Our Values Are Not Always Our Children’s Values
By: Lindsay Brown
Tags: Values, Parenting, Motherhood, Children, Life Lessons

I think about that night often, and the joy it still brings me is so real and raw. I can’t help but want that for my own daughter (but maybe not the railroad tracks part because that was dangerous as hell). Sophie is an introverted person at heart, and although she has several very close friends, she never seems to ask for sleepovers.

This year, of course, it's been different because sleepovers are basically against the law, but even in years past, the concept didn’t seem ever to interest her much. I asked her about it the other day, and her answer was sincere and simple.

“I just don’t really like people, even my best friends, going through my stuff.” She was dead serious.

“Well, we could always put your special things away in the spare room, so then it's, you know, out of sight out of mind,” I explained.

“No, that's okay. I’ll stick to playdates for now,” my ten-year-old replied, eerily deadpan.

I don’t know why this bothers me so much, but it does.

Still to this day, I like to have sleepovers with my best friends. Of course, my best friends now are my sister-in-law, Ashley, my husband and my lady-soulmate Janelle, who I basically talk to every day on the phone, so I’m lucky in this respect that I have them all close at hand.

This past summer Janelle, Ashley and I had a sleepover. All of our husbands were away working, so we packed up the kids, brought them to Ashley's house and made an evening of it. The kids camped out in the living room while we snuggled up in the spare room's enormous king-size bed and pretended we were 12 again. It was the best!

I don’t want my daughter to miss out on these moments of her childhood. However, because I am a critical thinking adult, I also understand that raising a child with your draconian law regarding how to have fun is probably not a great way to go about things. Who am I to say if she should want to have sleepovers? She doesn’t have issues making friends, and she has an active social life, even if in 2020 that meant zoom calling her girlfriends and talking with them half the day over video message.

As parents, it's difficult for us not to take a cherished childhood memory of our own and try to force it down the throats of our children.

We want them to experience and appreciate the same things we did. But the truth is, that will never happen. They are too far removed from our generation and experiences to feel the same way about events as we did.

When we were kids, my greatest joy as a tween (of which that name had not yet been invented) was stealing my mom’s Sears magazines cutting out photos of the ladies modelling bras and making a mint selling them on the playground at school the next day to all of the boys. I will be impressed with my kids if they have my entrepreneurial spirit, but I doubt it would be in the same fashion as mine.

Maybe Soph doesn’t want to do sleepovers now and will by next year. Or maybe she won’t. Maybe she is a private homebody type of person, and that's okay too.

She is happy and well adjusted and good, so really there isn’t anything to worry about.

But damn, those sleepovers were fun.