We had a difficult situation to handle the other day. Scooter has a friend her age at church named Sandra. Sandra’s parents are divorced, and she spends alternate weekends with each of her parents. While at her mother’s home (in another town) she often has friends over to spend the night. Recently, Sandra asked Scooter to spend the night at her father’s house.
Now her father, Jim, is one of the nicest men in our church. He is very active and has taught all three of our kids in Sunday School. But here’s the catch: he’s still single. And at the end of the day, Kadie and I were uncomfortable with Scooter spending the night with them. We agonized over this decision, but ultimately decided to follow our rule about not allowing Scooter to spend the night with people we do not know extremely well. (Outside of family, I think she has spent the night in two homes over the last ten years). We did let Scooter play with Sandra during the day, but did not let her spend the night.
We had a similar situation last year where an acquaintance of Scooter’s (not really a friend) invited her over to a slumber/birthday party. We didn’t know the parents at all and finally decided to let her go play until around 10:00 pm and then picked her up and returned her at 7:00 the next morning. Her parents repeatedly assured us that Scooter could stay the night, but we didn’t allow her to. We were the weird parents!!
The statistics about sexual abuse absolutely terrify me. 1 in 3 girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18. So at the university, in one of my typical classes of 60 students (around 40 girls), about 13 girls have been molested. So besides being “overprotective parents” (Jim’s words), what else do we do?
1) We talk to the girls. We specifically tell them that no one should ever touch them anywhere their bathing suit covers. Also they should never touch anyone else wherever their bathing suit covers. We try to reinforce this in a serious conversation every year or so.
2) We talk to them from time to time about the importance of being open with us. One of my fears is that something will happen and they will be too ashamed to share it with us. We try to prevent that by always being accessible and assuring them of our love no matter what.
3) We explain to the girls why they cannot spend the night or play in someone’s house we do not know very well. I have found that when we take the time to explain it, they are often more understanding.
4) We pray always for their safety. Ultimately, as much as we would like to be the ones in control, only God can keep them safe. We pray for them constantly and trust in the LORD to keep them in the palm of his hand.
Do you have any other suggestions???
So ultimately, while we damaged our relationship with Jim, I do feel that we made the right decision. Ultimately we will sacrifice some of their fun, and some of our comfort, in order to try to do our best to keep the girls safe.
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4 comments:
Well, ultimately that's what we decided too. But I feel bad that his ex-wife can have her kid's friends over for the night and he cannot. It's not fair of course, but life stinks sometimes.
I'm wondering if you allow Scooter's friends to spend the night at your house. Or if this goes both ways and you prefer not to have sleepovers at your place either.
We do allow Scooter's friends to spend the night if Kadie and I are both here. I doubt that we would do so if she had to work an all night shift and the kids would be left here alone with me overnight.
But to get back to your general question. We do allow other kids to spend the ight here (but no monkeys);)
Hard call to make, but a wise decision. Todd (counselor) has seen great heartache from girls that were molested from a friends family during sleepovers.
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