I let my young daughter sleep with 18 snakes in the room – yes, they’ve bitten her, but I promise she’s safe
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A COUPLE have revealed that they allow their young daughter to sleep in the same room as 18 snakes, and have insisted that she is completely safe. Socratis and his wife Jane have been heavily criticised for allowing their two children Ariana, nine and Maximus, five, to share a home with almost 200 snakes.
![[Ariana sleeps with 18 snakes in her room]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ve-bitten-i-promise-s-960756763.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Ariana was just one year old when she held one of the family's pet snakes for the first time and says she thinks the reptiles are "so pretty" and cute. Socratis himself got in to snakes from a young age, and caught his first live snake at just six years old.
![[Ariana loves the snakes and thinks they're cute]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ve-bitten-i-promise-s-960756764.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
However, his parents warned him that snakes were dangerous and he became afraid of them until later in life, when he grew fond of a friend's pet snakes. "What started as a fear of mine actually became a passion," he told Truly. Socratis said that himself and Jane parent their children in an "unconventional manner.".
"I'm actually giving my kids options and choices, instead of telling them what to do," he said. Unlike many reptile owners, Socratis and his family do not keep their snakes in tanks and instead let them roam around the house, and slither across their children's bodies.
Jane said that when guests come over to the house they at first freak out, but become more comfortable once they've stroked the snakes and realised they're harmless. "People think that snakes are mean and slimy, but they're not," said Ariana, who has 18 snakes of her own, who sleep in her bedroom.
