Friend had a sleep over party with a bunch of 11 year old girls. Two of the girls brought a package of 50 (!) pixie sticks in wihtout mom knowing it. A couple of them ate the bulk of them and turned into lunatics. They were really really bad. No one got hurt and there was not much genuine property damage so friend did not tell the mother of either kid or the kid that brought the candy what had happened.
If it was my kid I would want to know she had been so bad. She contends that kid did not get candy on her own, but mom may not have known where it went.....
Should she tell? Would you?
The mother who ran the party chose not to speak to any of the parents, but I was bothered that she told me. She told me my child was well behaved but vented at length about the behavior of the others. My take is that if my child misbehaved at your house I would strongly prefer that you TELL ME, not gossip about it behind my back. It does not matter whether the candy caused the behavior or not - if the children think they were hyper and acted as if they were hyper the result was still the same. The mother's concern was the the kid hid the candy so that the house mother did not know and had no way to say anything about it. I think her concern was over the sneakiness of it. For her the bottom line was that those girls are not invited over again and her own child cannot have or go to any sleep overs for 6 months because mom thought she should have done more to "tell" on the girls when the situation began to spin out of control. I still hold that if my child misbehaves I want to know about it, other wise I am not given a chance to correct the behavior.
Quick!
Call the Pixie Stick Police!
"Lunatics"? (I know I've got several black out periods from my pixie stick days in the 70's!)
Seriously? "Telling" about this is ridiculous, in my opinion.
And who leaves a gang of kids that age totally unsupervised long enough to polish off FIFTY pixie sticks? Did she not know they had them until they were gone?
Maybe a well meaning mom packed them as a snack to share.
Unless the "pixie sticks" had speed in them, this has nothing to do with pixie sticks. These are 11 year old girls, not 2 year olds on a sugar rush. It sounds like mom went to sleep out of earshot of the girls and let them run the place.
I would not be blaming the candy. I'd be blaming the child and I'd be asking her to come over and clean up the mess she made. And she wouldn't be invited to another sleepover.
Pixie stix...you are going to tell on girls for bringing candy to sleep over??
I guarantee whatever the girls did that was "like a lunatic" was NOT related to eating candy, but being mischievous girls. Tell the mother about the bad behavior but leave the candy out of it.
Bad behavior is not caused by eating too many pixie stix!!
So, a bunch of 11 year old girls were left unattended and unsupervised, which resulted in them becoming excessively hyper and causing some damage.
With or without the Pixy Sticks, this sounds like something which is a result of being left without supervision. Which is your friend's fault, not the candy's.
She needn't tell anybody. Unless she intends to explain why nobody was watching the girls.
Umm, the Pixie Stix aren't the problem, the property damage IS.
Yes, I would tell another mother if her child had caused property damage.
No, I wouldn't care at all if a kid brought Pixie Stix to a sleepover, and I wouldn't feel the need to tell the kid's parent that their child brought candy to a sleepover.
Be careful of what you label cause and effect. Pixie Stix don't make kids do property damage.
WTH did I just read. When did pixie sticks turn kids into lunatics, yes even 50 pixie sticks?
Sorry if those kids were destroying property it was because the kids have no manners, not cause they ate pixie sticks.
They didn't act like that because of the pixie stix, they acted like that because they were a couple of wound up 11 year old girls.
I wouldn't say anything but that's just me.
If they were "really, really bad" I simply wouldn't have them over again.
Are you sure they were "just" pixie sticks? Pixie sticks don't make 11 year olds get out of control enough to cause damage to property. (Even "not much" genuine property damage. ) Maybe a 5 year old who had a sugar high... but 11 year olds? nope.
What?? What is there to tell? Your kid ate a bunch of candy? Not something worth bringing up IMO.
Uh...actually, studies have been done and found no relationship between sugar and hyperactivity. People insist that they're related, but science doesn't back that up....it may lead to highs and lows in blood sugar, but not necessarily hyperactivity and being "lunatics".
Sleepovers and junk food go hand in hand....it was that way when I was a kid too. You didn't say how they were "really bad" so it's hard to comment on what they did....but the pixie stix were the least of it.
No, I wouldn't tell the other moms.
My recommendation on how it should have been handled: As soon as the host mom saw the pixie sticks, she should have taken them and given each girl a few as a treat, and then the next morning sent the rest home with the girls who brought them.
I think the other piece is that if a child at a sleepover is being that bad and causing property damage, the host mom should, on the spot, call the parents to come and pick the child up and take her home. Even if its the middle of the night. If she won't respect the rules of the house, she can't stay. If it's not bad enough to send her home, then it's not bad enough to report on later.
Unless they were doing something dangerous, like drugs, or something adult, like sex, I would not involve the parent. I was responsible for their supervision at the time, so if they ate candy then that is on me.
This is the "bad thing" that needs to be told to a mom? I always hated hosting sleepover parties becuase there's just not a lot of sleep going on. 11 yr old girls are probably at the worst age - they're so eager to be teens, and to be mischievous, and to stay up all night, etc. So if it's not pixie sticks, it's something else.
