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

A Word about Teens

Teenagers outwardly resist what they consider your intrusive or "butt-insky" behavior. But at some level - and they will never admit this to you - they appreciate the fact that you care.

Gutierrez's older daughter understands the rules of engagement and there's little debate when she heads out with friends. "Now she offers the information that the other parents are going to be home and gives us the phone number," her mom says. "She knows that she has to call us from a land-line - not a cell phone - when she gets to a friend's house so we know from caller ID that she's where she's supposed to be."

Studies have found that the values, family rules and standards you teach your kids in their early years minimize the risks they'll take when they're teens - a time when your opportunities for meeting their friends and their friends' parents greatly diminish.

"Teenagers adamantly want you to know as little as possible about what they do," Wolf says. "They will tell you that they are deeply offended that you want to know who their friends are."

Still, Borba says, parents need to be savvier about what their kids like to do when they're not supervised and whom they're with. Statistics show that first sexual encounters happen at home. The first drink - usually around fifth-grade - takes place in an unsupervised home. And adolescents' accessible drug of choice - cough syrup - is in everyone's medicine chest.

"We are so busy and exhausted that we've lost touch with who lives next door to us and who our friends' kids are," Borba says. "But we still have to get to know our own kids, their friends and their friends' parents."

Resources

Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues that Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing, by Michele Borba, Jossey-Bass, 2002. Borba makes the case that kids who develop empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness will be more self-reliant when not under their parents' supervision.

Get Out of My Life, but First Can You Drive Cheryl & Me to the Mall: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager, by Anthony E. Wolf; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2002. An entertaining, informative classic with practical tips on staying one step ahead of your teen.

How to Keep Your Children Safe, by Yvonne Vissing, University Press of New England, 2006. Offers advice on ensuring that your kids are safe under the care or supervision of other adults, from childcare providers or camp staff to anyone transporting your child.

365 Ways to Keep Kids Safe: How to Make Your Child's World Safer, Ages Birth to 16, by Don Keenan, Balloon Press, 2006. This example-rich book describes how to prepare and protect your child from everyday risks.

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Lisa Kosan is an award-winning writer and the mother of two boys.