Do you have a "you must have been dating for at least XX months" rule before allowing it? Or do you allow even brand new relationships less than two weeks to spend the night?
Or never? We want to give our teen a safe space to enjoy their relationships on every level, but also want to help them know how to set and hold good boundaries.
We have good and open communication with our teen. In case it isn't clear, these would be sleepovers with the presumption but not requirement! Thank you. No sleepovers at all no matter how long my teen has been in a relationship until they are over There are just too many potential disasters in terms of misunderstandings, bad break-ups, the other parents not being told the whole truth, etc.
Things can go terribly irrevocably wrong before the legal age of consent. No casual hook-ups allowed, but an actual partner is okay.
We allowed sleepovers in the same room after our teen had been dating her boyfriend for about a year. They were 17 at the time and they stayed together for 3 years. Before that the boyfriend slept on our couch and sometimes our teen would sleep on the couch with him too. This is a question we have very recently had to deal with. For our 19 year old who is still living at home, we have an agreement of once per week.
