had good sleep! went to cafe for breakfast, jj went to an all day party coming home briefly in the afternoon to practice violin and do some homework. then went to sleepover –
the whole question of sleepovers is an on-going discussion. my mother never let us go on sleepovers. she said that the kids would stay up very late and it would take a week to make up the sleep and meanwhile we would get sick. well, in fact, that is my thinking too. jj needs a lot of sleep and the times she gets sick is when she is sleep deprived, which is usually because of a sleepover. the current rule is that if she does go on a sleepover, she needs to take a nap. that usually works ok. she thinks that i am religiously opposed to sleepovers. the first invitation this year was turned down because we had just arrived and felt we needed a little time to settle in. the next 2 or 3 invitations were not accepted for various valid reasons – such as she had some obligation the next morning or we were away.
i had met the parents and the friend hosting this particular sleepover, briefly, but didn’t know much about them. i asked jj to get me the mom’s phone/email and their address. “why? why do you need these things?” i told her i wanted to make contact with the mom.
but as we talked about it over a few days, she got more and more upset. she was embarrassed that her mom had to call the host’s mom. i told her that when dad went away on business, he left me the name and number of the hotel he was staying in. it was just logistics to know where she was. i thought that it would only be proper. i need to ask her myself, if an adult would be home. she said, the apartment is just down the street next to the church. but i told her, that that was not a very precise address. in the end, because i did have contact before with the parents and because jj promised to text me the address, and her friend, (who i did trust) replied that both parents would be home, i let it go. though the rule from now on, is that i need to make contact with a parent beforehand.
You go, girl. Safety and imposing some parental reach....benignly...trumps adolescent resistance, and it goes for email accounts, facebook, etc...so sorry to our daughters for being the bad guy. On the other hand, I'm probably a lot more lenient about sleepovers, though we are the ones to host most of the time, so I can make some suggestions about lights out....on the pretext that their chatting keeps me awake....also, generally ONLY on weekends when it's actually possible to catch up on sleep. Sarah had a one-two combo last weekend, first a church overnight and then we hosted a farewell sleepover party in honor of a friend who was repatriating to Argentina. And of course, Sarah had a cold and felt miserable on Monday....which was the start of Tech week for the play that opens tonight, and she's got a leading role in. A few early nights and a bunch of occilicocinum and she's back on track.
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