A Slumber Party Podcast on Sleepovers

Sleepovers became popular in the U.S. in the 1950s, and over time they've become a tradition. How do you know when your kid is ready for sleepovers? Are co-ed sleepovers kosher? Tune in to learn more with Caroline and Cristen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From house stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. Or should I

(00:20):
have said welcome to us slumba potty? Actually no, well yeah,
because we're awake, were there? We are in sleeping bags,
but we're not sleeping. I'm wearing a high necked nightgown
and there's popcorn a popping And to kick things off,
I have a slumber party story. Please hit me. Well,

(00:44):
it has to do with losing a tooth. I have
there one of my front teeth, the one right next
to the second one over really makes note sense. I'm
going to post a picture of myself with a giant
arrow pointing to the tooth in question. Gin uh, it's
actually a fake tooth. Yeah you heard it her first, folks,

(01:07):
Christian's got a fake tooth. Because I was at a
slumber party when I was probably twelve eleven or twelve
years old, and we were all in the living room
and my sleeping bag was next to the fireplace. There
was some rough housing going on because it was late
at night and we'd probably had too many marshmallows, and

(01:27):
someone knocked over the fire poker and it landed on
It landed on my face, and it chipped off half
my tooth, and it really didn't I don't remember hurting
all that badly. I remember like laughing uncontrollably because of
all this silliness going on, seeing in slow motion of

(01:49):
fire poker coming towards my face, and then so I
being like, are you okay, and being like, yeah, I'm
totally oh, my tooth gone so and that in our
podcast on slubber Party, So anyone out there listening who
might have a slumber party coming up for whatever reason,
steer clear of the fireplace or any big blunt objects

(02:11):
that could knock a child in the face. When I
when people, when I tell people about my tooth, I
have to tell the whole story, because if I say
it got knocked out with a fire poker, it doesn't
go over quite as well. And then I hit him
back with a shovel. Um. Yeah, I I I myself
was not a very good sleeper over or um. Slumber

(02:32):
parties were better for me because I kind of knew
that I had to suck it up and and just
even if I didn't sleep all night, I just had
to lie there and not be the kid that went home.
Sleepovers were a lot more difficult for me. I think
maybe I had, oh, I don't know, like a handful
of successful ones out of the mini that I went to,
because as as I am now, I was a little

(02:54):
kind of anxiety written sleeper. I I I needed the
comfort of my bed, my own space. I had to
have the fan running. I didn't like being in different
environments that were unfamiliar and smelled weird. God, some people's
houses smell weird, and so I would often end up
calling my mother to come get me at like ten

(03:15):
or eleven and night. Oh you were one of those kids,
I was, Well, you're distinguishing between sleepover versus slumber party.
How would you well, slumber party I think of as
like birthday party or special event where there's like, you know,
a handful of girls, ten girls. However many um sleepover
I think of just as like your friend is inviting

(03:35):
you to come over on a Saturday, Friday night or
Saturday night, and then you go home in the morning.
But I usually went home at night. Yeah, I don't.
I don't know if it was because of the homeschooling aspect,
but sleepovers and slumber parties like I lived for them.
If I could have been a professional sleepover I would

(03:58):
have done it because I loved. One thing that I
really enjoyed about sleeping over at kids houses was the
next morning the cereal because my mom Wis bought super
healthy cereals, so we had it was a staple of
corn flakes, Raisin brand and puffed wheat at my house.
But you go over to other kids houses, they got

(04:19):
to those corn pops, lucky charms, that's loops and kidding me.
Those are the only times that I would have a
cereal seconds and then you drink the multicolored milk yes,
and be like God, this rules. Well, so we we
do have a point. There is more to this podcast
than just us telling stories, although I don't think there
should be. Well, I mean, we're making the point that
sleepovers are a pretty they're pretty big milestones in childhood socialization,

