Recently, I have found myself battling with whether or not I need to or should explain this out loud, but I think we've finally hit critical mass. It needs to be put out there in the universe.
It's possible that this is going to be unpopular, but as of last fall, we, as a family, have decided to remove the phrase "Play Date" from our lexicon. For the record, I am definining a "Play Date" as the planned activity of a kid going to a house or a kid coming to (and into) our house—not necessarily the definition of families getting together in a party setting or gathering with kids. That's different. I'm not sure if that's the true definition of "Play Date," but that is what it has morphed into in our world. It's just the basic act of a kid being over at our house or our kid(s) being at someone else's house.
There are a multitude of reasons for this conclusion, but I will lay out the most important ones.
It's too hard to manage. It's too hard to be fair to each of our (three) kids about it (Henry seems to get the most play date requests around here). It's too hard to be equitable to the play date participants (balancing work, school schedules, and multiple friend sets from each kid).
I don't know if this is your experience at all, but we started to see a pattern that one play date didn't necessarily satiate any kid—it only intensified the need for more activity, more play dates, more things that we need to do and get on the schedule. The more we do, the more we are expected to do. Enough is not enough. It cannot be sustained.
We (my husband and I) realized awhile back in our experience that parenthood is basically just a careful management of expectations. This is just part of that puzzle. We do a variety of other lame-looking things to navigate this, but we're just talking about one particular thing, here.
Our kids are at an age, now, where they are capable of managing their friendships outside of our involvement. Furthermore, and I recognize (and appreciate that) we are really lucky here, we do live in a neighborhood where, when it is nice outside, our kids can roam and go to parks and meet up with their local friends there. This is more challenging during these intense winter months (and, during the school year, when it seems like everyone goes to a different school in our neighborhood), but on warmer days, they still try to make it happen. At least during this time of year, they have school friends that they are interacting with and developing relationships with (although, I do wish there was more social time/recess available to them at school, which is a whole other blog topic for another time), too.
My husband and I grew up in an age where everyone was disconnected from constant and immediate contact, and we were responsible for managing our social interactions. Was it boring sometimes? Yes. It turns out that it's good for you to be bored, though. We wish this type of personal growth (disguised as mysery) for our kids, too. They deserve that.
So, while we look like some weird, stand-offish jerks on the surface, we're actually just trying to cork the seals and ford this unpredictable stream. Hopefully, this mysery will have some company. Outside. At a park.
