We just had this debate last night. With all but one kid (her situation is unique,) we do not allow sleepovers. I’m not worried about their physical safety or abuse. I just think very little that happens between 12-5am is good. We have a work around - they are in scouts and go camping. That gives them alone time in tents with friends. We also allow cousin sleepovers. By high school, I’m much more inclined to allow sleepovers.
For us, the magazines and the movies and the bullying just aren’t worth it. I know very few people who have positive memories of sleepovers. I’m trying to learn to let my kids have more independence, but I try not to put them in situations where our morals are compromised. I’m not worried about them not being able to build up defenses to peer pressure because school provides plenty of opportunities for that.
This is all very prescient to me as I learn the value of letting go and letting kids have more independence. There’s just some things (sleepovers) that I just can’t get myself to budge on.
That's a fair analysis and it makes sense to me. It is important, too, to foster a family-centric home environment where kids are expected to be present at home, interacting with parents and siblings, rather than taking off to friends' houses to be guests. It sounds like you're giving them lots of great chances to get out of the house! Camping is wonderful.
I loved sleepovers because they got me out of my house! I was always the kid who got up early and so many kind mothers, who probably got up early for some alone time, welcomed me to join them in the kitchen. I grew up in a less than happy house, so I learned a lot from these mornings with adults that weren't my parents. I hope my son grows up in a kinder household, but I still want him to see how other families do things and be able to get along without me. I am definitely going to be open to hosting sleepovers at our house and allowing him to go to them.
I also had so much fun being around other girls. My favorite girl scout camp memory is when we got caught in a hurricane and had to move camp into a big cabin with two other troops. It felt like the best version of an orphanage and I never wanted to leave.
I have fond memories of sleepovers, but I also have some not-so-fond memories. Like being molested in the middle of the night by my friend’s older brother on multiple occasions. Or watching the Saw movies at 9 years old and being too terrified to fall asleep.
I also think the consequences of sleepover shenanigans are much higher now. Like when one of my friends exposed me to online chat rooms, it was on her family’s desktop computer. I didn’t have a cellphone number I could give out to the older men I talked to and when I went home, my access was cut off. Or when another friend and I made a video prancing around in skimpy clothes and dancing suggestively and uploaded it to YouTube, (🤦🏻♀️) it got less than 5 views before our parents found out and removed it. Who knows how fast a video like that would spread now or how long it would take to be discovered by parents?
I think every kid makes poor decisions and it is a sort of right of passage to do those cringy things, but we live in a different world these days. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I can’t bear the thought of my children going through what I experienced at some sleepovers.
I’m not sure about this one. It’s not child abuse that worries me, but I do think families have different ideas of what is appropriate for children. I was about 7 when my friend’s mum let us watch Dirty Dancing at a sleepover after my mum had refused to let me watch it at home. (Luckily I think I was too young to have a clue what was going on!). I also don’t like the idea of children being left alone with their phones. My children don’t have phones, but I can’t control whether other children have them and what they might share with my kids. As children as young as seven now see pornography I don’t mind being called paranoid or controlling on this one.
I also think that the idea of a sleepover is a historically very new one, and that it is perfectly possible to have a happy, independent childhood without sleepovers. A sleepover is not a rite of passage that we all need to go through. Particularly in the age of the smartphone, I’m happy to err on the side of caution on this subject.
I am intrigued by your comment about sleepovers being new from a historic standpoint. I haven't thought of it that way before. I suspect that kids formerly slept at relatives' and friends' homes more out of necessity than fun, back in a time when they were swapped around a neighborhood more readily than they are now (i.e., the metaphorical village pitching in with parenting).
I do agree with you that families have very different ideas of what's appropriate, and that concerns me greatly. I could've gone into much more detail in my post, but my kids have only recently begun having sleepovers occasionally, now that they're 12+ years old, and that's because they're more in control of what they're exposed to. My mom used to call parents to ask what movies I'd be watching; it reassured us both.
The phone issue is real—but then, I think much awful stuff is being shared/viewed at school and on sports teams, too. No situation is ideal, that's for sure! Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
My children are only 6 and 8 and I can definitely see that things are different at 12+. Also we homeschool, so I don’t have to worry about what’s being shared at school etc. At the moment, sleepovers are one of the only places/times where my children could be exposed to stuff I don’t want them being exposed to, which is why I’m extra cautious on this front. I do realise I won’t be able to control this forever though, and it terrifies me!
