On the importance of sleepovers or Why you should parent based on your kid's needs

I’ve dedicated more than one blog to extolling the virtues of siblings of kids with disabilities: empathy in spades, adaptability, and kindness for all, to name a few. This weekend, when dropping Jackson off for sleep-away camp, I discovered another to add to the list. Now, at the time Jackson was developing this particular superpower, I was fairly certain I was damaging him for life. Turns out that could not be further from the truth.

You see, while other parents worry about their child sleeping away from home or getting homesick, I knew that Jackson would be fine. Because Jackson has been sleeping away from home since the ripe old age of three and half.

I should preface this blog by noting that ever since Miguel and I met we have never lived near our immediate families. Sending the kids to grandma’s has never been an option for us. We hire babysitters, rely on friends, and generally make it work.

But sometimes sitters and friends can’t quite cover the spread.

Not so coincidentally Jackson’s first sleepover coincided with Adelaide’s first hospitalization. He stayed with close family friends in the city who have a son a few years older than Jackson that he adores. Jackson had zero issues while there as evidenced by the attached photo taken the morning after. I was thrilled, shocked, and maybe even a little hurt.

Two months later Adelaide was diagnosed with infantile spasms, and we spent four weeks in the hospital trying to get them under control. With me in the hospital and Miguel now at the theater six nights a week with Hamilton, we called in familial reinforcements. Ideally, we wanted Jackson sleeping in his own bed and the family and friend coverage helped, but even then there were a few days where we needed to send him to a local friend’s house. Not without guilt of course for shipping our preschooler off to friends. But we did.

Once we landed in Chicago, I made it a priority to find a babysitter with a medical background who could care for both kiddos. Jackson ADORED our babysitter Katie (still does), she was heaven sent to our family, but she also had a regular nursing job. So, when Adelaide was admitted to the hospital for days at a time, she wasn’t always available. Again, we found ourselves relying on family friends to watch Jackson at our house, always prioritizing him sleeping in his own bed because I thought that was safest and the ideal and what kind of parent let’s their kindergartner have regular sleepovers?

That is until one afternoon when I went to surprise Jackson at pick up from school. I had been at the hospital for several days with Adelaide and Miguel had come to relieve me so I could take a real shower at home (hospital showers don’t count) and spend time with Jackson. At first Jackson was thrilled to see me, until he learned that I would have to return to the hospital in the evening and someone else would be coming to stay with him…again.

“I hate our family! How come Adelaide always gets you in the hospital and I have to have a babysitter. How come she can’t have a babysitter in the hospital?” He asked, staring at his shoes, unable to make eye contact with me.

Dagger meet heart.

There may be only one person in a family who has to endure seizures, but make no mistake, everyone in the family is affected by them.

Jackson was feeling left behind, and who could blame him? So, we decided to try and make Adelaide’s hospital stays more fun for him by intermixing sitters with sleepovers at friends… even on <gasp> school nights (because epilepsy doesn’t concern itself with the day of the week). It was what made Jackson the happiest and feel the most secure. This became his very bizarre normal for about one week each month for the last couple years of Adelaide’s life.

This experience has made him bizarrely homesick averse, to the extent that he never understood why his friends would get upset and ask to go home when they would stay the night at our house. Last summer he went to a different sleep away camp for just one week. When we picked him up I asked him if he would have wanted to stay for longer.

“Nope!”

“Because you were homesick and missed us?”

“Not really, I just didn’t like that there were spiders in the shower.”

At the end of the day, we are all parenting our own unique children under our own unique circumstances. I had to stop worrying about what was right for other families and listen to what was right for mine. Some parents are adamant about not letting their children sleepover at friend’s houses and I’m sure they have valid reasons for doing so. That wasn’t a choice my family had the luxury to make.

And now Jackson is better off for it and living his best life at summer camp! This may not be the same outcome for every child, but for Jackson, it taught independence, comfortability outside of our home and ways to self soothe without his mommy and daddy. There are many things I wish I could change about Jackson’s early childhood - having to sleep away from home isn’t one of them.

Image description: Jackson, age 3, wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas and sitting on a round red rug. He is mid-laugh, smiling at the camera and playing with a tan dog while wearing a red clown nose.