Q&A: playdates

Sorry for the late post--I was off doing class parent duties (yeah--I know; I'm not sure how it happened either...)

Kate (one of many) writes:

"What's the deal with playdates? At what age do you start dropping off the kids and not having to stay and make polite conversation? If the kids know each other from school but the parents don't, it can be a little awkward. And how do you navigate different rules at friends' houses?"

I think this varies regionally. And by birth order of child. For my younger one, since all his friends were younger siblings of my older one's friends, we did drop-off from a super-young age, and just called it "can you babysit him while I go do X?"

Once they're in Kindergarten, I'd guess kids all over the world are being dropped off for playdates. Before that, I think it varies from region to region. Some of those differences are probably attributable to different expectations of independence regionally, but I'm also guessing that the demographics of the caregiver situation might have something to do with that, too. (In areas where there are more parents home they probably stay, whereas babysitters maybe don't stay as often?)

As far as the rules of the house go, I'd say the parents need to open that conversation up at drop-off in front of the kids. So, for instance, if you know you have a rule at home that generally doesn't fly other places (like kids being allowed to jump on the couch or something like that), you probably want to address it when you get there with a little, "Now pumpkin, even though we can jump on the couch at home, I'm betting no one can jump on the couch here" then look to the other parent for confirmation.

Otherwise, just ask at the beginning of the playdate if they have house rules, and remind your child to abide by the house rules. I'm assuming most kids have been somewhere else (if only a grandparent's house) and understand that different places have different rules, so it shouldn't be hard sell for the kids. And we're hoping the parents can be sanguine about differences and not get defensive about different rules.

How do you guys navigate the rules? And at what age did/do you start dropping off for playdates? (Don't forget to put demographic info about where you live.)

Comments

[heather]

Ottawa, Canada.

My daughter is almost 2. She regularly goes to "playgroup", which is basically unstructured playtime at a community centre. The downside to this is I never know who will show up; sometimes it's a great group of parents/caretakers/kids, other times it's, ahem, less fun.

I've also scheduled "playdates" for myself & my daughter. So far these have been with friends of mine (from pre-kid days) who have similar-aged kids. It is a "date" in that it is scheduled; we live too far apart to just knock on the door and drop in. But it's basically unstructured playtime for the kids and chat-time for the moms.

At 2, we're definitely not ready for drop-off playdates. Maybe when we've spent enough time with another mom & kid that I feel they really know me & my daughter (and vice versa)...right now, not so much.

[hedra]

@akeeyu, cracked up on the 'old' comment. We say that, too (when feeling old, we just say, and HEY, you kids, get off my lawn! - on the other hand, our house is in a college-student rental neighborhood, and actually do have to say things like 'don't pee in my flowerbeds' and, sigh, 'get off the lawn' (I've lost more bushes to people walking through them... Grrr. Started planting prickly things just to stop the trend...).) Um, anyway, I'm old, too.

@Jen - As for the guns, I don't always remember to ask. I have asked a few times, but how do I know if they're telling the truth? (Have you got 'protecting the gift'? - I think it talks about how to ask about such things effectively.)

[casmas]

My daughter is nearly 5. I'll do a drop-off or host a drop-off if I know the kid well and know she and my daughter can play together mostly happily and independently. Otherwise, I, too, want other mother friends. I've worked full-time since she was born, so I think that's inhibited socializing a bit. I have an 8-month-old, too, and I'm hoping other mother dating will go better this time around. I'm also hoping that with so many of us losing our jobs, maybe we'll have more time for socializing, especially as I have lots of work friends I'll really miss. That would be a silver lining to all this.

[eccentriclibertarian]

@Jutta - I live in the East Bay, and I know MANY kids who are like the 14 yr old you describe. They're like dogs who were not socialized as puppies. My boy is just 5 weeks old, so this stuff isn't my most pressing concern, but I am actually wondering if I will be able to find 'normal' (not sure what less-loaded term to use here) kids for socializing, without the helicopter parenting that seems to be all the rage in these parts.

@Jen - For me it would be an issue of 1) is the gun loaded, or is ammo stored nearby? 2) is the gun SECURELY locked & kids absolutely don't know where the key is? If the answers are No and Yes respectively, I wouldn't have a problem with it. More to the point, I would go more on my feelings about what kind of person or what kind of 'vibe' I got from the prospective playdate mom (and/or dad) as opposed to possible dangers in their home, such as guns, swimming pools, large dogs, much older kids, etc etc. BUT, I grew up in Texas in a responsible gun-owning household, and have never had a strong feeling against guns.

[shirky]

@Biwani I live in Cambridge, my kid is 2, email me if you want to meet a socially awkward parent who is bad at making conversation and friends! and isn't that enticing? ha!

[AmyM]

Washington DC

I have a 2 1/2 year old son and a 4 year old daughter. The 4 yo has been on drop off playdates and is happiest when I leave her. I have dropped the 2 1/2 yo off at a birthday party under extenuating circumstances with people we know well. The issue we have has more to do with hosting since we have a small house, not tons of toys, no yard to speak of and the kids share a room. It is becoming particularly challenging to manage 4 year old playdates in the same space as the 2 1/2 year old. One of DD's friends teases DS to tears and frustration fairly often. My current line is: We are playing at our house. DS lives here too. We are kind to everyone in our house and while you are here, you have to play with him as well. Fortunately this isn't a problem with most of the kids we play with, but if anyone has suggestions on how to deal with this, I'd love to hear them.

