Value and protect your family time. It goes quickly. We don't allow sleep overs and also don't do the birthday circuit. We keep our weekends as family time and plan activities that get our kids excited.
Value and protect your family time. It goes quickly. We don't allow sleep overs and also don't do the birthday circuit. We keep our weekends as family time and plan activities that get our kids excited.
OP, in a few years you'll appreciate these sleep overs as the will be where your daughter discovers her bi-curiosity, and prevents you from becoming an early grandfather.
-Lesbian till graduation.
Keep the sleep overs going, hopefully it will pay off when she's older and her friends are in their teens. You'll be glad to have some young putang in the house.
So have your daughter trade off with her other friends and let her sleep over other places. Then you get some weekends where you have the place totally kid-free
ConcernedDaddy wrote:
When you become a father, everyone warns you about everything: no sleep, fewer miles, the unconditional love, the crazy expenses... No one warns you about sleepovers.
My daughter is 7 and she has sleepovers like once a month. They are terrible. One of the best thing about the weekend is just being lazy and relaxed at night and in the mornings. If we don't go out, my wife and I will usually have a few drinks at home, grill out or make a good dinner with the kids. In the morning, we get up early because my son (2) is an early riser, but normally I just make breakfast in my PJs and we hang around until it's time to run. Many times the kids just jump into bed with us and watch TV. It is a nice change of pace from a hectic work week.
Now we have sleepovers and everything is ruined. Some kid is all up in your business, hates what you have for dinner, can't sleep, asks why you are drinking a beer, etc. Then it's the morning and you have to get up and get dressed. No sleeping in. No relaxing in PJs. I went to get doughnuts only to be told that our guest isn't allowed to eat doughnuts, so I offer eggs, pancakes, bagels... No, No, No. She wants Waffles. Okay, so I make waffles with a waffle iron and pancake batter. She doesn't like them because she likes the waffles "that are small."
It even sucks when my daughter goes to a sleepover at someone else's house because I miss her.
I just want my weekend!!!!!!!!!
New dads! Consider yourself warned!
You are not alone.
True story
simple wrote:
Value and protect your family time. It goes quickly. We don't allow sleep overs and also don't do the birthday circuit. We keep our weekends as family time and plan activities that get our kids excited.
if your kids only get excited about doing things with their parents, you have weird kids.
Go read about the Duggar family. Seems like that turned out well.
Saying "no" is a bit painful but it works. Sleepovers are indeed mostly awful and are mostly about the initial excitement for the kids. My daughter thinks she wants sleepovers until she actually gets to sleep away a couple times a year and inevitably comes home exhausted and with stories of people throwing up, calling parents in the middle of the night, etc...
Try "sleep unders" where they get all jammied up and then go home before bed.
Vcxxch wrote:
We made a decision a few years ago that there'd be no sleepovers. Sometimes we'll let our kid sleep over at a friends house, but only cause we know the parents pretty well.
Well, aren't you great. You take moral stand against sleepovers - that you host? What a pair you are.
To the OP, if you agree to host, you agree to host. But you decide what that means. The breakfast thing sounds simply ridiculous and you're just cementing that kid's entitlement by going along with it. What if a parent told you your daughter said no to several reasonable meal offers? You'd probably be mortified. A nice thing about sleepovers is kids can learn not every household is just like their own.
Think about hosting a BBQ - you're being nice enough to open your home and feed everyone; that doesn't make it a damn restaurant. You can certainly spend the morning in pajamas, or better yet your running clothes so you can hit the road right away at 10 (not 11, not 12) when the parents take those kids away and your daughter goes back to bed.
That's why we don't have them. I do send my kids somewhere else though. My own kids can be pains in the A, how much more someone else's? I'll tell you what a kid like that wouldn't be welcomed back…
SHUT UP about the nutrition advice. Kids can have a damn donut every once in a while. My God, the fatties that are always giving us nutrition advice always look the worst of all…I'll never forget one summer stopping on a road trip to get mcdonalds french fries and some chain smoker telling us how bad it is for our kids. As the above guy most kids are rowdy and active, they eat a well balanced diet and have a donut here and there. The gluten-free kids always seem to be the sedentary overweight ones.
We have a rule. No sleepovers.
You should think about it.
Concerned Daddy wrote:
I should worry less about being "fun dad" and just be dad. It'd be a lot less exhausting. I guess I just get pumped for weekends and want to make them fun...
Before my 1st kid, a good friend and father of 4 pulled me aside and said, "You are not there to be a best friend. Your job: make them productive and caring members of the community."
Fun Dad is cool and I love to hang with my little ones and soak it all up, but once a month way too frequent IMO - especially if you are always hosting.
I've got 3 kids now and sleepovers a rare treat that are earned (and taken away) by good behavior. I'd say they occur quarterly or every 6 months or so. One of my favorite pieces of parenting advice to newbies: "Learn to to say "no" to your kid and say it often." One great thing about parenting: it's completely dictatorial.
Just wanted to note that you could have prevented this situation by not having children.
Doughnuts for for breakfast and for 7 yr old kids! No wonder Americans are so fat.
nor wrote:
SHUT UP about the nutrition advice. Kids can have a damn donut every once in a while. My God, the fatties that are always giving us nutrition advice always look the worst of all…I'll never forget one summer stopping on a road trip to get mcdonalds french fries and some chain smoker telling us how bad it is for our kids. As the above guy most kids are rowdy and active, they eat a well balanced diet and have a donut here and there. The gluten-free kids always seem to be the sedentary overweight ones.
(1.) Shutting up about nutrition advice is exactly how the next generation fails to learn. Way to stifle the transmission of knowledge.
(2.) Kids can certainly have a doughnut every now and then, but it shouldn't be habit-forming. I contend that for an impressionable mind, e.g. that of a child, having doughnuts AS your breakfast is habit-forming, whereas having them as a dessert item wouldn't be.
(3.) Why do you assume I'm fat? I'm not, but even if you didn't believe me, use your head: I'm posting on the LRC forums -- what are the chances that I'm fat?
(4.) Sorry you got told off by a smoker. Smokers annoy me sometimes, too.
(5.) I never said anything about gluten-free. My main point is on limiting saturated fats and sugar. Even if a kid isn't fat, internally there may be chronic (e.g. vascular) inflammation, or glycation, that is slowly hurting or even aging their cells faster than would otherwise happen.
The Concerned Dad sounds like a cool guy, and I understand he was just trying to have a special treat for his kids, but I've seen excess sugar ravage too many family members to want to remain silent if it can save someone else.
kid comes to my house with a list of stuff they can not do, can not eat. can not talk about = kid going home with list of stuff they can not . . .
if kid has medical issues their parents need to talk to me about them, kid saying I'm allergic to brussels sprouts or oatmeal don't fly here . you eat the stuff on your plate or go hungry.
jamins mom wrote:
What really sucks is when your grown child continues to host sleep overs at your house well into his adult years.
HAHAHAHA, good sir. POTD, I daresay. HAHAHA.
Thanks for the warning. I would also say stay away from soccer.
It's all fun and games till some perv takes pictures of your daughter!!!
Dude, don't even let your girls sleep over at another family members house!
When the "bad thing" happens she's going to blame you and you are going to blame yourself.
Your job is to protect her at that age. That means, she sleeps in her own GD bed!!!