<p>As Sally said to Harry about the battery operated pith helmet in the eponyomous movie, “Why is this necessary in life?!”</p>
<p>because it is after a dance and if they gonna have sex, chances are it is NOT gonna happen in a house full of people with parents around and more LIKELY to happen if two kids are alone somewhere</p>
<p>It’s a tough call and really depends on how well you know the kids, how much sleep you are willing to lose and your overall comfort level with the whole concept. We faced the dilemma on various occasions and decided to allow the sleepovers at our house under tight controls based on the notion of “trust but verify”. We required things to quiet down by 2 am, a general understanding that we would wander in and out of our den at our convenience and if it was a small group, boys slept in the den and girls slept in our daughter’s bedroom which shares a wall with our bedroom. Larger groups, everyone had to sleep in the den where we could observe at our convenience. (We also subscribed to the belief that with this group of kids the likelihood of inappropriate behavior in a group setting was slim and the den is right under our bedroom and sound travels.) </p>
<p>We also tried to mix a bit of humor and fear into our controls. We would have a short chat with the group at the beginning of the evening at which we told them outright the rules were “No drugs, no drinking, no smoking, and no sex with yourself or anyone else.” Since it was usually the same group of kids it got to the point where all we had to do was say “Rules?” and the kids would recite them back to us. My wife would often greet the group at night with what she called her “party dress” - 4 paper plates with red X’s and the word “No” on them, strung together with twine, 3 plates strategically placed in the front and one in the back, worn over her clothing. In what was an archetypal stereotype, I would frequently greet the guys after lifting weights in our basement looking very pumped and invite them to come down and finish working out with me. And I think all the guys remembered the toast I made at my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah when I explained that I learned everything I needed to know about being a father to a daughter from the movie Clueless, particularly the scene where the father greets the daughter’s date at the door and tells him “If you do anything to hurt my little girl, I have a 45 and a shovel and no ones going to miss you.” My daughter confided that the kids really appreciated my wife’s humor in addressing what could otherwise be an awkward subject and that even though she told them I was just a big harmless teddy bear the guys fully believed I would “kill” them if they misbehaved. It was really pretty funny at times and we never had a problem. And I know that all of the kids appreciated us opening our house to them and giving them a place to hang out in the wee hours and just have fun together.</p>
<p>Putting all of our antics aside, I really think the key is to make sure you know the kids, communicate expectations clearly, be unabashed about addressing directly and explicitly what the rules and limits are, and convey that you trust that they will adhere to your expectations. Then just be prepared not to get much sleep 
.</p>
<p>markcc: </p>
<p>What is the ‘worst’ that can happen…sex between high school seniors in your house, perhaps even including your child. If you are horrified at the thought, then I suggest you say NO. If it is something that you could live with, then go for it and make your senior happy. I would still make sure the parents of all the kids know it is a coed sleepover and the kids have agreed to adhere to your rules.</p>
<p>LOL. The worse that could happen – ahhh, I could be kept awake all night…</p>
<p>After graduation, my daughters class took a cruise until early AM and then all slept at a friends house.
Parents came @ about 10 am to make pancakes
they were really cute ;)</p>
<p>They had all known each other for years and while there was dating going on , the parents who were hosting knew them pretty well & they were too pooped to raise a ruckus
Just keep them up until 3 :D</p>
<p>who cares about losing sleep? we only have a couple more years left and losing a few hours on a Saturday night should be treasured!!! Soon enough, they will be gone, with all their friends, and no more lovely noise and concern to be had</p>
<p>I am the mom that picks up the gang at midnight, has them all to my house for snacks, for getting ready (our house is best location- most central) and I miss my oldests friends staying up all night chatting and laughing, and now its my youngerDs friends, sure you have to be watchful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way right now</p>
<p>A few late nights is okay when you think about the quiet to come</p>
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<p>While some such as CGM or MichaelNKat are comfortable and can engender humor and good will, you guys (OP’s)don’t sound very happy about this. It could mean something to you to get all the way through h.s. without changing that particular rule, and if so it would be valuable, IMHO, for your kids to understand you have limits, too.</p>
<p>Would it be almost just-as-good to agree to host a two-gender party until 1 a.m. and then find another nearby parent willing to take in all the boys at 1:10 a.m. just to sleep? Then rejoin the 2 groups for breakfast, which really is fun and cozy for seasoned h.s. friends.</p>