And although I think sleepovers are a relatively new ‘invention’, children in the past had so much more freedom away from their parents, and I would love to give my children that independence. It’s a really hard thing to recreate in the 21st century.
This reminds me of my 10th birthday party. It was a sleepover and I rented two movies-Ghost and Pretty Woman. One brave friend announced she wasn't allowed to watch Pretty Woman, so we watched Ghost and Troop Beverly Hills. Once my mom went to bed, the friend said we could watch Pretty Woman, but maybe not mention it in the morning. If only these were the worst movies we had to worry about anymore!
Yeah, I would nod in agreement to everything else in this (to be fair, thoughtful!) post.
The smartphone changed a lot. Sure, I probably watched some movies my parents wouldn't have let me watch while at friends' homes... but that was early 2000's! If pornography exposure is a problem for kids during *daytime* hours... I shudder at what a sleepover for my three boys in the 2020's would entail.
*I think a caveat would fall along the lines of the point about getting to know the family. It would only be worth it to me if the family was truly a low-tech/no smartphone or internet access for the kids family that we knew WELL, and shared many values. (Not every friend should or needs to for every interaction, of course, but things are higher stakes these days with the internet.) The stats are there that your average middle school and high school boy is already exposed to or watching porn, to life-long effect. This could be a bigger conversation about finding friends for your family where you can freely partake in certain experiences, like these. But the odds are kinda against us.
All in all, I did appreciate the points you made in this post. :)
Yes: media exposure might be the worst, and expected, part of this activity; e.g. the Playboy magazines of yesteryear are child's play compared with the actual porn that is regularly consumed today. And I also agree that it was never a "thing" in my life or circles. A couple times with my best friend with whom our parents were close and one party I hosted in high school. Honestly I feel like media, ironically, is creating the sleepover culture. My daughter only ever learned or asked about it after seeing it in an episode of Daniel Tiger.
My best friend and I had sleepovers at each other's houses almost every week, but our families were very close. We did have very different family cultures and there were definitely some movies we watched at her house that were not allowed at mine! :) But overall our families shared similar values and **KEY POINT** there were no smartphones. We could get on the desktop computer for a half hour and play SIMS (remember that?!) but that was about it. Otherwise we were let loose to ride bikes, play with our siblings, and so on. I may consider sleepovers at an older age for my kids with families that have similar low tech/no social media rules, but otherwise (unfortunately) I think the phone changed a lot. Yes of course there are phones everywhere but it's certainly a lot easier to get into some messy situations online over the course of an entire night (vs a quick glance during a sports game for instance). So, it's a constant discernment. Probably the blanket statement NO SLEEPOVERS EVER isn't terribly helpful but I understand in the current parenting climate/modern reality why people would be hesitant.
(I also was at plenty of other sleepovers where I was miserable/uncomfortable and desperate to go home. Yes it was illuminating, but there are enough rough childhood experiences. I don't think this one is absolutely vital.)
I am still thinking about this, especially about the concern for abuse. We need to teach our kids to be loud and not afraid to stand up for themselves. The first time I ever felt uncomfortable at a sleepover, I was 16 and my friend's dad gave me the major creeps. For some reason, we slept with her bedroom door open and I remember thinking "If Mr. H comes in here and touches me, I am going to scream so loud the whole building wakes up." I definitely wasn't taught that when I was a kid, but I am working on teaching my kid that now. At three, he knows to yell "PRIVATE PROPERTY" if anyone touches him without his permission. He knows the real words for body parts and he spends a lot of time around adults that aren't his parents, so he knows lots of good adults. I am also working on teaching him to not look at things without knowing what it is first. I don't know if this will work but it feels better to start now than wait until he is a teenager and has no idea how to handle himself in the world.
Loved this. I’m definitely pro sleepovers and have really fond memories of them as a kid! My son is 8 and we had a friend stay over this weekend, and plan to do a swap where he goes to their house next.
I wouldn’t say yes to a family we didn’t know well, but there is something special about the freedom to stay up late giggling and being in PJs together that you just can’t get with playdates.
This will probably be one of those things that will shift so much culturally that by the time I am making decisions about it, a new norm will be established.
