"Hey Mom As You Know Im Gay But Can I have My Friends for a Sleep Over?"
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| Jeff Freund banned sleepovers for his son, Trey, who is gay, after asking himself, “Would I let his sister at that age have a sleepover with a boy?”CreditCreditNick Oxford for The New York Times |
By Liz Tracy
When Trey Freund of Wichita, Kan., was 13, sleepovers and closed-door hangouts were part of his social life. So when he told his family he was gay, his father, Jeff Freund, a principal at an arts magnet middle school, asked himself, “Would I let his sister at that age have a sleepover with a boy?”
He thought about bullying, and about how other boys’ parents might react. “If they knew for sure my son was gay, I doubt they were going to let them come over,” he explained. Sleepovers for Trey ended after that.
Now at 16, with his family in the audience, Trey performs in drag at a local club. Instead of sleepovers, he drives home after hanging out with friends. He knows that limiting sleepovers was his father’s way of protecting him, but at the time, he recalled, “I felt like it was a planned attack against me.”
There are benefits to teen sleepovers. “It’s a nice break from a digital way of connecting,” said Dr. Blaise Aguirre, an adolescent psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “It’s a trusting and bonding experience.”
“I think parents always want to make space for the stuff of childhood to happen,” said Stacey Karpen Dohn, who works with the families of transgender and gender-expansive youths as senior manager of Behavioral Health at Whitman-Walker Health, a community health center focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender care in Washington, D.C.
While teens may see sleepovers as just a chance to spend a lot of time with their friends, parents may worry about their children exploring their sexuality before they are ready and about their safety if they do. For some, the intimacy of having their teens spend long stretches of unsupervised time in pajamas in a bedroom with someone they may find sexually attractive can be unsettling.
Amy Schalet, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies adolescent sexuality, said that American parents tend to believe that by preventing coed sleepovers, they are protecting teens who may not be emotionally ready for sexual intimacy. Her book “Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex,” compared the way Dutch and American teens negotiate sex and love. Unlike Americans, who feel that teen sex shouldn’t happen at the parents’ homes, Dutch parents think teens can self-regulate their urges and often allow older teens in committed relationships to have sleepovers.
Dr. Schalet warned when it comes to sleepovers, sometimes “prohibition takes the place of conversation.” Parents can help children learn sexual agency and develop healthy sexual lives by talking to them about consent and whether experiences made them feel good or not. If they don’t take this route, she said, parents of L.G.B.T.Q. kids risk sending the message that they disapprove of this part of their human experience and that they don’t trust them to “develop the tools to experience this in a positive way,” Dr. Schalet said.
There is no one way to structure L.G.B.T.Q. sleepovers, but parents concerned about making sure their kids feel safe and free of shame can try to plan ahead. For example, they should ask the child if they want to share their sexual orientation or gender identity with their hosts. Or if the child is uncomfortable changing clothes in front of friends, parents can make a house rule that everyone changes in the bathroom.
Dr. Aguirre suggested that parents who are concerned about possible sexual exploration to ask themselves: “What’s the fear?” For parents of L.G.B.T.Q. kids, he said, often “the fear is: Is my child going to be outed? Is my child going to be bullied? Is my child going to be harassed? Is my child going to be attacked? Because we know L.G.B.T.Q. kids are more likely to be bullied and harassed,” he said.
It’s critical for parents who want to keep their children safe at sleepovers to start building open, trusting, shame-free relationships with their young children so that kids can freely ask questions about sexuality as they grow.
“There shouldn’t be an assumption that your son is attracted to all of his male friends. That’s a sort of sexualizing of L.G.B.T.Q. youth,” Dr. Karpen Dohn explained.
If a teenager has a crush on a friend, Dr. Aguirre said parents can ask if they want to act on the crush and let them know sleepovers aren’t the place to do that. Parents can also use the conversation, if appropriate, to talk about the importance of contraception and protection from sexually transmitted diseases.
“When we’re not open about our children’s developmentally appropriate inquisition into their own identity, their own sexuality,” Dr. Aguirre said, “then we begin to pathologize normal human experiences like love, like desire.”
Christie Yonkers, executive director at a Cleveland synagogue, said that when her introverted 13-year-old daughter, Lola Chicotel, came out to her friends on Snapchat last year, she became “more socially active, has had more hangouts, more sleepovers.” Sleepover rules haven’t changed, but Ms. Yonkers allows them only at her home — something Dr. Karpen Dohn suggests for families of L.G.B.T.Q. youths.
The two have always spoken openly about personal safety and consent. Lola isn’t interested in dating yet, and Ms. Yonkers said she is not worried about any potential sexual experimentation. “As normal healthy developing kids who will become increasingly interested in expressing their sexuality — it just feels like normal healthy stuff,” she said. “My focus is on keeping the dialogue open.” She isn’t sure, however, if Lola’s future girlfriends will be allowed to spend the night.
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Logistical challenges create additional questions for transgender kids like 17-year-old JP Grant, a high school junior who lives near Boston.
When he started taking testosterone 10 months ago to transition from female to male, his parents ended sleepovers with girls and allowed them with boys. JP said he misses those playful experiences with female friends. “I’m still that same kid, that same person I was before I came out,” he explained, “For things to change like that, it made it feel like my trans identity was a burden.”
JP serves on the National Student Council of the L.G.B.T.Q. the youth organization, GLSEN, and volunteers with other groups that sometimes have events that involve spending the night away from home. Even with L.G.B.T.Q. groups, he says he still has to decide if he should disclose his trans identity with his roommates. He sleeps in clothing that isn’t aligned with his male identity and has to think about changing out of his binder, a garment he uses to flatten his breasts. “I have to make sure that I can get into and out of bed while feeling comfortable. I feel like that’s one of my biggest hurdles,” he said.
No matter what, rules at sleepovers need to be consistent for all the kids present. Since L.G.B.T.Q. teens may deal with discrimination at school or in certain social situations, “We don’t want to take home one more place where they don’t get to experience what other kids get to experience,” Dr. Karpen Dohn said. “We can’t necessarily protect them from the world around them, but the way we love them can help build coping skills and resilience.”
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