Anybody who has a child or cares for kids has experienced worries about the dreaded sleepover. And now I am not referring to the nice sleepover at grannies where you leave them and go home, or on vacation and sleep through a whole night without a worry in the world. It is the sleepover at other parents' homes whom you do not know that well, that is dreaded. I call them wake-overs, because there is no way anybody gets any sleep. From tots to teenagers, high on sugar and the spice of life; they are high octane, shrilly events. When they are young there is the midnight phone call to mom or dad telling them that their beloved child can't sleep in a foreign house and by the time they hit their teens; teenage pregnancies, boozing and drugs keep everybody awake. And if you have a super free range child like I have; you dread these nights even more. I have a secret weapon though: Afrikaans which is surprisingly effective in taming her high spirit and it has kept her tamer brother in line."Ek het nou klaar gepraat", barked in a low sergeant-major voice used to be to only remedy to any high-jinx shenanigans. My British friends often ask what it means and why it works so well. And with the age of the Internet another ominous element has crept in; now there is the risk of early exposure to pornography, endless scrolling on social media sites and gaming. Julie Jargon writes in the Wall Street Journal that half-overs are becoming a new option to decrease the likelihood of exposure to the unwanted side of the modern tech world after midnight. – Linda van Tilburg

Sleepovers have parents worried about midnight gadget use