Setting Rules for Safe Coed Sleepovers

Want to ensure that your youngsters and their friends have a safe coed slumber party at your home? The following rules are based on discussions with teens, parents and mental health professionals:

* Parents should set guidelines and discuss them with parents of the youngsters attending the sleepover. “They must determine that they’re all on the same page,” says Greenwich, Conn., psychotherapist Kurt Sperling.

* Announce the rules to the teens before the sleepover begins (i.e. no alcohol, drugs, sex, excessive noise, making a mess, leaving the premises).

* Check on the teens periodically.

* As an extra precaution, have the boys sleep in one room and the girls in another. In that way, parents can “minimize their risk that something will happen and that another parent will sue them,” says psychologist Christopher Bogart of Stamford, Conn.

* Make a commitment with your spouse to stay up until the last teen goes to sleep.

* If there is an infraction of the rules, the offender should be sent home or segregated from the group, says Sperling. “There has to be some kind of consequence in place,” he notes, based on the guidelines determined by the parents--who “collectively are the ultimate authority.”

* Inform that teenager’s parents of the youth’s breach of conduct. “A parent has the right to know what’s going on with that child, whether it’s positive or negative,” says Bogart.