My parents are divorced, so my parents already accepted a certain level of relinquishing control as to what my brother and I were exposed to (they disagreed on what media was appropriate for children) and they were used to us being out of the house. Sleepovers made sense. I LOVED seeing how other people lived, especially traditional two parent families. I loved how different everyone's houses smelled, the way their living rooms were organized, family photos, etc.
When I was in middle school, I had a friend group of 8 girls and we all rotated having sleepovers once a month. A very memorable part of this experience was going streaking through the neighborhood at around 3 am. We also made a lot of disgusting blender concoctions, prank calls, and at one house all 8 of us shared one bottle of beer. Sometimes it was stressful and frustrating, one pair of us almost always got into an argument, but overall I really enjoyed it.
Eight girls sharing one bottle of beer! Did any of the girls claim they were "sooo drunk"?
Not sure how old you are, but did you read The Sleepover Friends books when you were a kid? They were my favorite, right up there with the Babysitters Club, who also had a lot of sleepovers. At least 50% of all the birthday parties I went to in elementary school were sleepovers. My mom liked them because she could limit how many kids I could invite and she didn't have to go anywhere.
I remember that we all thought it was *disgusting*!!! I did not read that series, but I was an avid BSC fan.
I have so many feelings about kid birthday parties! I agree with your mom. I don't want 20+ kids showing up at my house or to pay hundreds of dollars on a party at a rented out location!
20 kids, plus their parents AND all the siblings. My friend had a party for her four year old and 90 people were invited, with most of those people being the parents and siblings of the birthday boy's actual friends. NO!
I see what you’re saying here, and I just don’t know that I agree. For one thing, sleepovers give opportunities for abuse. As you said, it’s usually someone the child knows… as in a friend or family member. I doubt parents letting their kids to sleep at a stranger’s house for the most part.
I also never had good experiences at sleepovers. I never encountered anything like devastating abuse, but one family my sister and I stayed at was over the top religious and made us do things to illustrate their points. (Like one time, we had to hug each other while the parents pulled on each of us and yelled “hold on!!!! The devil is pulling you apart!”)
I wish we lived in a world where sleepovers would be nothing but fun and great, but I just don’t see that the good outweighs the bad. That might change as they get older of course (right now mine are between the ages of 10 and 4) and I’m leaving room for a changed mind in the future.
Wow! What a story! Did that end up shaping your own views toward religion? I would agree that your kids seem young for sleepovers. I should've mentioned in my post that my kids have only recently begun sleeping over at friends' houses (and even then, it's infrequent) now that they are 12+ years old. I wouldn't have wanted to do it any younger.
As far as shaping my views on religion, I haven’t thought about it too much!!! But I will say I remember being confused and almost a little scared as a child at that sleepover. My sister and I were both pretty young. We laugh about it sometimes, but there’s a current of unease over it still.
And that makes so much sense! Sleepovers were more frequent growing up when I was in elementary and middle school so I automatically think of that age range. Older does seem like it would be better!
I was surprised at how early the requests for sleepovers came… although I remember having a sleepover for a 1st grade birthday, so maybe it is normal. My son is 6 and he’s slept over at his besties’ while we went to the theatre, but we are super close with the parents, know them, trust them etc. His other friend has slept over when her parents were in a pinch. I think visiting friends can give you sleepover vibes with the comfort of parents being nearby, some friends came for a visit at Christmas and the mom stayed in our guest room and the son bunked up with ours.
I'm a child of the 80s and have fond memories of sleepovers. The host parents ranged from super strict to super lenient. The strict house had the BEST snacks- homemade everything. I don't think boys had sleepovers as often as girls. Seems like my sisters were at another house or had friends at our house every other weekend.
Our son had only one sleepover growing up- a junior high birthday sleepover. One set of parents had not allowed any of their five children to participate is sleepovers due to a concern that such an activity, outside a strict Christian setting, could cause a kid to become gay. A gay friend got a laugh at this as church camp was a favorite time of year for him for secret, young, gay romances. Somehow our house was deemed conversion safe and their kid spent the night. He turned out fine. Last I heard, he was in a traveling production of Rent.
Side note, I'm going to try to work, "There was a piece of furry ham in the corner," into conversations.
Also, kidding about the kid being in Rent. He's a financial advisor and happily married to a woman (whew!).
