reality check + why are sleepovers normal

Floralie wrote:the families I visited were lot nicer and healthier environment than our own home. It was like peeking into normality for one night.

This was true for me, also. My parents weren't protective--quite the opposite--so I was able to stay at friends' homes pretty much every Saturday night if I wanted to. There was one family I was especially close to (our parents were friends also, and they had three kids--one my brother's age and two close to my age), and I stayed over there a lot until they moved away when I was 10. Then I stayed with other school friends.

To see that there were families that ate meals together, had parents who seemed to at least like each other, had mothers who cared about sleep, clean hands, manners, good behavior toward others, looking presentable, etc, was really useful, even if I was raised to think of our way of doing things as better and to think of "normal" as boring.

We felt uncomfortable around 'normal families' and ashamed. Never knew how to act and paranoid at a very young age, towards kind people. We just did not get that it could be real.

On the other hand our parents and their friends were proud or something for being...trash. Just like in your family, Gangs, 'normals' were seen as (gross and) boring (and dumb). It was a joke. And we were drilled with it for years and years.

But not all traumatized parents are like your parents, Floralie. Just like you're right about the whole world not being toxic and dangerous persé.

the whole concept of sleepovers is weird to me, i could count on one hand the amount of times i was allowed to have someone over, and they never wanted to come back again because of how coldly my parents treated them. i went to other people's sleepovers very rarely, i didn't live within walking distance of friends and there was no public transport nearby so if my parents refused to give me a lift, i couldn't go, so i was often left out of that kind of thing.

i think what most of the others here have said is a good idea - if you can meet the parents or have the kid over for a playdate, then i think sleepovers are a somewhat good idea for kids to socialise outside of school. but if you don't trust the parents or the kid or it just doesn't feel right, it's okay to say no.

also what TheGangsAllHere and Bejer said about family and "normal" being seen as boring really hit home with me. a lot of the scapegoating i went through at home revolved around how i was the "only boring one", meanwhile my sisters were interesting and unique and the "good" kind of different. i was unwell and didn't behave properly, i was a "bad" kind of different, but also "boring" because i was "too normal". it's something i've deeply internalised and up until now i've never seen anyone before who's had to deal with something similar.

sorry to jump in on what you were discussing, it just really resonated with me.

It's interesting knowing how different people reacted to the outside world. Sorry if that bothers anyone.

I never had sleepovers as a kid, but I didn't really have friends so that's not surprising. I was told from a very early age that certain things had to always be kept secret and I took that to heart. I didn't make friends with others kids because I couldn't let them know anything. So I never got invited to other kids houses and it would never have occurred to me to invite them.

The abuser thought it wasn't normal for me to not have friends and would arrange to meet other people and there kids at family friendly pubs and I would get told to play with them. But Z doesn't really understand play and would much rather have talked to adults because that was really the only way she could learn. We didn't learn to read until we were 10 and then home was so toxic we could barely do homework so independent study was impossible. So she would talk to adults about politics, religion, philosophy anything that helped her understand people. She would completely ignore the other kids.

And for us that relates to the original subject because not only do we believe people will hurt others (all people some just need the right provocation while other just enjoy it) but we don't understand why anyone would want a sleep over.

wow! what interesting and varied replies.

I really don't feel comfortable with it. I just feel like playdates are quite enough and we don't need to add overnights into the mix.

I do find it very weird how comfortable other parents are with sleepovers just being this accepted thing. what is the origin of a sleepover?

I think for me it really is a control + safety issue. there's no way I could handle it. I struggle with birthday parties and play dates. my daughter has a great deal of autonomy at home, where things are safe and boundaries are clear.

I don't know how safe other people's homes are. if parents are doing drugs in the garage. if cousins, uncle's, or brothers friends will be around the kids. if they might watch a horror movie like "IT". if there is uncontrolled access to firearms. if the parents might get into a bottle of wine and have a fight where someone gets smacked around. if there will be mean girls and bullying. I'm just not digging that. my daughter was allowed to have sleepovers with my friend that I knew for a dozen years because I was confident that her home was safe. and I sometimes watched her kids for trips and such.

I'm just not into sleepovers at my house or theirs if we don't have a close relationship. "they seem ok" is nowhere near good enough for me. I just have a blanket rule that we don't do sleepovers. kid is fine with this. she gets a gracious plenty of interaction with peers and fun activities. she doesn't ask or plead to do sleep overs.

and I'm not making friends with all the parents of my kids friends. I've got enough $#%^ to do. I feel like I've checked that sleepover box and wer'e good. she's socialized.

I couchsurfed due to homelessness as a teen and was exposed to a variety of home environments and predators. I'm keeping my kid under my roof at night. her curfew might get later but she sleeps at home.

