Kids are a blast, but sometimes parenting is also hard, but not in the way you’d think it is.

The other day my youngest was supposed to go on a sleepover. The parent’s got sick so they asked if their kid could sleepover at our house. Of course we said yes and had to kick some cleaning into over drive.

Now, this is a classmate of my daughter and she’s very polite and sweet, but I didn’t know her parents before the school year started. These two hit it off right away so we scheduled a hangout in a park, a play date at our house, a play date at their house before doing a sleep over. Now I’m generally a proponent of minimizing media. Statistically, we live in a safer world than when I was a kid regardless of the news cycles. I had hundreds of sleepovers at dozen’s of houses and I’m pretty sure half of them my parents never even stepped in the front door. Because of that I felt like my due diligence was solid. Meet with parents, watch some parenting, see house. All good.

Recently, in a parenting chat I have with some of my oldest friends one asked the question about what the rest of us do when our kids go over other people’s houses. He for example will meet the parents and ask two main questions. “Are you guns secure, if you have them, and are your prescriptions and medicine locked up or stored out of child access.” Two questions I never even thought to ask myself.

Now Firearms, I get there’s a lot of focus on that as a parent because most kids don’t fully think through things and video games and movies paint very different pictures of that versus reality. My kids know guns aren’t toys, they know how to shoot, they know how to make sure a weapon is unloaded and they 100% know not to put their finger on the trigger. Even if we had zero guns this is basic safety knowledge that everyone should know, in case they ever come across one.

Prescriptions, on the other hand…Never even once crossed my mind. My kids know not to touch medication, but what are other kids taught? How secure should something that gets taken once a day be? Apparently some people lock them up in safes or lockboxes with keys or combinations, others leave them on the mantel of the fireplace in the living room. Personally I think the medicine cabinet in the bathroom is fine.

I think the biggest thing about parenting is you have to make sure your kids are solid. They know right from wrong and hopefully will tell their friends not to be dumb, or go tell an adult.

That’s all I was thinking about today, sleepover went great. The kids had a blast, sneakily staying up till almost midnight, as if we didn’t know.

~~Miniwing~~
Parent, Stoic, Investor