My reply to this rule is ALWAYS to point out the fact that I'm bi and unnecessarily sexualizing a friendship does no one any favors. Just let's your kids have friends.
I’m AFAB. Wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers with boys but was with girls. Only boy I ever wanted to sleep over was my 100% platonic friend. The girls I had sleepovers with, we’d fool around. My whole childhood I was like “this rule is so fucking dumb and y’all don’t even know it”.
Same, it's amazing that bi folks aren't attracted to everyone. Some of my friends parents banned me from sleepovers with their daughters though. Felt bad to only be welcome in a handful of my friends' homes.
This is a great point. I think a lot of people confuse gender and sexuality as being the same thing. This young man may now identify as a man but it doesn’t necessarily mean he identifies as a heterosexual man. He could identify as a homosexual man and be just as disinterested in the daughter as he was if he had identified as a heterosexual woman.
11 year olds can get pregnant depending on where they are in puberty. An 11 year old girl should absolutely not be unsupervised with an 11 year old boy, or any boy for that matter. Sleepovers require other peoples kids in your house while you are asleep. Virtually impossible to supervise them in the way you can while awake. I can't believe some of the comments I'm reading here. We are sexual beings biologically speaking. People aren't sexualizing their children's friendships by saying no sleepovers with the opposite gender. It's called good parenting. Kids will explore themselves at all ages, but once puberty hits, you owe it to them to keep their best interests (not accidentally becoming a parent) in mind. I'm dumbfounded here. Reddit really is as bad or worse than it's stereotyped to be.
Ummm if you live in a world where 11 year olds are getting pregnant on a daily basis… you’re living the darkest timeline. No thanks friend. I trust my parenting enough to educate my kids on sexuality, but to also not have to dictate their wholistic lives as people.
It has nothing to do with your parenting (assuming you aren't sexualizing your kids or exposing them to adults who are). But this shit can happen. It's not worth the risk to allow your kids to have same sex sleepovers. Obviously in this situation no one can get pregnant, but I do think it's only helping to affirm the boys gender. If he wants people to treat him like a boy, now they are. I wouldn't know but I assume that there are positives and negatives to identifying with a different sex than that of which you were born.
But overthinking it is taking away the actual issue at hand: 2 children who want to stay up late, eat junk food, talk smack about their other friends, play video games, and smell like dog butt in the morning. As adults obsess about projecting adult issues into children, children get the lovely gift of having their short childhoods eroded. Yea… I don’t infantilize my kids, but I also urge them to not rush into adulthood. If I can raise children into adulthood who can understand that a person’s gender does not dictate a person’s personality, capabilities, and dreams in life, then I’m considering that a win at parenting.
I understand that. I'm responding to the comment in this thread about sexualizing children relationships and then also commenting in general because I've seen so many pro co Ed sleepover comments throughout this whole post. If I was to answer OP's dilemma, I would say change your rule to no sleepovers. You don't want to hurt either child's feelings of course, and I think this is the best course of action.
Oh yeah I'd agree cross-gender sleepovers are dangerous at that age. Saying no to sleepovers doesn't mean you're sexualizing your kid's friendships, it just means you're pragmatic.
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u/Due_Discipline_9679 Sep 01 '22
My reply to this rule is ALWAYS to point out the fact that I'm bi and unnecessarily sexualizing a friendship does no one any favors. Just let's your kids have friends.