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What smarty-party-pants came up with the idea of a kid sleepover? Someone who was going out of town overnight? In our household, the sleepover is rarely a good idea. We all do best with a good night’s sleep. No one here is a natural early riser. We still enforce a fairly consistent bedtime at their age, which is SO NOT COOL, but the kids are happier and healthier that way. I am not particularly interested in being cool. Being cool is not my job. And as Bill Cosby once said, “Parents are not interested in justice, they’re interested in peace and quiet.” Amen to that. Everything is hunky-dory around here as long as things get quiet and everyone gets sleep. Me included.
Then the sleepover invitation arrives in the mail, or via the more spontaneous phone call. Dang! Now I have to be the bad guy, or live with the consequences. And the worst part? People do not even call it the right name, since we all know no one sleeps. It is a stayupover. Or a stayawakeover, maybe. Let’s just be frank about the situation.
Sometimes I do wish I could be a more Fun Mom, the host of the the house where all the kids gravitate. The one with endless patience for noise and chaos and general frivolity and merrymaking. I know women like that, and their kids seem well rested enough. Those moms are not wearing a straitjacket (unless they are wearing it to bed during a stayawakeover). I don’t want to be the host of the house with the wailing and gnashing of teeth of biblical proportions. Can’t we all just have some fun and then everybody catch some happy Zzzzzz?
Please?
Okay, okay, so it is a kid’s right of passage, to stay up all night. I am happy my kids have good friends who want to hang out and have fun. Everyone recovers and life goes back to normal (a mere 72 hours later). And normal only seems normal if something abnormal happens once in a while. Parenting provides such endless opportunities to be The Uncool Bad Guy for their own good and safety and character-building. I’ll try to lighten up about the sleeplessover, and have my own LetItGo-over. A GetOverItAlready-over. We can have a nap-over the next day.
Still, I am going to propose a radical idea to parents everywhere — the sleepmoreover. If we form a united front, perhaps we can convince them that sleep is the new cool…
jane, candid 
My friend refers to the “sleepover” as just an “over”, since there is no actual sleeping going on. I will join your cause. I, too, do not encourage the “over” because this old mom needs her rest!
I am one of those moms to whose house the kids tend to gravitate. Not because I am the Cool Mom, but because my husband is the Cool Dad. Please note the Cool Dad does not feel morally obligated to stay up until the last of the stayawakeover guests are asleep. The Not-So-Cool Mom, however, can’t rest until all the little darlings are fast asleep – usually sometime between 15 minutes and half an hour before their parents are due to pick them up the following morning.
Maybe my husband would feel the need to outlast the kids, and therefore would be less inclined to commit to sleepovers, if he were the one who had to replace the drop-in ceiling tiles my daughter’s 7-year old friend decided to remove from the basement.
Maybe he would rethink his stance if he knew the kind of questionable stuff kids can come across on Youtube if not properly monitored. I, for one, don’t want to have to explain to other parents why their kids’ education has become disturbingly well-rounded thanks to unchaperoned internet exposure between the hours of 3 AM and 5 AM.
In the meantime, I’ll try to rein in my husband and, when necessary, outlast the younguns.
Plus I’ll put high-powered sleeping medication in the Kool-Aid!!!
Ha! Good luck with that! (For what it’s worth, my teenagers are becoming increasingly enamored with sleep.