Sleepovers

[wuapinmon]

Victory in the Pacific, War at Sea, Panzerblitz, Battle of the Bulge, Aaah, the memories.

Did you ever go raid other games for their dice so that you could do big battles faster?

[Jarid in Cedar]

Did you ever go raid other games for their dice so that you could do big battles faster?

No, we rolled each ship battle out one at a time. When we get bored with the game, We would put all of the pieces into a hat and draw them out to divide into 3 teams. We then arranged the rugs on the tile floor to be the land masses. We would combine the VITP and Battle of the Bulge games to play land, air, sea games.

[wuapinmon]

No, we rolled each ship battle out one at a time. When we get bored with the game, We would put all of the pieces into a hat and draw them out to divide into 3 teams. We then arranged the rugs on the tile floor to be the land masses. We would combine the VITP and Battle of the Bulge games to play land, air, sea games.

I can still remember that moment of clarity when my friend and I realized that we were too old for GI Joe, and we started using rocks as weapons to destroy our staged battles. That made us not-too-old for GI Joe for a couple more weeks.

[TripletDaddy]

I'm taking back sleepovers and it's starting with this thread.

One really fun sleepover memory I have: hearken back to the era of Atari 2600 and Intellivision (just before ColecoVision dropped)....one of my lifelong best friends called me up to tell me that his mom and dad just bought the family an "Intellivoice," which was the component add-on that actually spoke to you while you played the game. There were 4 or 5 games that were available at launch, one them being a car game and one of them being "Bomb Squad." He asked if I could spend the night and fortunately my folks said yes.

We stayed up all night playing "Bomb Squad" and I thought that digitally synthesized voice was the most incredible thing I had ever heard. It was much like Joshua's voice in WarGames. The guy told you how to diffuse bombs and such. Amazing stuff. What made the sleepover even better was that my friend's older brother was gone that night for some reason, so we didnt have to share or take turns playing the game. We slept out in the living room and ate leftover pizza and played Intellivision until about 3AM.

Another memory: same friend, spent the night at his house again. Don't recall the deets, but somehow my friend has a stack of about 100 Baby Ruth/Goonies promo posters. This was the exact pic:



So we are planning our TP target for the night and we collectively decide that it would be HI-larious if we went over to our mutual friend's (Bryce) house and left a bunch of the Goonies posters on his lawn. We didnt stop there....we spent about 20 minutes autographing the Goonies posters and customizing them with shameful or otherwise scandalous etchings..."Bryce....I love you...Sloth," or "Bryce is a Goonie." We snuck out at about 2AM, rode bikes over to his house, tossed some TP into the trees and then we laid w.a.s.t.e. to his front lawn...Goonie posters everywhere. Of course we pedaled out of there at 50mph and laughed ourselves silly once we got home. Monday at school, we couldn't wait to confront Bryce about the posters. We ran up to him and asked if he saw the posters on his lawn. He said, "Yeah. My dad had cleaned them up but they were all wet from the sprinklers. What were they?"

[RobinFinderson]

I can still remember that moment of clarity when my friend and I realized that we were too old for GI Joe, and we started using rocks as weapons to destroy our staged battles. That made us not-too-old for GI Joe for a couple more weeks.

I was always too old for GI Joe. If boys want to play with dolls, I say more power to them, but that shit wasn't for me.

[wuapinmon]

I was always too old for GI Joe. If boys want to play with dolls, I say more power to them, but that shit wasn't for me.

How very sexist of you! Please surrender your liberal card, poseur.

[Paperback Writer]

Mine too. We rolled some houses as we got older and could drive, but mostly we just stayed up all night playing that baseball game on the back of our dartboards. We'd draft teams, put down a batting order, and then compile stats on each player. Cal Ripken always seemed to get a homerun.

You needed to have discovered Strat-O-Matic. It was a dice baseball simulation game based on actual baseball statistics. But it doesn't allow for dart throwing so who knows?

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I think part of the "uncomfortableness" of LDS with sleepovers is that some (many?) LDS can be so insular and distrusting of "the world" that doesn't attend Priesthood and Relief Society. My parents were very guilty of this and initially said "No" because they didn't know the families of my non-LDS friends and didn't appear to have any desire to expand their social network outside of our ward. I countered that the father of my friend hosting the sleepover was a HS principal and that his family had some fairly strict rules. It helped get my parents out of their "LDS shell" because my friends' parents wanted to meet them since I was a positive influence on their kid.

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Taken to the extreme, there are LDS families in my ward who will not allow their deacon-aged sons to go on campouts without their fathers as an extension of the family no-sleep-over policy. And the fathers don't want to camp out so the sons don't attend. This, with a unit where all adult volunteers have child protection BSA training and there's usually a member of the Bishopric in attendance. When one of these families did agree to permit their son to attend the week long summer scout camp, he lasted one day before going home.