(04:44):
at least in the US, and I would stay in
Canada as well. It's a very uh, USA centric kind
of phenomenon that I didn't realize. I didn't realize that either. Um,
but yeah, it is definitely an essential part of childhood.
And this according to pediatrician Perry Class, who was quoted
in the New York Times back in February, who said

(05:07):
that it's definitely essential for both boys and girls. And
dr Class quotes Paula Fass, who is a history professor
at u C. Berkeley, who said that sleepovers are a
phenomenon of the suburbs and took off in the fifties
and sixties, and by the eighties they had become a
right not a privilege. Well yeah, and then with the
eighties it also became well, even going back to the

(05:29):
fifties and sixties, it was summer parties were often a
theme in like teen teeny bop movies, Sandrad d pillow fights,
what not. But of course sleepovers, if you are a parent,
are not necessarily just the prospect of gorging on pizza
and pillow fights. There are also issues that come up,

(05:52):
like a separation anxiety, the whole thing you know that
you were talking about Caroline, of sleeping in a strange place,
playing by another family, these rules, bullying, bed, wedding, Um,
this can be maybe there might be a lot of
fear in it for more for the parent than for
the child of sleeping in an unknown place for the
first time. Yeah, and you should probably if your child

(06:15):
is one who might have anxiety issues or sleep issues
or anything, you probably should warn the hosting parents because
you know, you don't want your kid to go wake
the parents up in the middle of the night or
have a big to do like oh, I don't know
when the child has to call her mommy to come
get her um and they stay. In this New York
Times article that especially you should warn the parents, especially

(06:37):
if your kid has night terrors or sleepwalks, because these
things are more likely to happen in strange environments or
when the kid is sleep deprived, So you know, night
terrors that could be terrifying for the hosting parents and
the children in the room as well. Oh do you
speak from experience? No, my friend, my friend, a couple
of friends actually have night terrors still and it is terrifying.

(07:01):
Oh yeah, I can. I can imagine we should do
an episode on night terrors. Now. While it would be
so much fun for us to continue on with the
podcast and just talk share sleepover and slumber party stories,
because there are so many. Uh, let's actually be more
practical about this and talk about from a parental perspective

(07:24):
of how to tackle a sleepover. The Chicago Tribune actually
published entire guide to sleepovers because they can be especially
if the kids are a little bit younger. If there
is still in that age range, um, maybe eight, when
sleepovers might be a new thing. If you're a parent

(07:46):
and you're hosting a sleepover, it's actually a decent amount
of work. And the first question, obviously you've got to
ask is is your child ready to play host? Yeah? Well,
to play host or to go away someone's smelly house,
because you might know that your child is not emotionally
or anxiety wise ready to go to somebody else's house

(08:08):
and sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor next
to the fire poker. Um, But your child might be adamant,
you know, like no, I'm ready, I want to go
play with the other kids. Um. A lot of recommendations
online have to do with developing fun sounding alternatives like
why don't you go to your cousin Jimmy's house instead?
It's more of a low pressure environment. Yeah, it's often

(08:29):
recommended testing out the sleeping away from home in a
family environment, going over to Grandma and Grandpa's house, going
over to a cousin, or having a cousin over, so
it's a little bit of a safer environment. And the
age that is often sided is eight to nine years old. Um.
And then the question is too of how many guests

(08:50):
do you have at a sleepover, because I mean I
remember going to the big ones and they could get
massively out of hand because you always have a couple
of troublemakers and then it just the trouble just spread
and then like just like in The Lord of the Flies,
I mean, you start to get like a leader and
then groups splinter and the next thing you know, you're

(09:12):
like fighting with sticks on a beach. It's crazy. And
next thing you know, you lose a tooth. What I
lose the tooth? Yeah. The Chicago Tribune and The Guardian
both have some recommendations, and I had never really I
guess I never knew this. I never really thought about
how many children you should have, just not the whole class,
I guess. But Chicago Tribune recommends that the younger the kid,

(09:32):
the smaller the group. That makes sense, it's less overwhelming.
The Guardian, on the other hand, gets a little more
specific and says that for a slumber party, you want
to invite the same number of guests as your child's age,
whereas for a sleepover the number is half that I've
never heard of that I don't I don't know what
to tell you. I say, you know, invite what seems manageable. Um.

