleep deprivation, while - looking at medical science - they might actually need an extra hour or two of a sound sleep compared to ES kids.

The fact that our school busing operations are set up as they are, HS kids on the bus at 6:05 am, MS kids at 7:05 am, and ES kids at 8:05 am, i.e. in essence in reverse order to their usual bed times, doesn't help in this much either.

One of the fundamental fact in support of "drastic" limitation of sleepovers (either in parentally supervised ones own home or reliably supervised other kids homes) is the fact that after so many hours and so many sleepovers statistical probability that due to boredom and need for stimuli and novelty all kinds of undesirable thoughts and activities in essence inevitably come to the surface. Let's be honest: If they - regardless how good or academically etc. oriented children not only at this age, even adults and college students are - have some serious or desirable interest and hobby they can as well devote themselves being alone, at their own home, safe.

In every group of people, teenagers included, are those with different life trajectory we like our own kids to be on. Spending dozens upon dozens of hours together, often hidden in different places of often cavernous houses today family homes are children do not devote themselves to educational or career preparation activities or even "innocent fun" we would like to believe. Yes, even the best one of them are - naturally - tempted by the lowest common denominator.

So, to defuse excuse for your child being ostracized as "socially not well adjusted and accepted" agreeing to a one-a-month sleepover clearly satisfy that criteria and legitimate need. Outside of that there seems to be no clear or even identifiable benefits from having more sleepovers above the mentioned guidelines until some department in some university in government-funded study will suggest what benefits are there from sleepovers and how it relates to children being better prepared for challenges of tomorrow and future in general.

Note: Might that be possible to set up your website in the way that instead of "5 Moms agree with this" we read "5 people agree with this"? as it is not only moms or even daddys who read and comment here? Thank you.