Erin really wanted to have a slumber party for her birthday. We thought that 7 years old was a little too young for her to sleep over at a slumber party so we figured her friends' parents would feel the same way. So we decided to have a 'Pretend' Slumber Party. Instead of the girls sleeping over, they just came from 7-10 pm, wearing their pajamas. We only invited 3 girls to the party, and by the end of it we decided that was 2 girls too many.
I was completely taken aback at the rowdiness of 4 girls (including Erin). The thing about little girls - they don't rough house and get into things the way boys do, but when they get worked up they emit a high-pitched, raise the cackles on your neck, squeal. Squeal is too generous a word. It is more of a screech.
One of the girls had serious authority issues. She would not listen to a word we said. We have two parakeets and twice she reached in their cage and grabbed one out, not very gentle about it, either. We told her she couldn't hold the parakeets and she yelled at us, "Well! I want to hold them and I'm going to hold them!" When we said she couldn't she stomped her feet and ran upstairs to Erin's bedroom and refused to come down. It was 3 solid hours of this belligerant behavior. I was never so happy to see a parent before in my life as I was to see this girl's mother come pick her up.
The other bad thing about this girl's behavior was that it made the other girls think they could also behave that way. If this girl insisted she was going to chase Teddy around the house, then the other girls would chase him, too. Two hours into the party I had had enough. Ted wanted me to call her mother but I was worried that the mother wouldn't believe us and that from here on out there would be tension. I'm going to be seeing this woman for the next 12 years while Erin is in school with her daughter. I decided to have a talk with the girl instead. I sat her down and told her that her mother was going to be picking her up soon. I said that if she didn't start behaving that I would report everything she'd done to her mother. I then asked her what she thought I would tell her mother. She got a scared look and said, "Lots of stuff that she wouldn't like." After that I wouldn't say she exhibited good behavior, but it wasn't quite as bad either.
At 10:10, when all of the girls had gone home and Erin and Teddy were asleep, Ted and I fell over from exhaustion, swearing never to have a slumber party again. We also thanked our lucky stars that we chose to end the party at 10 instead of 11, or, egads, made it a 'real' overnight slumber party.
LOL... Been there, done that! At least you had the sense to make it a pretend slumber party. Our daughter's first, she invited seven girls. Horror! Add that to our kids, and it was total chaos...
Posted by: Kristal | June 24, 2004 at 06:18 AM
Oh wow.I would have crawled in a closet and hid until the parents got there.lol
Posted by: emily | June 25, 2004 at 06:29 AM
Helpful tip #1: Invite girls who you have had play-dates with. If they are well behaved then they can come.
#2: Don't invite children who don't behave!!
When Lillianna turned 6 in October we had a sleepover with 7 of her friends. They ranged in age from 5-7. They were all well behaved sweetie pie girls.Ok they got a little rowdy dancing to the Lizzie Mcguire cd but so did I!!! We had a blast. We were all asleep by 11pm and up at 7am. They were all gone by noontime. I'd do it again in a heartbeat!
Posted by: RobinP | July 01, 2004 at 07:18 PM
Only one post in the whole last three weeks! Need more! :) I miss these wonderful stories.
Posted by: K | July 01, 2004 at 08:28 PM