(09:53):
And also don't invite kids that you don't know. Well,
you know, you don't have to invite everybody to the
sleep because again, with these kinds of environments you a
child has to get along with the the family rules
in place. Um. I remember that was that was one
of the toughest negotiations of sleepovers and slumber parties was

(10:14):
having to figure out the family dynamics like you can't
go in the room with the white sofa yea, or
or if you have free reign to do anything? You know,
if there was if I went over to a friend's
house who had a fewer parental restrictions in my home
might have had, it would take me a little while
to be like, oh, oh, I can do this. I
can't eat all this cereal. Excellent, We'll give me all

(10:38):
the cereal I want. Um. They do recommend uh fighting
off boredom because I don't know, a gang of board
children sounds terrifying to me. So you have to decide
do you want planned events and group activities or do
you just want to tell them that they have to
entertain themselves. Are you just gonna like lock them in
the playroom and just hope for the best. I don't know.
That all sounds scary to me. Uh. There's also ideas

(11:00):
about being careful to avoid hurt feelings, because yeah, that
it can happen a lot of times when you take
a group of kids, you get them kind of tired
and and also sped up on sugar that someone's going
to start crying. Um, and you set a rule at
the beginning not to exclude anybody. Also for older kids,

(11:23):
no cellular telephones because then you might text people about
other people, and there could be texting behind backs and whatnot. Yeah,
and that's so weird. That was certainly not um a
rule when yeah, well we did. We did have phone
issues at slumber parties or sleepovers that I had, Like
you know, where you do the thing where it's the

(11:43):
three way call and the other person doesn't know the
other person's listening. Oh yeah, those are the mean games
you played the mean game? No, I was just well,
it was never. It was never calling somebody and finding
out what somebody thought. It was usually like a boy like, hey, Nathan,
you know so and so has a cry shown you.
What do you think he's like? And then giggling and

(12:06):
hang up yeah or the other No, the no crank
call policy. But what about the issue of speaking of
calling the boys if you were at a girl's slumber party.
What about the issue of co ed sleepovers? Because this
is something that has come up. It was covered recently

(12:28):
in the New York Times, and they have also been
other articles and considerations about coed sleepovers because especially for
the um, you know, kids in their early teen years,
they want to be able to have boys and girls
stay the night together, to which most parents would probably
be like no or no, no, definitely not. Uh. Actually

(12:52):
went to a I wouldn't call it a slumber party.
It was like the safe house because I think it
was after homecoming and um, my senior year of high school.
This family who had a farm in Marietta invited all
of the kids back because it was like they kind
of had the wink hush hush attitude of like, well,
you're probably gonna sneak alcohol, and we'd rather you all

(13:15):
be in the same place, roaming free on a farm
than trying to drive somewhere. Well that's so, but that's
different than like actually hosting a sleepover. Yeah all, yeah,
there was, there was co ed sleeping, that's for sure.
Um So anyway, moving on, but that's a whole But
that's a whole fear with these cod sleepovers is that naturally,

(13:37):
at some point something's gonna happen. Are you a terrible
parent if you if you are down with doing this, well,
I guess it depends on what country you're in. Frankly,
because Amy Shelleh, who's the sociology professor at UMAs Amherst,
did a study of teen sex and family life in
the US and the Netherlands, and surprise, surprise, there is uh,

(13:58):
there's a lot of differences. Um She found that here
teens are helpless victims beset by raging hormones. That's our
perception of our teens. We have to keep them safe
from themselves. In the Netherlands, parents interviewed regard teens more
as capable of falling in love and of reasonably assessing
their own readiness for sex. I I haven't a thing