We just had this debate last night. With all but one kid (her situation is unique,) we do not allow sleepovers. I’m not worried about their physical safety or abuse. I just think very little that happens between 12-5am is good. We have a work around - they are in scouts and go camping. That gives them alone time in tents with friends. We also allow cousin sleepovers. By high school, I’m much more inclined to allow sleepovers.
For us, the magazines and the movies and the bullying just aren’t worth it. I know very few people who have positive memories of sleepovers. I’m trying to learn to let my kids have more independence, but I try not to put them in situations where our morals are compromised. I’m not worried about them not being able to build up defenses to peer pressure because school provides plenty of opportunities for that.
This is all very prescient to me as I learn the value of letting go and letting kids have more independence. There’s just some things (sleepovers) that I just can’t get myself to budge on.
That's a fair analysis and it makes sense to me. It is important, too, to foster a family-centric home environment where kids are expected to be present at home, interacting with parents and siblings, rather than taking off to friends' houses to be guests. It sounds like you're giving them lots of great chances to get out of the house! Camping is wonderful.
I loved sleepovers because they got me out of my house! I was always the kid who got up early and so many kind mothers, who probably got up early for some alone time, welcomed me to join them in the kitchen. I grew up in a less than happy house, so I learned a lot from these mornings with adults that weren't my parents. I hope my son grows up in a kinder household, but I still want him to see how other families do things and be able to get along without me. I am definitely going to be open to hosting sleepovers at our house and allowing him to go to them.
I also had so much fun being around other girls. My favorite girl scout camp memory is when we got caught in a hurricane and had to move camp into a big cabin with two other troops. It felt like the best version of an orphanage and I never wanted to leave.
I have fond memories of sleepovers, but I also have some not-so-fond memories. Like being molested in the middle of the night by my friend’s older brother on multiple occasions. Or watching the Saw movies at 9 years old and being too terrified to fall asleep.
I also think the consequences of sleepover shenanigans are much higher now. Like when one of my friends exposed me to online chat rooms, it was on her family’s desktop computer. I didn’t have a cellphone number I could give out to the older men I talked to and when I went home, my access was cut off. Or when another friend and I made a video prancing around in skimpy clothes and dancing suggestively and uploaded it to YouTube, (🤦🏻♀️) it got less than 5 views before our parents found out and removed it. Who knows how fast a video like that would spread now or how long it would take to be discovered by parents?
I think every kid makes poor decisions and it is a sort of right of passage to do those cringy things, but we live in a different world these days. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I can’t bear the thought of my children going through what I experienced at some sleepovers.
I’m not sure about this one. It’s not child abuse that worries me, but I do think families have different ideas of what is appropriate for children. I was about 7 when my friend’s mum let us watch Dirty Dancing at a sleepover after my mum had refused to let me watch it at home. (Luckily I think I was too young to have a clue what was going on!). I also don’t like the idea of children being left alone with their phones. My children don’t have phones, but I can’t control whether other children have them and what they might share with my kids. As children as young as seven now see pornography I don’t mind being called paranoid or controlling on this one.
I also think that the idea of a sleepover is a historically very new one, and that it is perfectly possible to have a happy, independent childhood without sleepovers. A sleepover is not a rite of passage that we all need to go through. Particularly in the age of the smartphone, I’m happy to err on the side of caution on this subject.
I am intrigued by your comment about sleepovers being new from a historic standpoint. I haven't thought of it that way before. I suspect that kids formerly slept at relatives' and friends' homes more out of necessity than fun, back in a time when they were swapped around a neighborhood more readily than they are now (i.e., the metaphorical village pitching in with parenting).
I do agree with you that families have very different ideas of what's appropriate, and that concerns me greatly. I could've gone into much more detail in my post, but my kids have only recently begun having sleepovers occasionally, now that they're 12+ years old, and that's because they're more in control of what they're exposed to. My mom used to call parents to ask what movies I'd be watching; it reassured us both.
The phone issue is real—but then, I think much awful stuff is being shared/viewed at school and on sports teams, too. No situation is ideal, that's for sure! Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
My children are only 6 and 8 and I can definitely see that things are different at 12+. Also we homeschool, so I don’t have to worry about what’s being shared at school etc. At the moment, sleepovers are one of the only places/times where my children could be exposed to stuff I don’t want them being exposed to, which is why I’m extra cautious on this front. I do realise I won’t be able to control this forever though, and it terrifies me!
