Say yes to the sleepover, and mean the rules
By Delia Marchetti, Staff writer · · 2 min read
A woman I know in Fort Wayne kept a seven-year-old overnight for the first time in June. Her daughter sent a list. Bedtime, eight. No sugar after six. The blue blanket, not the green one. Brush teeth for two minutes, use the timer.
She followed every item. The child cried at eight and was asleep by eight-twenty. Nobody died.
In the morning the child asked for pancakes. She made pancakes. That was not on the list, in either direction.
Here is what she told me. The rules were not for the child. The child would have gone to bed at nine and survived. The rules were for the daughter, who was in a hotel two hundred miles away not sleeping, and who needed to be able to picture the evening going exactly as she had written it.
So you follow the list. Not because the list is right. Because the list is the price of the second sleepover, and the third, and the one in August when the child is nine and the list has gotten shorter without anybody saying so.
The pancakes are yours. The pancakes were always going to be yours.