So, my son went to sleepover at a friend's house.

12:30am, we hear someone coming in the front door. Turns out he didn't want to sleep in a basement, so he biked home. At half-past midnight.

He's -eight-.

Granted, it's only two blocks away, but still... he is now grounded and no longer allowed to go sleep anywhere.

How do you teach a kid it's not okay to be out that late at night, alone?

Stage an elaborate plot involving a one-armed man losing a fake arm to teach him a lesson?

Just played level 7 (escape) Pretty cool game.

My computer won't load hcrealms tonight. Weird.

*Previous statements posted on some other website and magically transferred to HCRealms

^^^ This was my first thought as well ^^^

adamical...
























...I love you.

Personally, I'd be publicly upset and privately proud. I mean, he took the initiative to remove himself from a situation that made him uncomfortable. For an eight-year-old, that's kind of amazing. Of course, I'd also want to talk to the other kid's parents to find out how he managed to sneak out of their house. The way I'd approach it? Tell him that he should never do anything that he doesn't really want to do (even if he previously committed to it and is having second thoughts at the last minute), but the next time a situation like this comes up (assuming he's ever allowed to leave the house again) he needs to CALL YOU FIRST.

He didn't sneak out -- apparently, the friend's older brother was still awake and watching TV. Everyone else was asleep. So he told the older brother he was going home, and went home.

I'm trying to balance myself between "He should know better" and "C'mon, how dumb were you at that age?" But I didn't grow up around cell phones... and I defintely didn't grow up in a city. If I ever went out that late at night, I only had to worry about wildlife -- there's some bad examples of humanity in this city. Plus 12:30... that's when people leave teh bars before they close to avoid the rush.

Yeah, the older brother has a bit of a responsibility there. Still, it sounds like something I'd do at that age... actually, come to think of it, I did do that stuff at that age.

Peers, query, where exactly do you live? Like, suburbia, in a city proper, or someplace more rural?

A wizard did do it.

I'm across the river from Fargo, North Dakota. The metropolitan area is about 209k. So, technically, a city, but, y'know... I'm from the East Coast. Calling this a city is just another way of saying it's the biggest place between Minneapolis and Seattle.

But I grew up in a town where our entire high school was 400 students covering three towns; here, each -grade- hs more students than that, and that's just for one of the several highschools... so it's much different from where I grew up.

My brother walked home all the way across a city at that age, from a sleepover, at 2 in the morning. It was because the other kids were making fun of him all night long (he put up with a lot of bullying in school throughout his life, something I didn't give him nearly as much help with as I should have, one of those regrets that haunt me to this day).

My parents flipped their ####, as did the parents of his friend, because they wanted to know why he left like that. All parties decided he wasn't allowed to go to any more sleepovers. I got very angry about that decision, because I felt it was tremendously unfair to my tremendously well-mannered little brother who was being picked on by a bunch of #######s.

When I was 10 years old I was a very very retaliatory kid, and I tended to do things I would regret almost instantly. This being no exception, as I approached his "friends" at lunch the next day, said "hi", and then tossed their lunch trays onto their respective laps (it was spaghetti day!). I don't remember what else I said, or what their reactions were, but I do remember I got in a lot of trouble, and that my brother never appreciated it.

My parents decided to retract their position on his sleepovers, instead just threatening him that if he walked across town like that late at night again, his older brother would probably embarrass him again like that. There were then some mixed messages (in hindsight, likely because they were proud but were duty-bound to not condone my behavior) about whether or not I did the right thing.


I doubt any of that helps, Peers, but thought I'd share.