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Coed Sleepovers
As I write this, my son is sleeping in his queen bed with a girl.
I sanctioned it. I even coordinated with her mother.
They’re having a sleepover. Amazingly enough, at 8:30 at night, they’re both actually asleep. He’s shirtless, clad in his Incredible Hulk sleep shorts. She’s wearing a butterfly nightgown.
Last I checked, they were holding hands.
They’re too young to know that sleepovers mean you don’t actually sleep.
They’re not old enough to know that soon, boy-girl sleepovers will be cause for concern, not cause for maternal coordination.
Attitudes have clearly evolved in the quarter-century between my parents’ generation and mine. My dad refused to let my husband and me spend the night in the same room in my parents’ house until we were married. I’m not only condoning my son’s behavior; I’m making sure the nightlight’s plugged in and his friend’s Hello Kitty suitcase is situated so that she doesn’t trip during a middle-of-the-night visit to the bathroom.
The kids are so cute that, earlier in the evening, I had to snap a picture. They mugged for the camera, arms slung around each other, before my son proposed, “Let’s get married.”
At 5 years old, they’re likely on the brink of deciding that getting married is the last thing they want to do. Isn’t this the age where girls stick with girls and boys play only with boys?
For now, they’re in love.
I hate to douse the fire of their pre-K romance. But their ardor raises another question: When is it time to draw the line between the sexes?
I still bathe my son with his younger sisters. They laugh as they splash around together, scuba diving for sharks and sculpting shampoo Mohawks.
Likewise, my husband and I have yet to declare our bathroom off-limits. The kids saunter in when they awake, bleary-eyed and still warm with sleep, and plop down on the tile floor in front of the steamy shower.
A few years ago in Carolina Parent, someone from the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood wrote that by the age of 3, children should no longer see their parents naked.
Oops.
Honestly, though, I don’t think either of my older kids – even my oldest, the 5-year-old – thinks there’s anything unusual about seeing mom and dad sans clothing.
It doesn’t appear to be stoking any Oedipal complexes. It’s merely a matter of survival in a household of little kids.
They don’t understand what it means to be discreet.
“Privacy or company?” my kids ask each other when one or the other is perched on the porcelain throne.
The answer is usually “company,” which translates as brother or sister hanging out in the bathroom, chatting about matters of preschool import, as the other takes care of business.
A friend once told me that I’ll know when the time comes to insist on separation of the sexes. I won’t have to do a thing, she said. The kids will let me know with an unequivocal “Ewwwww, mom, that’s gross!”
Meanwhile, I just peeked at the sleeping beauties upstairs in the queen bed. He clutched his orca finger puppet. She cuddled her Webkinz penguin.
Fast asleep, they were just little kids, oblivious to the not-so-distant future when child development dictates they’ll decide they don’t like each other before realizing, 10 years down the road, that they really, really do.
Bonnie appears every Monday on TriangleMom2Mom.
Bonnie Rochman
Bonnie is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Monday.
She lives in Raleigh and has written for The News & Observer since 1998. She has covered political unrest in the Middle East and chronicled the experiences of entrepreneurs in Vietnam, but that was long before her new bosses -- there are three of them, one more demanding than the next -- presenting her with her most challenging assignment to date: juggling the needs and perceived wants of boy/girl preschoolers and their baby sister.
Bonnie also writes kids music reviews for TriangleMom2Mom.
Comments
This is kind of sort of related. I'd never noticed this before. I went to Ridge Road Pool over the weekend and there was a sign on the women's locker room that said no boy over age 5 is allowed. I'd never seen that before.
For my kids, the "cover-up" happened sometime when my son was around eight and my daughter was around five. I think that is relatively late for most kids, but they were immature, perhaps. When they were preschoolers, I wondered the same thing: when, if ever, would we all stop dressing and going to the bathroom, and bathing around one another as if nakedness between sexes made no difference? It happened as a natural transition for us. I don't remember the event that changed how we always used to be. But I think I noticed one of my kids looking at one of us as though we were naked. Imagine! We had always been naked, but no one ever noticed. Once it mattered in anyway, we all naturally protected our privacy from then on. I think the Ridge Road Pool Sign is reasonable. Though my son wouldn't have noticed anything, I wouldn't want to have to protect my privacy in a public locker room.
I wouldn't be comfortable leaving a 5 year old outside the locker room while I went in to change / shower.
Having experienced one of my children being grabbed, almost 15 years ago, the thought of saying wait here to someone that small frightens me.
Perhaps more "family" rooms would be better for families with bigger children or stalls put into place so we wouldn't have to leave our children unattended.
Hi Bonnie,
I did co-ed sleepovers with my youngest girl who is now 21. :)
She even had a few as a teen with us present where her friends parents had to go out of town where we all slept in the living room in sleeping bags.
Our home we never were ashamed of our bodies and my girls were always modest in public, much more than many of their friends who grew up in houses where families "hid" their bodies.
I may be one of the few, but up until I got very heavy, my daughter and I shared clothes, changing rooms, even showers when we were on trips together all her life, and all through her teen years and even now I go with her for check ups and she asks me to come in with her.
Some families think this is odd, but I remind friends who feel this way and who have children, did your spouse go in with you when you had your OB appointments or during the delivery of your child? How many strangers were in the room seeing you sans clothing, so why is it unacceptable for a mom & daughter to see each other without clothes?
I now have a son. He still nurses and he showers with his father and I. It saves water and none of us think anything of it. His dad grew up in the UK and they view the body very differently. They don't have the nudity issues that we have here in the states.
I am sure that there will come a time when he will not want to change in front of me or see me for that matter or I may feel uncomfortable, but I will deal with that when the day comes.
The sleepover sounds adorable. We are an all girl family except for my husband, so I don't have any input about when to seperate! I do know, that what I'm about to say is not attributed to philosophy in anyway, more personality, but neither my husband nor I ever walk around with no clothes on, we change privately, not because we are 'hiding" or "ashamed" but it's just not our style. We lock bathroom doors and don't conduct that sort of business in front of one another or our kids. Again, not because we're prudes, (believe me, we're not!) but it's simply not our "style". I have no opinion either way about the impact any of these things have on kids (probably none) again, it's just a matter of personal taste in our case.