For my son’s fourth birthday, we skipped a party in favor of a sleepover with his best friend and a beach day the next week. This was the first sleepover for either boy and I wanted to make it extra-special. Here are a few tips I learned from the experience.

Pizza and Cake for Dinner!

Pizza is the standard sleepover food. Of course we had cake to celebrate Gabe’s birthday, but why not make that part of the sleepover fun? I would rather my kids eat a piece of cake after pizza than snack on candy throughout the night. I topped Gabe’s cake with some of his Jake and the Neverland Pirate toys for fun.

Play Games

Usually, when Gabe has a playdate, his friends want to play with just the toys. But for the sleepover, I pulled out some games and directed the boys to those. It was fun switching up the “routine” for them.

Break the rules – just a little

These guys are only four, so pulling an all-nighter with tones of sugar wasn’t an option! But I let them do a few things that weren’t normal in our house, like eat on the couch or have extra fruit snacks during a movie. For sleeping, I allowed them to “camp” in Gabe’s tent set up in his room. How fun would it be to build a blanket fort and then sleep under it that night?

Calling Mom is always an option

Leave it to my son to start talking about monsters and scaring his guest. Thankfully, before I turned out the lights for them, I explained where my bedroom was in case anyone needed me. I also pointed out the upstairs bathroom (our guest has previously always used the downstairs toilet). Well, it wasn’t thirty minutes after lights out that I heard some crying, so after going in Gabe’s room, hearing the boys’ stories about monsters (complete with our guest’s sniffles), I let our guest call his mom. She was so great and kept calm and chatted with him for a bit. He agreed to finish out the night and after speaking with Gabe about monster stories, we successfully finished out the night.

I think it is important to communicate that the guest always has the option to call home and to go home if it doesn’t work out.

Big Breakfast the next morning is a must!