BeccaBee wrote:I'm just not into sleepovers at my house or theirs if we don't have a close relationship. "they seem ok" is nowhere near good enough for me. I just have a blanket rule that we don't do sleepovers. kid is fine with this. she gets a gracious plenty of interaction with peers and fun activities. she doesn't ask or plead to do sleep overs.

Makes sense. And if she doesn't feel deprived or left out, then there's no problem at all. You may get more pushback from her in 3-4 years, and may feel like she's better able to handle situations with less supervision as she gets older, but this sounds like it's working for you and her at this stage.

NyxX wrote:It's interesting knowing how different people reacted to the outside world. Sorry if that bothers anyone.

I never had sleepovers as a kid, but I didn't really have friends so that's not surprising. I was told from a very early age that certain things had to always be kept secret and I took that to heart. I didn't make friends with others kids because I couldn't let them know anything. So I never got invited to other kids houses and it would never have occurred to me to invite them.

The abuser thought it wasn't normal for me to not have friends and would arrange to meet other people and there kids at family friendly pubs and I would get told to play with them. But Z doesn't really understand play and would much rather have talked to adults because that was really the only way she could learn. We didn't learn to read until we were 10 and then home was so toxic we could barely do homework so independent study was impossible. So she would talk to adults about politics, religion, philosophy anything that helped her understand people. She would completely ignore the other kids.

And for us that relates to the original subject because not only do we believe people will hurt others (all people some just need the right provocation while other just enjoy it) but we don't understand why anyone would want a sleep over.

This hit me hard. I'm so sorry you went through all that. And it's great that you have your SO and a T you feel comfortable enough with to dó this. I think you're very smart, nice and motivated and you dit nót deserve that childhood.

Bejer wrote:We felt uncomfortable around 'normal families' and ashamed. Never knew how to act and paranoid at a very young age, towards kind people. We just did not get that it could be real.

I felt ashamed as well, but when my friends really didn't come to our house to see how we lived, I could fake to be normal better. But I do remember how amazed I was, when I was having a sleep over in my best friend's home, and we showered before night and I remember her dressing up after taking a shower. She got a full box filled with clean underpants. Of course I didn't say anything, I knew it was me lacking normal things, not her having huge amount of clothes, but to me it was just amazing. She had so many she could just choose which she wanted, when I had like two underpants myself, and only the other ones of those were the kind I could undress with someone seeing them. (If someone wonders, where I live kids go to shower at schools every time after sports. I know that doesn't happen everywhere in the world, but here it's normal to shower after sports in public showers.)

I do remember thinking about some things constantly. We don't use shoes inside in here, and I didn't have so many socks either, and the ones I had were broken. So I tried to fold them and walk the ways anyone wouldn't see the holes in them. My shoes weren't very good either, and I remember how shameful it was to walk with wet socks, and the wet marks could be seen after me on the floor.. I couldn't raise my hands, because I was thinking what if someone sees I am sweating under arms and my shirt is wet.. I was ashamed of everything all the time, but I had few friends when I was a child who didn't seem to care. And I think if we would have been from a happy home, all these little things probably would not have felt so shameful, a child can have wet socks and not be ashamed of it. It was all the things together and all the secrets at home why I realized every little detail all the time that could show others how different and wrong kind I am. It's really not a brainer why I grew to be a person who prefers her own company and escapes from the real world. Being around normal people was the walk of shame from the beginning to the end.

Bejer wrote:But not all traumatized parents are like your parents, Floralie. Just like you're right about the whole world not being toxic and dangerous persé.

I know. That s why I used the word trigger in there, I know it's because of my own traumas. We didn't have any normal activities, we didn't do anything or go anywhere as a family at all. I tried to have some hobbies few times, but it was just more to be ashamed of, so thinking about it feels claustrophobic. Not having sleep overs in a home that has other normal things, is not a big thing. But sleepovers meant so much to me in my childhood, that is how I see it.

Also like I said, there are really different kind of neighborhoods (and cultures!) I come from one of the worlds safest countries. In here there would be a real need to reality check if someone would worry about people having firearms in their homes, so that certainly is big difference where I come from and where BeccaBee comes from. Not all things can be compared, because environment is so different. It has been in the news papers lately how people from elsewhere see our country when they come to visit in here, and they are amazed about things that are really normal in here, but would never happen in other parts of the world or maybe wouldn't even be legal. Like for example kids traveling with buss or subway etc. without any adults in our capital city from about 7 years old up, on their way to school or friends home etc. But all that safety doesn't mean there wouldn't be drug abuse or child abuse in here at all. People are people everywhere. Certain kind of social problems are more common where there are more poor people and homeless people and really bad neighborhoods, but violence happens in wealthy homes too. Maybe it just doesn't happen as openly.