My Thoughts On Sleepovers (as a Mom who founded an Anti-Trafficking Nonprofit & Works in Child Safety)

This week I found myself explaining my thought process on sleepovers in a comment on Threads, and figured I would briefly share here as well. 

My kids are 13 and 6 now, but when my older kid was 9, it seemed like there were sleepovers pretty much every week. Since both my husband and I weren’t allowed to do sleepovers growing up (except at our grandparents’), it was a “no” from us both.

When my kid asked why, I responded that our family doesn’t do sleepovers because I can’t impose my own safety rules on someone else in their home. She was disappointed but understood. I’ve always been very firm about my duty to protect her above all else, and I explain as much of my reasoning as I can in an age appropriate manner. If it’s a birthday party, what we do instead is let her join in on activities and offer to pick her up late.

Despite trusting parents and all siblings in the home, here are some additional things that I consider:

-Whether someone else may drop by—a family member, friend, friend of a sibling. It would be exceedingly awkward to try to tell people who they can and can’t allow in to their own home. But as you may know, predators are more likely to be family members or family friends than a stranger. And though I knew my 9 year old was a walking red flag for that type of person, even the possibility of being placed in a situation where she would need to call for my help was not worth it to me. 

-Whether parents are as diligent as I am when it comes to screening apps, shows, movies etc. Especially now that we live in Portugal, we’ve found that a lot of people who don’t speak English as their first language tend not to apply as much meaning to inappropriate words or concepts as we do. At 13 years old, this matters a lot less, but it was definitely something I strongly considered when my kid was 9. After all, kids are more likely to be exposed to porn and other inappropriate content by other kids–and when I think back at my middle school days–yep, that tracks.

-Whether any adults in the home may have a drink of alcohol. Once again, this isn’t something I could comfortably tell someone not to do in their own home. And even if it was just a glass with dinner (which is very common here), everyone’s tolerance is different–some people do a 180 after a few sips, and others are completely unaffected after a bottle.

-Kids are most vulnerable between the ages of 0-7. About 3 years into running Humansave (my nonprofit that provides therapy to human trafficking survivors as young as 2) we started to notice a pattern: The vast majority (if not all) of the survivors we worked with were also victims of child sexual abuse, and the abuse occurred before the age of 7. At this age, regardless of whether they know what to do to protect themselves, they are very unlikely to be able to fight back against an adult. Since they are still beginning to develop their sense of self, they are also much more impressionable, and therefore easier to groom.

I want to make it clear that I’m not judging anyone who lets their kids partake in sleepovers–just as I’ve heard horror stories, I’ve heard how much fun people have had as well. I just wanted to offer my perspective in case anyone finds it helpful.

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