I had great times at sleepovers, but looking back, at sleepovers is where I first:
played spin the bottle
witnessed all my friends get drunk
saw classmates hook up and go to bed together
saw guys take advantage of drunk girls
found a big porn stash in a friend’s closet
watched a rated R movie
watched a rated X movie
spent lots of time walking around at night time the neighborhood up to no good
the fewer sleepovers my daughter goes to (when she gets older) the better.
I think when you get to that age is a different situation. Nowadays kids that age fly to Cancun for summer vacation unsupervised for mass teen aged drunken orgies. Fortunately my grandkids are still only into toilet papering neighborhood houses. And they are such bad criminals that they get caught almost every time.
played spin the bottle
witnessed all my friends get drunk
saw classmates hook up and go to bed together
saw guys take advantage of drunk girls
found a big porn stash in a friend’s closet
watched a rated R movie
watched a rated X movie
spent lots of time walking around at night time the
neighborhood up to no good
Porn stashes and X-rated movies in a friend's closet are s-o-o-o 20th century. Now with everything online and kids having access to their own and their friends' mobile devices and laptops, today's kids are growing up in a highly sexualized environment that has nothing in common with the experience of any adult. And "blocking" the sites on the family computer (or keeping the home computer in a common space in your house) is completely useless.
Kids can go on websites like Omeagle.com, where they can video chat with different strangers, many of whom turn out to be adolescent boys and older pedophiles masturbating. You can change "strangers" every 10 seconds if you want, and there are just regular kids on it too, so your kid can actually find normal kids to chat with. My daughter showed me this site, and told me all her friends -- good kids -- know about it.
You can "forbid" your kid to watch it or other sites like it, but all you'll do is drive your kid underground and encourage secret keeping.
I sat with my daughter and let her show me the freaks on Omeagle. I didn't freak. I didn't give her orders about not going on it. I didn't threaten her. But I was able to communicate to her that it is a stupid, degenerate, boring waste of time. That strategy, as shocking as it may seem, has worked really well. She thinks it's gross now, and I know for a fact that she doesn't go on that site (or others like it) anymore. She outgrew it.
It has been a real eye opener to deal with the fact that the average 12 year old has already seen more penises and perverted sex acts (including people having sex with dogs) than most women my age have.
At 12, I asked my daughter how many of her friends had lost their virginity. She didn't tell me their names, but did a count on her fingers, and told me that nine -- NINE -- had done so. She also told me how many were into cutting, and how many were into drugs.
You can't protect your kids from that stuff, and if you try, all you do is either make them dangerously naive, or drive them to be sneaky.
The good news, though, is that in this environment, you can really be frank and honest with your kids about this stuff. Frank, honest talk without pulling punches is key to building real trust, instilling strong personal values and making sure your kids have their eyes wide open to the risks so that they're not taken advantage of.
It's a dangerous, degenerate world out there, a far cry from the Leave It To Beaver world that I grew up in. You can't protect your kids from it by trying to hide it. All you can do is be there for them, educate them, communicate your values, listen to them, and teach them how to develop boundaries.