(14:18):
that kind of falls somewhere in between maybe, but she
said she said in talking to all these parents in
the Netherlands that normalizing ideas about teenage sex actually allows
parents to exert more control because it kind of opens
the way for dialogue. Well, yeah, and this is one
of the context of allowing like a code sleepover in
terms of one like a like like my definition of

(14:41):
a sleepover versus a slumber party, like an adult an
adult sleepover rather than like having a group of friends.
Which education dot Com talked to psychologists and parenting author
Linda Sona about this and because she was saying that
more parents are are having to deal with these are
us for co ed slummer parties and um. She says

(15:04):
that many teens have deep platonic friendships with members of
the opposite sex and honestly might just want to hang out,
but at some point, but they often involve sexual activity,
whether planned or not. But if you are a parent
and you decide that that is okay, you obviously need
to talk to the parents of the other kids to

(15:25):
make sure that they know what's going on, be clear
about rules, provide separate sleeping areas and set a party perimeter,
essentially like once you're in the house, you're not going
to leave the house. Personally, it sounds like a giant
trying to facilitate a a completely PG teenage co ed sleepover.
But it can be done, I'm sure. But maybe a

(15:49):
life would be just easier for parents with this whole
sleepover thing if it wasn't such an ingrained part of
American culture. Because I did not know that it was
so US specific, and didn't either. I just figured it
was a rite of passage for all children the world

(16:09):
over has a global slumber parties. That sounds really fun.
That's something that should happen on the internet. The Internet.
Um yeah. Carmen Yuri in The New Jersey Star Ledger,
wrote a column about her attitude about sleepovers, both when
she was a child and now when she's a mom
to daughters. Because a lot of people argue that it

(16:31):
is a rite of passage, it's very common, no big deal.
It can be a bonding tool for kids and their friends.
She disagrees she was not allowed to sleep over at
friends houses as a child, and his instituted the same
rule for her daughter and her reasoning. I find it
a little hard to get behind other than there are
such cultural differences. She said that because she perceived these

(16:53):
slumber parties to be so cool and so normal, I
wanted to do him. Um, her Cuban mother was like, no,
I'm not a you do this. Why would I let
you go sleep away at some stranger's house? And so
she ends up bullying her mom into letting her go
on the slumber party and says she felt scarred for
the rest of her life. That she made her mom cry.

(17:13):
That just sounds well, yeah, well so all because of that,
because of her experience, She's not gonna let her kids
do it, she says. The way I see it, my
kids may miss out on a little fun at sleepovers,
but they won't be permanently scarred in the future like me.
They may sympathize with their mother. Well, we should point
out that that her mom or keeping mom, did allow
her to have friends sleep over at her house. It

(17:35):
just wasn't like culturally, it did not make sense that
she would need to sleep somewhere else. It just seemed
very foreign to them. And there were um some other
like parenting blogs that I ran across as while talking
about Um. In some Muslim families, sleepovers are a no go,

(17:57):
and also Amy Chiwa, who wrote the Battle Hymn of
the Tiger Mother that got so much attention a couple
of years ago. Um. One of the things that she
talks about and all the strict rules that she imposes
on her two daughters was that she refused to let
them ever participate in sleepovers. Never ever, Um and uh

(18:20):
Gil Sutherland in the Guardian, and she grumbles that the
slumber party has its origin in quote that other great
American tradition, the summer camp. And she goes on and
on talking about like all these things that you now
have to do because kids think it's cool to have
these weird slumber parties, and so you have to, you know,

(18:41):
buy pizza and make a mess and deal with what
are they called wakeovers? Essentially, like kids never get enough
sleep if they have a sleepover, go to a slumber party.
So you need to be prepared as a parent to
deal with your junk food bloated, sleep deprived child. They
say that who will probably grumpy from a wakeover? Yeah,

(19:02):
I mean I'm pretty grumpy one I don't get sleep.
She also recommended food in boxes, like that's a cool
thing for kids. I yeah, I would. I still like
food in boxes and sleeping bag boxed food. UM. I
do think we would be remiss not to mention a
little bit of slumber party pop culture history, something that
Kristen and I found that is amazing in the horrific