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<p>Imo, this has little to do with it. Make your best call now. </p>
<p>If you think some proposal is wrong, then don’t allow it, regardless of what happens next year.</p>
<p>I wasn’t allowed to have or go to co-ed sleepovers in high school. Neither were most of my friends. We lived. (Or just didn’t tell our parents the complete guest list.) Don’t feel guilty if you say no, as long as your rules are consistent. Also think about whether your problem is with co-ed sleepovers for this age group in general or whether you just don’t want to host the event. I’m sure each kid is asking his/her parents about hosting this. </p>
<p>On the gay issue, I’m a lesbian, so the fact that this was even a rule for me was sort of absurd. I was allowed to sleep over with my female friends, though I’m sure my parents just never thought about the fact that I could easily have sex then. I know several gay teenagers who regularly had their S.O. sleep over, both before and after “coming out.”</p>
<p>If you don’t want people making out or having sex in your house, whether it involves your kid or her friends, then don’t host the party or set up rules and check in often. If you don’t mind some sexual activity, then check for alcohol in the beginning and part way through the night, and leave them alone. </p>
<p>No offense to the parents, but you guys are deluding yourselves a bit if you don’t think teenagers would think about having sex at a co-ed sleepover. Beside the bathroom/closet/office, there’s always that opportunity in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. Or, for a more adventurous group, they may not even try to hide very much, if at all. I do think that teenagers in this situation are much more likely to have sex at 4 AM during a sleepover than 4 PM while hanging out. No question. The novelty and chance of getting caught is part of the experience, of course. Two teenagers can have sex at 4 PM pretty easily, but the chance at 4 AM in a group (i.e. “dangerous”) situation doesn’t come up nearly as often.</p>
<p>I’m 18 and in my second year in college, so this is pretty recent history for me.</p>
<p>Why go there? You put all the other parents in the some quandry you are now in. IF someone’s hanging out in the bathroom, or taking turns in the bathroom, it WILL become common knowledge and you get to be the parents that allowed it. So much potential for disaster…on your watch. What’s the point? Next year will be here soon enough and they’ll be responsible for themselves (I mean at college). Life’s little milestones will all come in due time. Why rush it?</p>
<p>My best friend is a therapist for teens in an afluent area of Boston. She says that there are PLENTY of kids having sex at coed sleepovers and that kids are OFTEN not shy about having sex out in the open. I agree with Schmoomcgoo, why risk having this happen at your house and why put the other parents in the position of having to be “the mean parents who don’t trust their kids.”
We’ve hosted several very succussful cast parties with 50 or more kids. They typically ended at 1:00-2:00 a.m. I think that keeping it short and sweet and having amazing food is the key. At the last one, we fed 65 kids an Italian feast. They had a jam session in our living/dining room and then danced in the basement for two hours. I’ve had MANY kids tell me that it was the best cast party ever. All we really did was rally the parents and provide good food and WATER BOTTLES! We frequently went around with trash cans and open eyes, but never had a single problem. The kids left on a high note and honestly they were talking about what a blast they had for days.</p>
<p>Corranged, I agree with you. Even in the dinosaur days of the 70’s when I was in college, kids had sex all the time when their roommate was right there in the same room, asleep. It was (supposedly) part of the fun!</p>
<p>Well, as long as we are voting, I’m in the “what’s the big deal?” party.</p>
<p>It happened many times for both kids. With my daughter, who mainly had female friends, it was usually a question of a situation arising where there was a boy or two with them and it made sense for them to sleep over rather than taking them home. I might have been uncomfortable if it was a sexual situation, but it wasn’t. (Maybe, as corranged suggests, I was deluded. But I don’t think so. When one of the boys sometimes involved and one of the girls always involved actually got involved with each other, sexually and emotionally, they took great pains to hide it from the rest of the group.) We always had separate rooms available (i.e., boys slept in my son’s room, girls in my daughter’s), and often that’s even how it worked out. Other times, I would look in in the morning to find children strewn among the dirty clothes all over the room (and always WEARING some of the dirty clothes, all of them), and one or two of them were boys.</p>
<p>My son always had a co-ed group of friends (and a very un-advanced co-ed group of friends in the sex department, generally). They would do things like sleep over at someone’s house so they could go to a Magic tournament together at 8:00 am, or plan all-night movie marathons around a theme that never made it all night. Sometimes one friend’s parents went out of town, and she didn’t want to go with them, and they calculated (correctly) that she was a lot less likely to get into trouble spending the night in her platonic buddy’s sister’s room with his parents there than spending the night alone in her own house, or spending the night with her closest girlfriend who was capital-T Trouble. When these boys got girlfriends, or girls boyfriends, or in one case girl-girlfriend, it happened outside the group. Some of the kids lived a long way away; no one was anxious to spend 90 minutes driving at 3:00 am to pick up or take home someone who was a girl rather than letting her sleep over and get picked up in the morning.</p>
