Sleepover Safety: How to Make Sure Your Kids Are Safe at Another Family's Home

The First Rule of Sleepover Safety: Meet the Parents

Wondering how safe your child is at a friend's house? Parents and experts alike say you have to make the effort to get to know that other family better, whether your child is very young or in the teen years. Introduce yourself to the other parents, ask questions about supervision and safety, and even discuss some of your own house rules.

By Lisa Kosan

Along with beautiful weather, spring and summer can bring waves of anxiety for parents whose children do just what children do best: make new friends. We may be proud of our kids' growing independence, but we're a bit wary of these unknown kids and their families.

Remember the days when "play date" meant you got to visit your friends for coffee and brought your infant, toddler or preschooler along for the ride? You chose the time, the place and the people.

If your kids are now elementary-school age, tweens or teens, you're probably acutely aware that they prefer to arrange their own get-togethers with people of their own choosing. Kids who've hit the ripe old age of 11 may already be asking for a ride to the corner near their friend's house - and balking if you suggest meeting the parents.

But meet them you must, say plenty of parents and parenting pros. For safety's sake, and your own sense of security, you need to know that the parents of the other child are home, will continue to be home and are supervising both their child and yours. And you need to know that the home your child is entering is a safe, secure, comfortable place to be.

It gets harder the older your kids get, to be sure. As tweens and teens become more independent - and less enamored with their parents' involvement in anything they do - parents say they're often more likely to drop their adolescent off in the driveway of a friend's house and pick the youth up in the same location, never even getting out of the car.

"You have to take the first step to introduce yourself to your child's friend's parents," says Michele Borba, Ed.D., an author and lecturer who specializes in the topic of building children's character. "You have to make it your house rule that, no matter what, you will always introduce yourself before dropping your child off for a party or any other gathering. Just don't expect your child to send you a thank-you card."