Help! My House Has Been Invaded by 7-Year-Olds!

I used to think having guests for Shabbos was the best way to get our house cleaned in a hurry, but having a sleepover party for seven-year-old Adina gets the job done much faster, and as long as they’re here, the cleaning never stops.

They dribbled in at about 7:15 P.M. last night, complete with sleeping bags, toothbrushes, and very big mouths. The numbers were slightly reduced when one parent called to announce that her daughter has strep. And two cousins went home after one was offended when she didn’t have enough alphabet beads.

The evening’s activities began with Sand Art, a craft that is specifically warned against by all floor manufacturers in the U.S. and abroad. Each girl got a little bottle (A) with a very narrow opening. Larger bottles (B) were then brought out, each containing a different color of very fine sand. All the girls, at the same time, attempted to pour (B) into (A). Bottle decorations were also available—little beads looking like eyes were to be glued onto the sand-filled bottles. In a short while, my kitchen looked like the Sahara Desert had just been poured into a sewing notions shop on Delancey Street.

Glue, sand, and beads are a bad enough combination, but when added to a large number of first-grade girls, the mixture was enough to make Shimon (age five) seek shelter for his own overnight down the block at his friend Jacob’s house. To think that our two-year-old, Meir, was the child requiring the least supervision in the house is a thought to ponder.

The sand bottles were filled and corked and beady eyeballs glued on. The vast majority of the sand was spread in a bell-curved distribution with the main concentration under the kitchen table and lesser amounts trailing out to the far ends of my house, garden, and neighborhood. Ready for the next activity. Time now: 9:30 P.M., the beading begins.

The beading kit contains over 1,000 colored beads and about 50 lettered beads among which are only three “S”s. This is one of those cultural challenges of overseas manufacturing that I learned about during my MBA. Apparently, in China, where the bead kit is made, girls are often named Lee, Chen, or Muki, but rarely named Shoshana, Basia, Batsheva, or Sara. Can you imagine the competition for those “S”s! (Meanwhile, I’m still thinking about last week’s near-emergency when Meir stuck a bead in his nose.)

I’m trying to keep most of the sand and beads contained in the kitchen. I’m chasing after girls trying to escape to the living room with their sand-covered shoes on. No one notices Meir is fishing in the turtle tank. Time: 10:15 P.M., the girls are getting hungry.

My wife Helaine breaks out the cake, wisely prepared before Shabbos. The girls with “S” names forget the bead disappointment as they slather themselves in chocolate icing and I empty the remains of the many-days-at-the-beach kitchen into the trash. Shimon calls to make sure he’s not missing anything and Helaine escapes under the pretense of getting him to go to sleep down the block, while I’m left with the task of getting the girls to go to sleep. Time: getting close to 11 P.M.

They’re all exhausted and they’ve spread their sleeping bags and pillows. Teeth get brushed with remarkable speed and then, just when I’m looking forward to my break for the night… the chatter begins. I shoosh and shoosh until finally, one after the next falls silent which, silly man, I think means they’re falling asleep. But whenever I leave, the room gets noisy again. And when they run out of wide-awake girls to talk to, the ones still hanging on to wakefulness simply do the noble thing. They wake up a few sleepers with a loud shout and the whole process begins again.

Helaine finally returns, impressed with my accomplishments, until the next outburst brings the volume up again. She quiets them all except for the one who, without admitting it, is actually a little afraid of being away from home and feels that if she can only stay awake a few minutes longer, the sun will rise and the ordeal of sleeping in unfamiliar territory will be over. She sits with this last one till she finally succumbs to the night. Meanwhile, I have the kitchen spotless, last week’s remaining laundry is folded, and Meir is finally sleeping. I escape to my own bed, imagining that it won’t be that long before all these girls will be supervising their own daughters’ sleepovers, possibly with their husband Shimon or Meir sweeping up the sand and eating the last piece of cake.



This article originally appeared in NJP #13.

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