Ashley Tisdale French is explaining why she won’t allow her daughters to attend sleepovers.
The High School Musical star, 40, who shares two daughters, Jupiter, 5, and Emerson, 20 months, with husband Christpher French, explained her reasoning via a Tuesday, May 26, blog post on By Ashley French.
“I’m just not a fan of sleepovers,” Tisdale French wrote. “As a parent, it comes down to this: You can know someone well and still not really know them. You just don’t always know who people are in their home. You don’t know how parents talk to each other, how they handle conflict, who else has access to the home… the list goes on.”
The post continued, “A family can seem lovely from the outside, and most are. But the risk of getting it wrong isn’t one I’m willing to take.
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The actress stated that while her stance may sound “dramatic,” and that plenty of children “have fun” at sleepovers, she stands by the belief that if danger presents itself, “statistically, it’s rarely due to a stranger.”
Tisdale French also recalled a childhood experience of her own that left her feeling far from comfortable about sleepovers. “One time, I was staying over at my best friend’s house at the same time that her older brother had a bunch of friends over. They were probably around 10 years old,” she wrote in the blog. “I thought I’d slept soundly through the night, but the next morning, they all thought it was hilarious that I had gone sleepwalking. I remember feeling really weird and vulnerable about having no memory of that.”
Despite declaring a firm opinion on allowing children to stay overnight at another family’s home, Tisdale French reiterated that she’s determined to help her daughters have fun with friends and has come up with a sleepover alternative. “This is the plan. Some of my friends and I have decided that when our girls are older, we’ll do some group getaways. The moms can get away from the house for a night, bring the kids, and they can have a sleepover in the same space,” she wrote. “Maybe an Airbnb or hotel rooms with a shared door. The kids can have their independence and fun while the parents unwind nearby. That feels different and doable.”
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Tisdale French’s exploration of parenthood will soon extend to her professional life. She revealed in February that she will star in and executive produce a comedy for CBS that will center on coparenting with an ex.
Her parenting views had attracted headlines one month prior when she blasted her mom group as “toxic” in an essay for The Cut. The January piece did not name any moms but online speculation pointed to celebrities including Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor who all enjoyed early motherhood alongside Tisdale French, as documented via social media.
A rep for Tisdale French denied insinuation towards Duff, 38, Moore, 42, and Trainor, 32, at the time, but all three have reacted to the essay in recent months.
