Co-Ed Sleepovers Are Nothing to Fear

Old school sleepover crew

This has been in my drafts since 2022. Wild stuff. 

My oldest is now 10. Last year, or maybe it was two years ago, he went to a sleepover birthday party, as kids do. At the time, I didn't think anything of the fact that it was a co-ed invite list. I think my oldest son may have been the only boy invited, I'm not sure because I didn't care enough to examine who was there when I dropped off or picked up. After the party ended, I forgot it had even happened. A few months ago, I was at another party where the topic of "that party with the boy sleeping over" came up. The parents I talked to were sagely nodding to each other, relieved that one girl just went for the movie and didn’t sleep over. According to the group wisdom, her parents had done well. "Uh, yeah." I said, "That one boy there was my son."

I was surprised that a co-ed sleepover became a low-key elementary school scandal. I didn’t think it would be a topic of conversation for parents whose kids weren’t there. I honestly don't see the risk in having elementary school aged children hang out overnight. I can sort of imagine what parents might be worried about, but really? What do you think is going to happen? They’re 8- and 9 year-olds and there are parents actively hosting the party. Nothing is going to happen. Especially in Berkeley, where almost all of these kids have all been socialized to have friends of both genders. My 10y/o isn’t even thinking about crushes yet, let alone anything physical.

I was surprised at how surprised these parents were when I told them my mom let me have co-ed slumber parties in high school. My town is supposedly liberal and woke. The socialization of seeing girls as viable friends and not just as potential hook ups is why my mom, and the parents of my friends, didn’t care about our sleepovers. They knew we were friends. I’m still friends with all of them today. If we're trying to create a world where men see and treat women as equals and peers rather than only as objects of desire, we need to drop the taboos and sexualization that we put on them that they themselves don't feel. We need to let them be friends.

There's more though. All your fears about co-ed sleepovers assume your kids are straight.

Whatever you're worried about kids doing at slumber parties doesn't magically disappear for LGBTQ kids. Every parent I know at our school would be fine if their kids were gay, but I wonder what that would mean for them and their views on slumber parties. It seems like an unexamined aspect of parenting LGBTQ kids. A lot of kids know their orientation at an early age. I think that may be even more so now, and here where I live, because we're not afraid to talk about or acknowledge the existence and validity of same sex relationships. So if your eight-year-old son tells you he's gay, what do you do about slumber parties? Maybe you're thinking you'd just send him to parties with girls. Or just with straight boys. Is that really a rational approach? Should you approach things any differently than you would with your cis-het son? No. The fact is, you should trust your children to be children. And if you don't, maybe it's time to examine how you've parented them. Have you contributed to over sexualizing your children in ways that you're not aware of?

These guys just want to hang out

My other question is this: if people are worried about co-ed sleepovers at this age, where does my transgender child fit? Only allowed with the gender they were assigned at birth, or with their gender identity? What if the child is gender fluid? No sleepovers at all? What’s up? At this point, my middle son's orientation is an open question. As I type that last sentence, I realize that this could be said of all three of my children, but I'll focus on my trans son for now. I ask you, with whom is he allowed to sleep over? My hope is that the answer is, wherever he's invited. And I hope those invitations come from friends of every gender.

The bottom line is that we need to examine our own filters and realize that our fears for our children don't always align with reality. My ten-year-old son isn't a predator, and your ten-year-old daughter isn't a harlot. She didn't invite him over the way you invite your co-worker over after happy hour. Or maybe, it's exactly the way you invite your co-worker over, with zero intent at a romantic encounter, because you're friends and you both know that and don't want anything else. My eight-year-old doesn't have internet access and he's not yet steeped in hookup culture. If he's hanging out with your son or daughter, he just wants to play make believe or maybe Candy Land. Kids are innocent, even when we invade that with our own fears or misguided jokes about their relationships with people of other genders. But if you're really parenting your kids, you should be able to trust them to hang out with friends no matter how they identify.

What DTF St. Louis Gets Wrong

I wasn't planning on watching DTF St. Louis on HBO Max. I know what the acronym stands for and despite the cast, it just didn't seem like something that would interest me. My guess was a show about infidelity and/or dating after divorce and neither topic really entertains me. Then some podcaster I like, probably Lizzie Bassett from What Went Wrong, said it was well written and very well acted so I decided to give it a try (she's right on both counts).

But as usual, that's not what I'm here to talk about. Nope, I want to talk about how this show escaped my attention on two fronts: One of the main characters is an ASL interpreter. Another one is a youth baseball umpire. Both of them are terrible (but potentially realistic) representations of these two occupations. How do I know? I am an ASL interpreter and a youth sports official. (Caveat: I don't umpire baseball yet, but I have an application in with the city.) Not only that, but I was the chair of an interpreter training program and I have been a coordinator and educator for rugby referees. I know ball.

So, what does DTF St. Louis get wrong about this? Let's take a look.

Interpreting

On the show, Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) is a down-on-his-luck former printer toner salesman who stumbles across an ASL class on his way to a job interview. He realizes that he has found his calling but instead of enrolling in the class, he picks up a pamphlet and starts teaching himself ASL on the train ride hime from Chicago to St. Louis. We don't know how Floyd ends up as an interpreter, let alone on TV. At one point he says he's been signing for about a year. Later, it's implied that he came across the ASL class several years prior to the start of the show. 

What we do know is that Floyd is not a fluent user of ASL. His signing is stilted and lacks the use of cohesive signs that show relationships between propositions. It's possible he could have picked up that level of fluency in about a year, but unlikely without a class or knowing any Deaf people. If he's still that bad after several years, that would be surprising unless, again, he's learning on his own. If that's the case, it's no wonder he can't make ends meet, because he must not be getting much work outside of occasional gigs with the TV station and an odd concert.

While there are some crappy interpreters who find work, it's alarming that Floyd would get such high profile gigs. Especially for his first job to be on TV when we know there are plenty of qualified interpreters in St. Louis. The other thing is that Missouri has certification and licensure laws for practicing interpreters, which my MO based interpreter friends say Floyd would not pass at the skill level he shows. So there's basically no way this character could exist like this in St. Louis.

Floyd is a poor representation of interpreting as a field and it's sad that many people will watch the show and get the idea that this is what we do and who we are. On the other hand, there really are interpreters like Floyd out there doing a disservice to Deaf people around the country. We've seen real life terrible interpreters show up on TV during extreme weather events. So while the show got a lot wrong, it does show an aspect of the interpreting world that is sort of accurate. Just not in St. Louis.

Umpiring

I admit, I have less experience on this one than I do as an interpreter. I have been a manager of youth rugby referees. I play in a rec softball league that has umpires. The show inspired me to apply for a job with our city's parks and rec to become an umpire. Carol knows nothing about baseball and says they gave her a rulebook when she was hired but indicates that was the extent of her training. I know how hard it is to recruit people to officiate youth sports, but Twyla must be super desperate. For most sports leagues, officials need to have some kind of certification. This is especially true now when abuse of athletes is a very public concern. The website for the fictional city of Twyla where the show is set requires umpires to take a certification course, and lists Carol as a certified umpire. She also says she earns $85/game. I guess that's possible. Youth rugby refs in my area earn $75/game. However, the city of Twyla's website offers a high of $38/game. In my hometown, sports officials for all games earn between $22-$37/hour. While the money thing isn't super important, it is very unlikely carol would be hired as an umpire without some kind of training. The show's depiction of her side gig is odd and a little annoying.

So there it is. Is any of it important? No. Does anyone care? Probably not. Did I enjoy the show in general? Absolutely. Give it a watch if you can get someone's login.