2 "At what age.." questions

[Yogagirl17]

Question 1 - at what age does it become inappropriate for kids to have sleepovers with a member of the opposite sex? DD is 10 and as far as i know not at all interested in boys yet but at the same time, pretty mature for her age. There's a boy she's been friends with for years who is very nice but slightly akward socially - not big on social queues and what's ok and what's not sometimes. On the one hand they've had many sleepovers together before & I dont' actually think the kids are going to get up to anything they shouldn't (pretty sure it wouldn't even occur to them yet!) AND I trust the mum to be sensible. On the otherhand, at some point it's probably not going to be ok and it's just beginning to feel a bit weird but I have no idea how to put a stop to it or even if I should.

Question 2 - similar theme - kids recently discovered TV show Friends by accident but decided it's really funny and they want to watch it all the time. Unfortunately it is ON ALL THE TIME! But even though there's never any actual nakedness or even terribly sexy scenes, they talk about sex a lot - sometimes quite explicitly. The other day I was in the room when the scene came on where Chandler wanted to know how to make sex go from good to amazing and Monica and Rachel draw him a numbered diagram. Fortunately (because I have seen every episode many times!) I knew what was coming and made them change the channel very quickly. I'm thinking I need to ban it all together but it's hard to explain exactly why.

Help!! (please)

forgot to say DS is 8 (and DD 10)

Ugh tricky! Not sure about the sleepovers. Have you talked to the boy's mum about it?

Thing about Friends is that it normalises porn, one night stands etc. You'll have to hide the remote til autumn as Channel 4 are stopping showing it by then here.

1 - I'd say when either of them seems to be starting puberty - up till then you can be reasonably confident they aren't thinking about such things

2 - is the TV in the living room? At that age, I just vetoed anything that I didn't want DS to watch, and changed the channel or turned it off. I always reckoned "because I don't like it" was reason enough

well DD has a tv in her room as well but DH & I still have a say over what she's allowed to watch. Part of the problem is that DH doesn't seem to think it's such a big deal. At first I thought it was ok as well but the more i see of it I'm remembering just HOW MUCH of it is about sex.

I suspect the sleepovers will end naturallly once they start secondary school.

I didn;t let my dd watch Friends until she was about 11 - but I have to admit that dd has watched them all, and he's 10 - he started finding them funny at about 9, I think.

But i don't have a problem with sexual content (within reason), and anyway, I think Friends generally puts things into context, and there's always a "moral", IYSWIM>

Not really answering your question, but I remember when the Chinese government banned Friends; they finally realised it wasn't about really about wholesome friendships..!

DD is 9y.

She has watched Friends. It does have some more adult themes but nthing is overly obvious or in your face, and normally comes with a story behind it. Definitely preferrably to things like Eastenders anyway.

Sleepovers - not sure. We don't have mixed sleepovers with friends anyway as DD is at a girls school so her close friends tend to be girls. She does have a little boy stay over in her room - he is currently 5y - her godparent's son, our good friends. But the age gap is so big it isn't an issue and can't see it beig so for a little while yet.

1. I also have a 10 and 8 year old and there's no way I would let them watch Friends. Completely not suitable for children imo. Fine for early teens to watch but not this age. You don't even need to give an explanation, just say no.

thanks for all the input - have decided Yes to the sleepover and no to Friends!

"You don't even need to give an explanation, just say no."

I think you do, actually. You can't just say no to something their friends are allowed to do without giving some sort of explanation, surely?

Possibly Seeker, a brief 'it's not suitable for children' is enough. Although we don't know if the OP's children are being influenced by peers.

Battling against peer pressure can be really hard though. My oldest is only 10 and so far we don't have much 'but all my friends do'...I'm sure that will increase in the coming years. The tack I tend to take is 'in OUR family we do x, y or z'.

Well I tried the 'it's not suitable for children' line but they both looked at me and rolled their eyes so I said 'fine, you can't watch it because they talk about sex too much!" That shut them up.