SleepOvers
Favorite Childhood Past Time Or
Cause for Concern
By Alleta Liebenberg
“Mommy, please may Jonathan
and I have a sleepover?”
M
y friend and I snapped
our heads towards her
five-year-old daughter, as she casually
asked whether my three-yearold son could sleep over. We
distracted them with snacks
and chuckled at the innocence
of it all, but at the same time, I
couldn’t shake the feeling that
we would be circling the subject
again sooner than I thought.
When my oldest son was fiveyears-old, we told him that he
would only be able to have
sleepovers when he turned
ten. That would buy us enough
time at least? Little did we know
that days filled with school and
soccer, turn into months and
months into years and suddenly
in April this year, he turned ten.
Now we find ourselves having to
make the decision whether we
allow sleepovers or not.
Growing up, I knew hardly
any parents who didn’t allow
sleepovers. It was a “rite of passage” in some ways and provided fun as well a sense of
being all grown up.
Bureau report titled “Child Maltreatment 2010”:
Studies by David Finkelhor,
Director of the Crimes Against
Children Research Center, show
that:
• 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a
victim of child sexual abuse;
• Self-report studies show that
20% of adult females and 5-10%
of adult males recall a childhood
sexual assault or sexual abuse
CONS
incident;
But what has changed? Let’s look • During a one-year period in the
at some of the concerns we have U.S., 16% of youth ages 14 to 17
around allowing sleepovers:
had been sexually victimized;
Sexual abuse
• Over the course of their lifetime,
Gone are the days when abus- 28% of U.S. youth ages 14 to 17
ers were only suspicious strang- had been sexually victimized;
ers, lurking in the park, enticing • Children are most vulnerable to
our children into their lairs.
CSA between the ages of 7 and
13.
Let’s consider the follow- • According to a 2003 National
ing chilling statistics from the Institute of Justice report, 3 out
U.S. Department of Health and of 4 adolescents who have been
Human Services’ Children’s sexually assaulted were victimYet today I hear more and more
Moms (and I assume they speak
for Dads too) saying: “We don’t
allow sleepovers.”
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