Oh, Give the Kid a Break!

Look out, the helicopter parents are hovering ever closer, and they’ve devised a new way to over-monitor their poor kids.

It’s called a “sleepunder.”

Get it? Much, much safer than exposing your precious one to danger during a sleepover!

I had never heard of this new trend (my kids, who loved sleepovers, are now in their 30s) until I read about it recently in the New York Times’ “Style” section.

“Parents are experiencing more anxiety in general these days,” wrote reporter Erin Sagen. “There is an increased awareness of issues like sexual abuse and gun violence.”

But as the story went on to note, parents who are anxious and overly cautious “can cause anxiety problems for children who are forbidden to take age-appropriate risks and therefore build a healthy sense of resilience and autonomy.”

What happens at a “sleepunder”? Children are dropped off at a friend’s house for a few hours but then Mommy or Daddy comes back at a late hour — it can be as late as 2 or 3 a.m. — to rescue the child from potential harm!

The Times talked with Qarniz F. Armstrong, a mother of three, ages 12, 14 and 20. She has never allowed her children to spend a night away from her. Not even another family member can be trusted to host a safe sleepover!

Armstrong believes that fetching her child at 2 or 3 a.m. rather than allowing a dreaded overnight is “a good compromise.”

Guess what —her offspring do not agree. Her oldest, Mecca, says, “I was definitely feeling left out a lot” because the other kids got to stay at a home for the entire night. Eventually his friends stopped inviting him and he was relieved because “I really did not want to be the only kid who had to go early.”

Nice going, Mom!

But she’s still at it, now with her younger ones. From the Times story: “She has a protocol she continues to follow: First she calls the parents to ask who’s going to be there, whether they have guns and what they plan to do for the evening. She then goes inside at the drop-off, greeting the parents and anyone there.”

The Times quoted a psychology professor who stated: “Sleepovers are a pretty normative part of U.S. kid culture. They give children an opportunity for real independence.”

My two daughters sure would not have been thrilled to see my wife or me show up at their friends’ homes at 2 a.m. to retrieve them. And I would have felt like a neurotic narc.

When I discussed this new phenomenon with my elder daughter Natalie, she noted, “Sexual abuse and gun violence can happen before 2 or 3 a.m.” She has many fond memories of the sleepovers which she somehow survived and lived to talk about.

My younger daughter Charlotte wrote me a passionate email when I asked her about sleepovers vs. sleepunders. Here it is:

“Sleepovers are a fundamental joy of adolescence. Some of my fondest memories as a child feature that giddy feeling of knowing I had an impending sleepover scheduled for the end of the week, or even better than that, having a daytime playdate turn into a sleepover after my friend and I successfully convinced our parents to let me please please please stay the night! 

“Sleepovers are where I forged my closest bonds as a kid, and made important, coming-of-age core memories. Learning how to put on eyeliner and mascara at sleepovers were big life lessons for me, frenching-braiding each others' hair, playing dress-up. I remember choreographing dance routines at sleepovers despite not being able to dance a lick compared to my hyper-feminine soccer teammate friends. Staying up into the wee hours of the night on air-mattresses in unfinished basements watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns on Nick @ Nite. We always ate pizza or greasy Chinese food followed by mugs of ice cream doused in chocolate syrup. 

“There's a magic and a mystique to sleepovers, because they promise that the fun never has to end. You don't have to say goodbye when the sun sets or it's "time for bed." Because at a sleepover, it's never actually "time for bed." It's the one scenario as a child when it feels like the rule-book has been thrown out of the window, and you and your friends can let loose, can let your freak flags fly. Free from the shackles of school-night vegetables, homework, and screen time rules, sleepovers represent unbridled ecstasy and limitlessness.”

What more is there to say, except: lighten up, you worrywart parents!