<p>Of course, all the parents involved had to be comfortable with it, but they all were (or their kids went home, one way or another). For the most part, we knew the kids pretty well. We wouldn’t have been devastated if we learned that hanky-panky had occurred at some point, since we assumed hanky-panky was occurring in these kids’ lives somewhere, somehow. But honestly, we never had to face that, because that just wasn’t what was happening.</p>
<p>(Back when I was in high school, “co-ed sleepovers” were unheard of. Except . . . in connection with regional conferences of my religious youth group, where many delegates often wound up in sleeping bags in some social room or host family’s living room. And hanky-panky most certainly did occur, although – almost – never the hankiest.)</p>
<p>Sometimes parents do have a good grasp on their kids and their kids’ friends and know that they have very platonic friendships and/or aren’t sexually active. What I think is incorrect thinking, though, is the assumption that since this is a group sleepover no one will have sex, or that since none of these kids seem to be in a relationship with someone else in the group none of them will have sex, or whatever.</p>
<p>For those who suggest parents are being naive, I suggest there are some parents who aren’t, and can manage this successfully. I can guarantee with absolute 99% assuredness that no sex took place in our house during these lock-ins. Maybe it’s the layout of our house, but there was no way couples were going to hook up once the kids were separated, based on where I placed myself.</p>
<p>Regarding cast parties being over at 1 or 1:30AM. We usually hosted the more formal cast party on the last night of production (more informal ones were held the other non-school night performances) because we have a pool, and would keep it open late in the season, and open it early just for these parties. Thankfully, we have a pool heater, and we would heat it up to somewhere between 82-90 degrees… the kids LOVED it, and after a swim, they were usually so exhausted, it could have been a contest to see who fell asleep first (I always warned the neighbors of ‘pool’ parties at night and asked them to let us know if it was too loud - in 5+ years, no one ever said anything). Anyway, the kids were required to strike set right after the last performance, so many time, most of the kids wouldn’t even be here until midnight or later. I’m not going to go to all that trouble, then kick them out after one hour. </p>
<p>However, all this being said, I DO know there are parents who do not take all the precautions we do, and I have never let my kids do sleepovers at parents houses where I have not spoken to the parents directly to make sure they understand the expectations for my kid. It seems as if the responsible parents have a way of separating the kids and making sure the separation stays during the ‘sleep’ period. </p>
<p>The last time we hosted an after-prom lock-in, I truly sensed the kids were very appreciative to have a place to go where they knew adults were keeping a close eye on them. So many kids, especially the girls feel pressured to have sex with their dates the night of prom, that by coming to our house, they know their date had better not dare make a move on them. So for the majority of our kids’ friends, they really appreciated having a safe place to be, with their friends.</p>
<p>“What I think is incorrect thinking, though, is the assumption that since this is a group sleepover no one will have sex, or that since none of these kids seem to be in a relationship with someone else in the group none of them will have sex, or whatever.”</p>
<p>So if that’s true (and I think it is at least reasonable), do you think parents have a responsibility to provide condoms?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Yes. Parents should provide condoms. We did. (Never touched.)</p></li>
<li><p>It never occurred to me that it should be a major goal of mine to prevent sex from happening in my house. As I said, I never really had to face it in connection with the co-ed sleepovers, but I would have had to change my life utterly if it had mattered to me to make certain that my kids weren’t using our house for sex. It didn’t.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I wanted my kids to be good people. I wanted them to be safe, physically and emotionally, and to be respectful of others. Those were goals. Prohibiting sex wasn’t. (Neither was encouraging it, either.)</p>
<p>JHS: I like your goals for kids- be good people, safe, physically and emotionally and respectful of others.</p>
<p>When we had sleepovers, my dogs were like little spies…one boy got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and the dog went nuts… snarled at him and follewed him to bathroom and back…and another morning, a different young man woke up with a dog staring at him and growling under his breath…guy was on floor and dog was basically at his face</p>