Whether you love them or hate them if you are the parent of a young child eventually you will submit to the modern day equivalent of playing with friends now know as THE PLAYDATE. To those of you out of the loop, the concept of playdates mirrors the singles scene many of us experimented with in our twenties and early thirties. Suddenly you’re experiencing insecurity, miscommunication, rejection, love at first sight followed by silence, inconsistency, bliss and then boredom, except this time it’s not your social life that’s at stake but your kids. Navigating this new yet strangely familiar world you’ll wonder if you’re the only one not in on the joke especially since people are rarely straight forward about how much they detest this practice. Most of us would rather do anything else then submit to organized get-togethers where we’re forced to be social with other parents we barely know or dislike on sight.
Like dating, you go out, you have a great time, you think you’re connecting and everything is going great until you never hear from the person again and you never know why. Did you do something wrong? Was it something you said? Did you fail to follow some unwritten playdate protocol? Or imagine how you’ll feel when you discover that the playdate mom cancelled last week because her kid was invited to a better outing with a more popular child. Suddenly, you’re back in high school except now both you and your kid are ejected from the popular table? Wasn’t this supposed to be simple?
Or did you have to sit through a therapy session where you were forced to watch not only your kids, but the other mom’s since she’s too busy bombarding you with conversations about her sex life which you’re hoping your child doesn’t overhear and then repeat. Or you show up and are ignored by the close knit group of moms who treat you as if you have an undiagnosed case of head lice. Or you spend the entire afternoon having to protect your child from the holy terror whose mother doesn’t bother to address their kid’s behavior at all? And then there is the playdate where the mom brings her large brood of out of control children who proceed to tear your house apart. Or what about the family that comes over for Sunday Brunch and doesn’t leave until after dinner. We’ve all heard tales of playdate nightmares. Don’t you wish that there was a book that was required reading for all these people who got it wrong? The ones who deliver sick children with runny noses or fail to pick up their kids on time or those whose kid doesn’t actually like to play with other kids but wants to hang out with grownups. And no, we don’t think that’s acceptable either.
Somewhere between pregnancy and Kindergarten you will awake to the realization that parenthood is in fact a competitive sport. From the earliest prying questions about conceiving, to weight gain, to labor, to breast feeding, to sleeping through the night to the age of first steps, to first words, to reading…you’re always being reminded that you need to train better, faster stronger not just to stay in the game but to succeed at the task of parenthood. Media outlets continually remind you how quickly you can fall behind, risking the future wellbeing of your beloved off-spring. Do you really want to be responsible for your child becoming social salmonella by giving them too much praise and not enough organic food? Some books would have you believe that in order for your child to succeed at life you must start with the right diapers, the right stroller, the right baby group, the right onesie…wrong. With children morphing into the latest and greatest accoutrement surpassing the lap dog as the status symbol of choice these days, the pressure to succeed is elevated. Among these pressures few are greater than the need to socialize your kids. Most of us have memories of social outcasts growing up but for some of us those memories are personal and still painful. We worry that our children could suffer alienation or become ostracized by their peers because we haven’t socialized them properly. Whether you love them or hate them, playdates have quickly replaced other forms of socializing your kids. Welcome to your new reality.