And although I think sleepovers are a relatively new ‘invention’, children in the past had so much more freedom away from their parents, and I would love to give my children that independence. It’s a really hard thing to recreate in the 21st century.
This reminds me of my 10th birthday party. It was a sleepover and I rented two movies-Ghost and Pretty Woman. One brave friend announced she wasn't allowed to watch Pretty Woman, so we watched Ghost and Troop Beverly Hills. Once my mom went to bed, the friend said we could watch Pretty Woman, but maybe not mention it in the morning. If only these were the worst movies we had to worry about anymore!
Yeah, I would nod in agreement to everything else in this (to be fair, thoughtful!) post.
The smartphone changed a lot. Sure, I probably watched some movies my parents wouldn't have let me watch while at friends' homes... but that was early 2000's! If pornography exposure is a problem for kids during *daytime* hours... I shudder at what a sleepover for my three boys in the 2020's would entail.
*I think a caveat would fall along the lines of the point about getting to know the family. It would only be worth it to me if the family was truly a low-tech/no smartphone or internet access for the kids family that we knew WELL, and shared many values. (Not every friend should or needs to for every interaction, of course, but things are higher stakes these days with the internet.) The stats are there that your average middle school and high school boy is already exposed to or watching porn, to life-long effect. This could be a bigger conversation about finding friends for your family where you can freely partake in certain experiences, like these. But the odds are kinda against us.
All in all, I did appreciate the points you made in this post. :)
Yes: media exposure might be the worst, and expected, part of this activity; e.g. the Playboy magazines of yesteryear are child's play compared with the actual porn that is regularly consumed today. And I also agree that it was never a "thing" in my life or circles. A couple times with my best friend with whom our parents were close and one party I hosted in high school. Honestly I feel like media, ironically, is creating the sleepover culture. My daughter only ever learned or asked about it after seeing it in an episode of Daniel Tiger.
My best friend and I had sleepovers at each other's houses almost every week, but our families were very close. We did have very different family cultures and there were definitely some movies we watched at her house that were not allowed at mine! :) But overall our families shared similar values and **KEY POINT** there were no smartphones. We could get on the desktop computer for a half hour and play SIMS (remember that?!) but that was about it. Otherwise we were let loose to ride bikes, play with our siblings, and so on. I may consider sleepovers at an older age for my kids with families that have similar low tech/no social media rules, but otherwise (unfortunately) I think the phone changed a lot. Yes of course there are phones everywhere but it's certainly a lot easier to get into some messy situations online over the course of an entire night (vs a quick glance during a sports game for instance). So, it's a constant discernment. Probably the blanket statement NO SLEEPOVERS EVER isn't terribly helpful but I understand in the current parenting climate/modern reality why people would be hesitant.
(I also was at plenty of other sleepovers where I was miserable/uncomfortable and desperate to go home. Yes it was illuminating, but there are enough rough childhood experiences. I don't think this one is absolutely vital.)
I am still thinking about this, especially about the concern for abuse. We need to teach our kids to be loud and not afraid to stand up for themselves. The first time I ever felt uncomfortable at a sleepover, I was 16 and my friend's dad gave me the major creeps. For some reason, we slept with her bedroom door open and I remember thinking "If Mr. H comes in here and touches me, I am going to scream so loud the whole building wakes up." I definitely wasn't taught that when I was a kid, but I am working on teaching my kid that now. At three, he knows to yell "PRIVATE PROPERTY" if anyone touches him without his permission. He knows the real words for body parts and he spends a lot of time around adults that aren't his parents, so he knows lots of good adults. I am also working on teaching him to not look at things without knowing what it is first. I don't know if this will work but it feels better to start now than wait until he is a teenager and has no idea how to handle himself in the world.
Loved this. I’m definitely pro sleepovers and have really fond memories of them as a kid! My son is 8 and we had a friend stay over this weekend, and plan to do a swap where he goes to their house next.
I wouldn’t say yes to a family we didn’t know well, but there is something special about the freedom to stay up late giggling and being in PJs together that you just can’t get with playdates.
This will probably be one of those things that will shift so much culturally that by the time I am making decisions about it, a new norm will be established.