[hush]

Rural Pacific Northwest, US

One of our closer neighbors, T, has a boy a few months older than our 13-month-old DS, so given the geographic isolation here, we were going to be friends & have our kids play together a ton whether we really wanted to or not! ;) There just aren't a lot of pre-K & under kids around here. When T asked us over to her place to play the first time, she called it a "playdate," but we've never referred to it as that in a long time. About an hour's drive away is a bigger city where we can take parent-child swim lessons, do kindermusik classes, or go to toddler playtimes at the library, so that's where I've made some other mama friends, none of whom live anywhere near us. Things do need to be scheduled in advance because of the driving distances required, but that's part of rural life. The upside it that when kids are older, they can play outside all day, and won't need much structured play time.

We used to live in a large US city, and everything about the scene was structured. Moms groups, play groups, structured play. Big city life lends itself more to that kind of structuring I think.

re: Guns. Negotiating "playdates" (ugh... I know) & gathering info about a gun-owning family was part of a discussion enu & I had here about a month ago. So now I'm going to obnoxiously quote us via this link!

http://www.askmoxie.org/2008/11/qa-keeping-kids-safe-on-social-networking-sites/comments/page/2/#comments

@biwani - My heart is kinda breaking right now reading your comment about getting dumped by a mama friend you thought you had meshed with so well. Just know that her behavior is not the norm, and most people are not that callous. So try not to be too scared about putting a toe back into the water. I'm going to venture a guess and say it's her, not you. The older I get, the more I just see that some people have deep unresolved feelings of inadequacy, and sometimes feel threatened by very small things.

It's too bad that we can never really get the honest feedback we deserve about why things ended. If you have a gut feeling about it, that's probably accurate. But I'd just chalk it up to personal issues. Some people are very uncomfortable with intimacy. She may have felt terrified and vulnerable because suddenly you were so close, and in her past, maybe that has not been a happy thing for her. Maybe she saw her child really connect with you and that was threatening. Or maybe her hubby made a comment to her about your great rack? Who knows? I'm really sorry for your loss. Allow yourself to really grieve it, maybe take a short break from the scene before it's time to move on. Keep your head up!

[Charisse]

@Jutta and eccentriclibrarian, I know what you mean about the upper middle class Bay Area scene! Mouse takes less lessons (swimming) than just about any of her friends even though she goes to an extremely non-helicopter-oriented preschool...and she's 4 1/2 and hasn't started team soccer yet, so her life is probably RUINED, omg!!!

I wanted to recommend a book I read recently, Unequal Childhoods by Annette Lareau http://tiny.cc/FsjhL ...it's not a prescriptive book, it's an ethnographic study where they went and lived with American families of various economic levels. The most interesting part for me was what the way they discussed the problems of the middle class--not just that the kids are overscheduled but that all of their activities are structured by age group--many such kids never interact with anyone who has more than a 6 or 9 month age difference, many of the sports and lessons are sex-segregated too, and many are in schools that are frighteningly homogeneous on other factors...so not only do they have adult interference constantly, they pretty much NEVER interact with anybody different from themselves; lower-middle class and poor kids, by contrast, tended not to be signed up for so many activities, and tended to play with a range of kids either from their extended family or their immediate neighborhood and were much better and dealing with different types of people, though they were much less able to hold their own in interactions with adults in authority positions. Anyway, super interesting book, made me think a lot about how I can make sure that Mouse isn't constantly with people only of her gender/developmental level/ethnicity/socioeconomic class. Or in activities targeted exactly to a particular gender/developmental level/etc.

[pixie]

The issue is we are so spread out as a society now. I don't know any of my neighbors very well, and the only one with kids well I tried and tried to do stuff with her but she was never into it. So I gave up. I have two friends who live 10 to 15 minutes away and we "hang out" when we want to, taking turns going over one anothers house, the kids are still to young to interact alone (1 year to 2 years) but we arn't all over them.

I have done "mommy groups" where a large group of women meet at someone's house once a week and it's like 10 babys. It can be overwelming but fun, I met moms in that group who became friends later, but I found it hard to get to know anyone at those meetings, hopefully I met someone who I could email outside the group and get with.. was my motivation.

[eccentriclibertarian]

@charisse - Soccer. Oh man. I say - resist it as long as you can! I see, from friends, how it becomes an amazing force that takes over the entire family's life.

[new balance]

We cannot always build the future for our youth , but we can build our youth for the future .

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[Kerry]

I think you can't ever underestimate how flaky other pleope are. Back when my daughter was itsy-bitsy and an only child, I used to organize playgroups at our house. I'd scurry around cleaning up for an hour or so, try to keep things tidy and getting all stressed out, and then at least 50% of the time, nobody would come. I have very happy memories of the times when it actually worked, but as far as providing regular peer social interaction, I did much better by agreeing to nanny for another little girl my daughter's age. That was one of the best things I ever did for her social life, although giving her a little brother is probably #1. My daughter is a 3rd grader now and she tests high probable for Asperger's. I think she is on friendly terms with almost everybody in her class at her private school (and we all worked pretty hard to get her to this neutral/mildly positive position), but there's only one other family at school that regularly invites us for one-on-one stuff (we do get a fair number of birthday party invites). I used to work a lot harder at trying to book playdates, but Saturdays are so busy now (therapeutic riding for my daughter, free Lowes projects with the kids, grocery shopping, shoe shopping, flu shots, haircuts, yard work, confession, astronomy club stuff for my husband, cleaning the kids' rooms with them, taking stuff to Goodwill) that it's challenging just to take care of basic, routine tasks. We don't have to do each of those things every week, but we do have to do at least four of them. I suppose we could make more of a point of inviting other kids to join us at Lowes or star parties. There's also Friday after school, Sunday afternoon (after everybody gets out of church), and those long summer months. I actually have not a bad acceptance and completion rate with playdates, it's just that it all seems to depend on me. I need to get more proactive about it, because we're getting very close to the point where it's totally child-driven, and I'm pretty sure that unless we work really hard now, she's eventually going to be frozen out. Saturdays--so busy, summers? Large families--create own social

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