(19:26):
sense of the word. Um. In nineteen Mattel released Slumber
Party Barbie. Now, what what could be wrong with slumber
Party Barbie? She's so cute, She's got slippers, right, that's great? Yeah,
Well maybe it's because she comes with a scale that
reads a hundred and ten pounds and a book titled
how to Lose Weight? Can you tell me the sole

(19:46):
contents of the Barbie book how to Lose Weight, don't eat,
which defeats the entire purpose of going to a slumber party?
I know, boxed foods? Yeah? What are you to do
with all that boxed food? Uh? Yeah? Speaking of Barbie,
there was some analysis on uh kind of how Barbie
intersected with American culture and they talked about how, uh

(20:10):
it's symbolized the slumber party popularity. Um. When not only
did they release that nineteen sixty five Slumber party Barbie.
But also in the original fashion booklet from uh it
featured Barbie dressed up in cute NightWare. So even back

(20:30):
in the late fifties, slumber parties, all the rage, all rage,
all the kids are doing it. Yeah, hopefully people in
the fifties and sixties eight though. That's true. Yes, But
then also with games, the things we haven't been able
to talk about with sleepovers, we could make this like
an eight part series really, because there are things like
Luigi board, the whole light is a feather, stiff as

(20:51):
a board. Truth or Dare I was always I'm still
a truth or dareweenie because I'm like, well, I don't
want to really tell you the truth about something, but
I have to. I don't want to go like run
naked through the sprinkler in the backyard at night at
the neighbor's house, you know, like I was. I was
kind of a pansy about that. Yeah, that was when
I saw My first mooning was during a slumber party.
True through day. I was like, Wow, that's your that's

(21:13):
the butt, that's your bottom. And then of course there
are the pranks, your friends fall asleep. You don't want
to be the first one to sleep because you might
end up with shaving cream on your face, or you
might attempt to get your friends to peat themselves by
putting your hands in warm water. And then yeah, those
like a whole bullying games where I don't know that
there's a name for it, but it's where you have

(21:33):
like one friend hide under the bed so they the
other person thinks that she's gone, and then you're like,
what do you think about, Caroline? And then she gives
a glowing report and you stick out two thumbs way
up from out from under the bed. Um. Yeah. Also,
so Girlhood in America, because I do feel like slumber

(21:55):
parties especially are a little more associated with girlhood then
boyhood of all. And I know boys have slumber parties
and and all of that. But according to the book
Girlhood in America, they say the research shows that even
such cultural practices as slumber parties can be transformative, at
least for a night, because it is the first time

(22:16):
that you are completely away from uh parental authority. You
don't know teachers are around, It's just you and your
peers all night with a sugar rush. And yeah, and
you have to like work out all these kind of
like negotiations of being in a new space and you
have to watch what's that movie Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken? Yep,

(22:39):
yep yep. Or if you're like me, you would go
over to your friend's house and she would just pull
out one of her mom's uh tapes video cassettes from
the shelf and it would be Silence of the Lambs. God,
is it any wonder? But I hate the slumber parties, man, Yeah,
I do feel like there's a lot of a lot

(22:59):
of boundary testing that ends up happening at slumber parties
because all of a sudden, you're all there together and
you can get into the hoots and hijink skin ensue. So, uh,
that's what we got for sleepovers and slumber parties, essentially
a lot of fun reminiscing. Yeah, now I want to
hear your slumber party stories. Parents out there? Is the

(23:21):
slumber party something that you fear because you know, maybe
your kids not ready? What? What are the uh? Is
it weird sending your child off for the first time
to a sleepover or hosting a sleepover? You stay sane
when you have like ten or fifteen or twenty kids
in your house? Probably wine lots of it, I would

(23:43):
assume um. And also, yeah, folks out there any slumber
party stories. Caroline and I have shared ours, We would
like to hear yours, and you can send them to
us at Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com. And we
got a couple of letters here to share for you
as well. This one comes from Katie and she wrote