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I've been pro-sleepover with my kids and seem to host more than my share to accomodate some LDS families that my kids want to invite but realize they can't actually sleep over. So at curfew, I walk some of their LDS friends home where they spend the rest of the evening with a YW-aged baby sitter instead of with their friends and two-adult, experienced parents. For familes we don't know very well, we visit them in person prior to the sleepover and ask a standard set of questions. Cell phone technology has made things easier with sleepovers and allows us to discuss unforeseen circumstances like whether Paranormal Activity is suitable for a group of 11-year girls to watch.

[Moliere]

Did anyone here play video games at a sleepover?

[Shaka]

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Taken to the extreme, there are LDS families in my ward who will not allow their deacon-aged sons to go on campouts without their fathers as an extension of the family no-sleep-over policy. And the fathers don't want to camp out so the sons don't attend. This, with a unit where all adult volunteers have child protection BSA training and there's usually a member of the Bishopric in attendance. When one of these families did agree to permit their son to attend the week long summer scout camp, he lasted one day before going home.

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This is interesting to me. As a little kid I loved riding bikes and that eventually led to me trying out BMX racing. My mom was hesitant to let me try simply because of the crowd that hung out at the BMX track on race day. The crowd, mostly parents and family of the racers, was definitely not what one would see in Sacrament Meeting. There was plenty of beer drinking, smoking, and profanity. With that said there were also pockets of LDS folks who brought their kids out to race. All this at the Riverview BMX track in the hear of the Salt Lake Valley.

My parents are great people but I've often thought that their greatest flaw was protecting us a bit too much from the world. It took me a long time to figure out that folks who smoked weren't inherently evil simply because they smoked. Of course my parents didn't think smokers were evil but between them and the indoctrination at church I certainly had a skewed view on who smokers were as people.

[wuapinmon]

Did anyone here play video games at a sleepover?

I can remember a marathon Friday night til Sunday afternoon session at my friend Norman's house, complete with our own handmade maps, of us trying to beat this game.

[KillerDog]

I didn't know anyone who had a no sleep-over rule growing up. Thre are some negatives to sleep-overs but I think they are centered around a kid staying up too late. If a kid is going to get in trouble, he/she will do it in the daytime as well as at night. I can't recall a single sleep-over that resulted in inappropriate action. I can think of a few scout trips and a lot of "going outside to play" that resulted in inappropriate action. I think the belief that sleep-overs are the problem result from the lack of control a parent experiences when his kid goes to someone else's house and the fear of what that lack of control will cause.

[wuapinmon]

I also remember an awesome sleepover, before the internet made this irrelevant, when Wes Wilson and I tried to figure out the lyrics to "It Takes Two" by Rob Base. It took all night, but by the time we were done, we had them all, and I can still remember every word.

[TripletDaddy]

In defense of the no sleepover klan, no amount of good parenting can protect against abuse that may occur in the middle of the night. Dont want to discount that risk. I get the sense that the no sleepover rule is just as much about protecting children from others as it is protecting them from themselves.

[Paperback Writer]

In defense of the no sleepover klan, no amount of good parenting can protect against abuse that may occur in the middle of the night. Dont want to discount that risk. I get the sense that the no sleepover rule is just as much about protecting children from others as it is protecting them from themselves.

Fear the Boogeyman! Child abuse is the excuse that's given by some of my LDS acquaintances about the no-sleepover policy. It's as if they suspect all other parents (including LDS in their ward) as capable of child abuse. The best protection against child abuse is educating your child about it and getting to know the families of your child's friends. I worry more about unlocked guns in a friend's house then I do about them getting molested.

I realize child abuse is a serious matter. But I fear LDS parents are getting so over protective that they are viewed as "weird" by others and their children do not develop socially. IMO, one strategy to protect a child against bullying and perhaps child abuse is to nuture a child who is heathly socially and that usually requires kids to do things outside of the watchful eyes of their parents.

[DrumNFeather]

Fear the Boogeyman! Child abuse is the excuse that's given by some of my LDS acquaintances about the no-sleepover policy. It's as if they suspect all other parents (including LDS in their ward) as capable of child abuse. The best protection against child abuse is educating your child about it and getting to know the families of your child's friends. I worry more about unlocked guns in a friend's house then I do about them getting molested.

I realize child abuse is a serious matter. But I fear LDS parents are getting so over protective that they are viewed as "weird" by others and their children do not develop socially. IMO, one strategy to protect a child against bullying and perhaps child abuse is to nuture a child who is heathly socially and that usually requires kids to do things outside of the watchful eyes of their parents.

Here's what is interesting about your post...many on this site have used similar logic about potential abuse when deciding to send their child in alone for an interview with a leader. So where does one draw the line? Do we assume all our preditors? Or do we try to educate our children to know the "warning signs" as it were.