Earlier this week one question was thrown out on a blog that I frequent during the day. Later in the week, a variation of the same question was thrown out. In my opinion, if your answer was yes to one, it should have been yes to another. However that was not 100% the case.
Would you let your child sleep over at a his/her friend's house?
Would you let your child go to an away from home over night camp?
to me that's like asking
Would you swim in a tank filled with sharks
Would you swim in a tank filled with piranhas
Then I got to thinking, this is how politicians get caught up in the details of speech. I'd call somebody a "flip-flopper" if they said yes to one and no to another. To me, a parent's underlying issue is that they are not in control of their child's circumstances/situation in either case (and want to protect their child's safety). So I cannot imagine why the response would be different. I suppose it's all in how we perceive the underlying risks and/or circumstances of a given sitaution.
I went to sleep overs, whether it be at a friend's house or at an away camp. And let me tell ya, I did more dirt at camp than at a friend's house. At camp (basketball), the counselors are...what 4-7 years older than I was...and were doing their own dirt. At a friend's house, me and my friends were too scared of the immediate consequences of stepping out of line. At camp, I had freedom and no house alarm to sneak out with the other girls to go visit the boys. Because I didn't believe that I'd get caught, my conscious didn't ride me as it would have if I were in my own or a friend's neighborhood. Some would argue that you don't truly know the parent's whose house you are sending your child. I know my mother spent more time with my friend's parents than she did ANY of the camp counselors/directors etc. The risk was the same in either instance. Thank God, no crazies got to me in either situation.
Ionno - but that topic struck a weird chord in me.
1 comment:
I thought the response to that topic was odd too. So many people were against sleepovers but cool with camp. There were dramatic testimonial letters about people getting molested at sleepovers for goodness sakes. But no one could offer any solid explanation of why camp was OK. IMO, the sleepovers I went to at my friends house across the street were a much safer situation than a camp. My parents knew my friend's parents and vice-versa. How is that more unsafe than a camp full of adult/teenage staff that you don't know from Adam. Shoot - if I were a child molester I would love to take that job! If you say no sleepover, you should be anti camp too.
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