(24:07):
in a little while ago about our episode about man
flu and whether or not man flu is real And
for those who have not listened to the episode on
man flu, a man flucis notion that when men get
colds they totally uh dramatize their symptoms and make a
big to do about it, whereas women are super tough

(24:28):
when we get sick. So Katie writes, I do believe
that there is probably a connection between masculinity and the
man flu, but I did not think it has anything
to do with the male sex. I'm really only speaking
from personal experience, but I have noticed a definite pattern.
All of the women I've dated have been very masculine
in some way, to have been very butch in appearance

(24:48):
but very gender neutral and behavior. They both want to
have children someday and they would like to carry a
child if possible. One was very feminine in appearance, but
very typically masculine in personality. She was a loy or
who's very focused on career and monetary goals and cringes
at the thought of babies. All three would describe themselves
as more masculine than feminine. All three suffer from horrendous

(25:09):
man flues. Once a year. For many years, I would
get very bad bronchitis, and every time I would keep
chugging along stubbornly until I ended up at the doctor
with a hundred and four degree fever hallucinating from lack
of oxygen to my brain. These three women would get
the sniffles, and this apparently signaled armageddon. I try to
respect that it truly does feel awful for them, but

(25:30):
the whining gets very old. So there's a fun observation
from Katie. All Right, this is an interesting email from
Israel about our Smell podcast. He says, as a blind guy,
I've always been asked all kinds of questions. Is you're
hearing any better? Can you feel things better than most people?
Is your sense of smell like that of a shark?

(25:50):
And that's a reference. I don't get the sharks smell. Yeah, man,
sharks can smell blood from a mile away. Okay, alright, then, okay,
glad I was confirmed for me. I never okay anyway, yeah,
no kidding. Someone actually asked me that the shark thing,
and of course, since I have been gifted with an
amazing sense of humor, I responded, yes, absolutely, I could.

(26:12):
I could smell you coming a mile away. Immediately this
person took off running, came back, and was literally bathed
in perfume. I found this absolutely hysterical. Sense. Of course,
I was exaggerating with my mile away comment, having said
that I do tend to be more sensitive to smells,
and although I don't pick them up a mile away,
I do tend to notice things that most other people
would just ignore. Listening to your podcast on smells just

(26:33):
made me wonder if, in fact, there is any science
linked to lack of sight and how strong my senses
may or may not be. I've always dismissed this and
simply attributed it to the fact that since I can't see,
my brain just tends to pay more attention to the
senses that do work. And then he adds, and just
in case you might be wondering, no, I don't smell.

(26:53):
I would know, so, thank you Israel, And now I
know that sharks have a good sense of smell. And Caroline,
iologize if that came across in my tone as shark shaming.
You did not mean to. But also there was one
bit in this letter, the man Food letter from Katie
that was addressed to you really that I didn't get to.
So Caroline, here you go, she says, Caroline, in my house,

(27:17):
we share our beer with one of the cats. I
think this comes from, uh something. There was an episode
we were talking about getting saliva from pets. Yeah, something
about you could get sick, and I was really grossed
out about maybe letting your pets lick you. Yeah, it
was something some some aversion to pets. I mean, I
am grossed out about letting pets lick you. But well,

(27:39):
listen to this. In Katie's house, she says, we share
a beer with one of the cats. The way I
see it, their germs are everywhere, whether I knew it
or not, I'm sure I eat much worse by accident
every day, and it's just so much fun to watch
the cat drink beer before you get worried. She doesn't
get much and every vet we have ever told about
it says something along the lines of cool, my cat
isn't nearly that awesome, So double thanks to Katie. I'm

(28:03):
learning all sorts of things today for that. And now
I'm gonna go look up videos of cats drinking beer responsibly.
So in the meantime, if you've got letters to send
our way, mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is our
email address. You can also find us on Facebook and
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and we'd
love for you to head over to our blog as

(28:24):
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little smarter during the week, you can head over to
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(28:49):
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