by Sora Millay

Created on: April 27, 2008

If you allow your child to go to co-ed camps, why not sleepovers? Also, I want to point out that if your teen is asking you for permission to have a sleepover in the first place, he or she is exhibiting trust in you, and in good faith, expecting the same from you.

From what I know from being an educator, troubled or rebellious teens seldom ask permission for anything they want to do. As many people here have already pointed out, if your teen wants to experiment sexually, he or she has multiple opportunities to do it outside of the home.

That being said, there are a few things you should consider. Firstly, do you know your teen's friends? Are they the sort that respect rules and authority? If your teen's well-behaved but his or friends are not, then yes, I agree it's asking for trouble. But it's actually as simple as asking for their families' contact numbers on the pretext of possible emergency use. Once they know that you can call up their parents anytime you want, they ought to be on their best behaviour.

You will also need to be around to supervise the teens, and to set clear boundaries, e.g. girls' rooms are off-limits, all doors to be open in any room where the boys and girls are together. Let them know you'll be getting up in the middle of the night to do surprise patrols, so they know you mean business. While this may mean extra effort for parents, you should take this as very useful early training for the teens in having discipline and in keeping their word (and you'll better appreciate what we teachers have to do on all the camps we organise). I also think you'll find that the additional effort may pay off when your child goes off to college. If you've overly shielded your child from exposure to the opposite sex growing up, the lack of experience and contact is going to be an explosive and dangerous mix in an environment where there is almost no supervision.

But in the end, I think it boils down to the maturity of your teen and the kind of relationship you have with him or her. Have you talked about sex and its consequences? Have you talked about taking personal responsibility? Have you talked about peer pressure and how to resist it? Do you have an honest and open relationship with your child?

If so, then allowing your child to organise a sleepover, with you as custodian, is going to build on that trust, and help him or her to exercise active responsibility.

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