Why bother having kids if all you are going to do is worry about everything that might happen to a point that you stop actually living life out of fear?
This is such a weirdly hyperbolic response. How does not going to sleepovers mean people/ children are not ‘living life’? It’s a relatively common childhood experience for some children in certain societies, it’s not some fundamental right of passage the denial of which means you’re living some kind of sheltered half life!
It's incredibly sad that people are living in such fear of something that is very unlikely to ever happen that they are denying their children experiences and presumably the opportunity to develop skills from being somewhere without their parents.
Well what are we classing as very unlikely? If you mean on balance it’s more unlikely to happen than not then yes I suppose so. But the risk of a child being sexually abused is not tiny - the NSPCC suggests around 1 in every 20 children has been sexually abused, and that’s just from cases that are reported. Over a third of police reported sexual offences are against children. And in the majority of cases it’s adults known to the child - now admittedly in many cases that will be family members, but not all. We know from personal stories on this thread that these things do happen at sleepovers, and I also know from personal experience.
Someone upthread used the ‘you might as well never fly again in case of terrorists’ analogy but to me, the risks of those two eventualities are orders of magnitude apart!
It’s not just about abuse; there’s all kinds of things that might go on in another family’s home that I might not be ok with. I went to a sleepover at 11 where we were allowed to watch 18 rated horror films, I was bloody traumatised but felt peer pressure to go along with it. By contrast, if the parents of the kids who used to sleep over at our house knew about the alcoholism and occasional DV I’m sure they wouldn’t have been so happy to allow them, but nobody bothered to check 🤷♀️
Like I said upthread, my DD is only 4 and whilst I’m leaning towards the idea that we won’t allow them during primary, if at all, the jury is still out and it’s a bridge we’ll cross at the time based on what info we have available. But I’m honestly baffled by those who equate not allowing sleepovers with locking their child in their rooms forever, forcing them to watch screens and nothing else, passing on anxiety and denying them any chance to develop normally. It’s a sleepover - it’s not a blanket ban on any socialisation whatsoever. DD has already experienced plenty of confidence building opportunities to develop social skills and resilience both with a parent there and without - and we’ll continue to encourage this in age appropriate ways as she grows, but I don’t feel like sleepovers are a particularly necessary part of that.