Middle school & high school are right around the corner and your friend will be longing for the pixie-stix problems of the 11 yr old. The two girls who brought the candy are either a lot of fun to be with, or really annoying. Your daughter will sort that out over the next few years. Kids go into middle school as kids with playdates scheduled by their parents - and they come out as teens who make their own friends, sometimes to the chagrin of we the parents. This is a good time for dialog and questions about the daughter's opinions of the candy-brining girls & the "bad" behavior. (without details we don't know if the behavior was nudity, twerking, cell-phone pictures and online chat rooms - or - giggly, goofy hairdos & manicures and boy-craziness in the middle of the night.)
This is when moms have to choose their battles. By calling the other girl's moms it will be made into a bigger event than it really is. This is one of those non-events. Dont' sweat the small stuff - and 99% of stuff is small stuff.
It's no big deal. I would not tell. I would not have given it a second thought.
Yes, I would inform any parent of deliberate property damage their child had caused. "Sally and a friend were behaving dangerously at our house and X was damaged. I felt you should know, just because I would want to know if my child had done this." Let the mom ask "what do you think happened" and go from there.
And then, the little monsters aren't invited back. Candy or no-- sugar doesn't give you permission to break things and behave like hooligans.
Just FYI--when the nonsense was going on, THAT is when I would have called the other parents to come and pick up. Seriously. There's no law that says they have to put up with this because it's a sleepover. Too bad if the parents were enjoying a night out--now they can all deal with this as a family. NOT my problem.
I wouldn't really look at it as telling. I probably would have said something like, "next party, no candy or pixie sticks! Haha...These girls got crazy, so and so and so and so where almost out of control". and leave it at that.
Pixie Stix are called Crack for Kids, want to know why? They are so high is sugar that it's like simply sticking your finger in a sugar bowl and eating it straight. They are full of artificial flavors and colors and who knows what other additives.
On Toddlers and Tiara's they give their kids Pixie Stix when they start getting sleepy or tired. The kids often have fits of rage, wild behaviors, and crash like crazy a little while later.
So all in all, Pixie Stix are nuts for kids. I'd simply say this falls onto the parent who was in charge of the party. It's obvious there was no parental supervision. Who leaves that many kids alone for that long and doesn't expect chaos?
If you look to anyone who is to blame for this then look to who was supervising the kids. They allowed this to happen.
What happens at the sleepover stays at the sleepover. Tell her mother if she carved a chunk out of the wall. Eating candy and running amok is something to be addressed by the parent in charge, unless it results in a health scare.
PS. Wait a minute--are you talking about tripping over a cord during horseplay and knocking over a lamp OR running straight through a window?
i absolutely would tell. not in accusatory tattly way, but in a you-should-know no-drama way.
really no idea what your second paragraph means.
but the parents should know.
khairete
S.
I would have confiscated the candy to begin with, but people know not to bring it into my house. I would discuss the actions with the parents, yes. I would want to know if this were my son for certain.
My gauge on whether or not I involve a parent for behavior that happens in my care is:
1. Are they doing something that harmed / could have harmed themselves or another person?
2. Are they doing something that is immoral or illegal?
3. Did they damage/destroy property?
So, in order for me to assess if your friend should involve a parent regarding the behavior of her daughter at a sleepover I would have to know what happened that was "bad"......
Did they eat pixie stix and get loud and not go to bed? Or was one girl who has a sugar sensitivity get force fed pixie stix by the other girls and end up having seizers? Different scenario in my opinion....... The first scenario is just girls being girls. The second scenario is "bad" in my opinion.
It's Pixie stix, not crack! They should take responsibility for their actions if it was truly out of control, but not blame it and excuse it because they od'd on candy. And for me it would really depend on the behavior because kids get a little crazy on sleepovers with 10 other kids.
If the host of the sleepover wants to tell, then she should. It's ok for her to say how the children behaved at her house. If you were not the host, I don't think it's your place to say anything to the mom.
Well, sugar makes you a bit energetic, but it would not suddenly make an 11 year old become a lunatic and act really, really bad. I think those girls need consequences. Yes, I would have called parents to come pick them up and I would have given them a talking to about how you behave when you are in another person's home.
One of my daughter's friends (she is also one of the girls in my Girl Scout troop) loves to run crazy and blame it on her "sugar high." I have never believed her - I think she just uses it as an excuse to get louder (she's pretty loud to begin with). I haven't ever told her mom - I just now try to dissuade my daughter from inviting her to sleepovers!
No need to tell about bringing candy to a sleepover. That's what girls do. It's not like she brought a pack of cigarettes. As a previous post said, if they were purchased by a mom it was probably a well-meaning mom trying to send her daughter with a fun snack to share. It's not surprising that she would bring a pack of 50, especially if it's to share.
What do you mean when you say they were "bad"? What is there really to "tell"?
