In our parenting Quandaries, we pull from the comments, the weekly open thread or email a question that we know (or at least suspect) plagues more than one parent. You, the readers, provide the advice: How have you made this work better in your family?
This week’s quandary came via email from Andrea Pyros, author of the middle-grade novel “My Year of Epic Rock.”
Like many other families, we have rules for screen time with our children, who are 6 and 9. There’s a limited amount of TV watching/tablet playing allowed during the week, a bit more on weekends, and all bets are off on long plane rides, vacations visiting older cousins who are nose deep in their phones, and on those surprise snow days when I have a deadline and the kids won’t leave me alone. And no gadgets in the bedroom.
Last week my 9-year-old daughter invited two friends over for a sleepover. Both of her guests showed up with shiny new devices they had received as Christmas presents, and the three girls proceeded to spend the evening rotating among Subway Surfer, Temple Run and Animal Jam.
Other than eating dinner and a brief foray playing with hair chalk, they didn’t seem at all interested in doing anything but hanging out and gaming. My suggestion that they do a craft was a bust. (Sorry, bottlecap necklace kit, maybe next time.) So I left them to their own devices, as it were.
It was bedtime that had me stumped. This was my first experience having kids come over with iPod Touches. My past bedtime rules for my daughter’s sleepovers were limited to making sure they all brushed their teeth, got into their sleeping bags and kept the noise level down low enough that they wouldn’t wake our younger child. This time, I asked the girls to power down their tech at around 9:30, figuring they would stay up talking and drift off when they got sleepy enough.
And soon enough, there was total silence from the bedroom and I was patting myself on the back for getting them down at a reasonable hour. Until 11, when my daughter came racing into our bedroom to ask if we would charge her Kindle, which I hadn’t taken out of her room. When I asked why she was still up and still playing Subway Surfer, she explained, “We got bored,” looking not bored so much as exhausted and slightly wild eyed. I went back in and did another round of “good night” and “sleep well” and “try to get some rest.” Again, quiet. Then at around midnight, one of our guests, who it turns out had been texting her parents on and off all evening, asked to be picked up.
So, yes, I clearly lost control of the sleepover, but I’m still at sea on what to do next time. If the goal is to let them have fun and no one needs to get up early for school, then what’s the harm in gaming late on a non-school/special night? Besides, taking away gadgets from my kids at bedtime is one thing. Taking someone else’s device feels like overreach. I know, it’s my house and my rules, but I’m uncomfortable snatching away a prized possession a child brings over.
Still, I do have a wish that sleepovers be somehow wholesome: full of crafts and socializing and baking cookies together (what would Laura Ingalls Wilder do?). And though I’m sure I was watching TV with my friends until all hours and not learning to knit, I still don’t feel quite O.K. about all this.
My daughter and the friend who had spent the night woke up in good spirits and happy. No one was the worse for wear. But I recognize these evenings are only going to get trickier as my children get older. By the time I was in sixth grade, slumber parties careened from “Light as a feather, stiff as a board” to “Let’s go around the circle and we’ll each say one thing we don’t like about you,” and “Who do you have a crush on? I promise no one will tell.”
There were tears, hurt feelings and drama that extended into the following school week. I realize I won’t be able to shield my kids from these moments, but the thought of adding social media and powerful, tiny computers that can do anything to the mix seems terrifying.
For wiser parents with older children, what do you suggest? Should I assume that sleepovers mean it’s going to be a late night with none of the usual routines about bedtime or screen time, or should I be enforcing a “turn that thing off” rule, too? Do I ask the other parents beforehand how they would like me to handle things? Do you go over expectations beforehand with your own child? As my friend Holly says: “They go through life with their noses buried in a screen. I get it. Sort of. But I don’t like it.”
Sleepovers are a chance for kids to socialize with friends and build relationships and learn to be good hosts and for the guests to have a taste of independence from their own families in a safe, supervised setting. I’m just not sure their tiny, extremely entertaining gadgets are going to provide all of that.