My parents are divorced, so my parents already accepted a certain level of relinquishing control as to what my brother and I were exposed to (they disagreed on what media was appropriate for children) and they were used to us being out of the house. Sleepovers made sense. I LOVED seeing how other people lived, especially traditional two parent families. I loved how different everyone's houses smelled, the way their living rooms were organized, family photos, etc.
When I was in middle school, I had a friend group of 8 girls and we all rotated having sleepovers once a month. A very memorable part of this experience was going streaking through the neighborhood at around 3 am. We also made a lot of disgusting blender concoctions, prank calls, and at one house all 8 of us shared one bottle of beer. Sometimes it was stressful and frustrating, one pair of us almost always got into an argument, but overall I really enjoyed it.
Eight girls sharing one bottle of beer! Did any of the girls claim they were "sooo drunk"?
Not sure how old you are, but did you read The Sleepover Friends books when you were a kid? They were my favorite, right up there with the Babysitters Club, who also had a lot of sleepovers. At least 50% of all the birthday parties I went to in elementary school were sleepovers. My mom liked them because she could limit how many kids I could invite and she didn't have to go anywhere.
I remember that we all thought it was *disgusting*!!! I did not read that series, but I was an avid BSC fan.
I have so many feelings about kid birthday parties! I agree with your mom. I don't want 20+ kids showing up at my house or to pay hundreds of dollars on a party at a rented out location!
20 kids, plus their parents AND all the siblings. My friend had a party for her four year old and 90 people were invited, with most of those people being the parents and siblings of the birthday boy's actual friends. NO!
I see what you’re saying here, and I just don’t know that I agree. For one thing, sleepovers give opportunities for abuse. As you said, it’s usually someone the child knows… as in a friend or family member. I doubt parents letting their kids to sleep at a stranger’s house for the most part.
I also never had good experiences at sleepovers. I never encountered anything like devastating abuse, but one family my sister and I stayed at was over the top religious and made us do things to illustrate their points. (Like one time, we had to hug each other while the parents pulled on each of us and yelled “hold on!!!! The devil is pulling you apart!”)
I wish we lived in a world where sleepovers would be nothing but fun and great, but I just don’t see that the good outweighs the bad. That might change as they get older of course (right now mine are between the ages of 10 and 4) and I’m leaving room for a changed mind in the future.
Wow! What a story! Did that end up shaping your own views toward religion? I would agree that your kids seem young for sleepovers. I should've mentioned in my post that my kids have only recently begun sleeping over at friends' houses (and even then, it's infrequent) now that they are 12+ years old. I wouldn't have wanted to do it any younger.
As far as shaping my views on religion, I haven’t thought about it too much!!! But I will say I remember being confused and almost a little scared as a child at that sleepover. My sister and I were both pretty young. We laugh about it sometimes, but there’s a current of unease over it still.
And that makes so much sense! Sleepovers were more frequent growing up when I was in elementary and middle school so I automatically think of that age range. Older does seem like it would be better!
Scout sleepovers start at 6, which surprised me slightly.
I was surprised at how early the requests for sleepovers came… although I remember having a sleepover for a 1st grade birthday, so maybe it is normal. My son is 6 and he’s slept over at his besties’ while we went to the theatre, but we are super close with the parents, know them, trust them etc. His other friend has slept over when her parents were in a pinch. I think visiting friends can give you sleepover vibes with the comfort of parents being nearby, some friends came for a visit at Christmas and the mom stayed in our guest room and the son bunked up with ours.
I'm a child of the 80s and have fond memories of sleepovers. The host parents ranged from super strict to super lenient. The strict house had the BEST snacks- homemade everything. I don't think boys had sleepovers as often as girls. Seems like my sisters were at another house or had friends at our house every other weekend.
Our son had only one sleepover growing up- a junior high birthday sleepover. One set of parents had not allowed any of their five children to participate is sleepovers due to a concern that such an activity, outside a strict Christian setting, could cause a kid to become gay. A gay friend got a laugh at this as church camp was a favorite time of year for him for secret, young, gay romances. Somehow our house was deemed conversion safe and their kid spent the night. He turned out fine. Last I heard, he was in a traveling production of Rent.
Side note, I'm going to try to work, "There was a piece of furry ham in the corner," into conversations.
Also, kidding about the kid being in Rent. He's a financial advisor and happily married to a woman (whew!).