DP has spent an hour trying to collect 5 yr old from a play date

[Eastie77]

I'm at a loss. DD is 5 years old and went to a play date at a friends house today. DP went to pick her up at 6:30pm. Her friend only lives 5 minutes away so I've been wondering where he got too. He just turned up, his voice shaking saying he "cannot remove her" from her friends house, she is running around their sofa laughing, refusing to put her shoes on and will not come home. He left the house without her as he "couldn't take it anymore" after spending nearly an hour chasing around after her

I am in bed ill with DS who is also ill and he expected me to get dressed and go and get her! I have sent him back to fetch her and he has angrily left the house. I reminded him that he is a GROWN man surely capable of picking up a 5 year old child, putting her over his shoulder and walking out of the house?!! I feel like I'm in some kind of parallel universe here.

I'm friends with the play dates mother but god knows what she must be thinking..

If the other mum was saying leave her and she can have a sleepover that must've sent mixed messages to your DD. She probably thought if she resisted enough her DF would give in. Not really DD's fault. I'd be annoyed with the friend's mother.

oh dear.i feel so sorry for you.do not get out of bed.tell him you dont care.leave him to it.

He just spent 2 hours chasing a 5 year old and he has the audacity to call you silly?

Yeah, they don't exactly get easier to parent. 5 year olds are about the epitome of easy to parent. Can toilet themselves, can use their words, can be bribed with small/cheap things, can be physically carried if necessary...

Shit is to come.

This!

I think this behaviour isn't uncommon at all, I remember having to drag one of mine from where they were hiding under a bed.

And plenty of times I have had to assist 'leaving' a play date at our house with a breezy 'time to go now' and supporting the other parent.

just caught up. if sleepover was ok,id have bolted to be honest(unless not confident bout care level). BUT i am the mother of a child who runs at pick-up oclock(even on times cried when i left)its very easy to call too soft..despair is horrible.parenting courses dont have to be in form of inadequates anon group.if dp can read-get himm a (your rulesesq)book.get him read aloud to dd at bedtime optional.

Sorry this is the funniest thing I've read!

Ugh.

What a weak twat.

Glad you sent him back and didn't go yourself.

Honestly, every single child needs cajoling to leave a play date, do t they? And I always find it’s the dads who are most messed with at pick up time.

I get every messing about child and say, in a calm but firm voice, “Do you know the rules at my house? Anyone who messes around at pick up time isn’t allowed back to play ... and that would be awful, because it’s been so much fun. Now, where are your shoes?”

I’ve done it so often my DC pretty much self-police it now with kids who haven’t been before and they know the rule applies to them in someone else’s house too,

The quicker you leave, the quicker you get invited back...

Your DH sounds hopeless but I’d have been helping him not hindering him with talk of sleepovers.

We count backwards from 5. DD1 knows what happens if we get to 1. It only works on DD2 because she sees DD1 taking it seriously. I have no idea what would happen if we got to 1 with DD2 as I can’t work out what makes her tick.

Speechless. Can’t stand this kind of nonsense. Reminds me of times parents would come to collect their child who would then refuse to leave and them say “oh ok I suppose you can have another 10 mins” while I’d be silently screaming inside. I told mine if they ever behaved like that they would never go to peoples houses to play.

I'm shocked that after that pathetic display of parenting, he has the nerve to tell you you're being silly.

What a prick.

I remember getting very frustrated as the host in a similar situation. After a good 10 minutes of ineffectual parenting I just went up behind the child , hooked my arms under their shoulders and frogmarched them towards the door. I don't think the parent was best pleased but I had better things to do with my time

I'd take the mum some wine or chocolate or something, what a ridiculous waste of time.

He needs to get his act together before your daughter is much older. It won't get easier.

I totally hear what you're saying llangennith but at the same time, a strongly phrased, immediate response from the DF "Thanks other mum but it's time for DD to come back home" would have effectively dealt with that!

In all seriousness though, I wonder what makes DP reluctant to do the 'nasty' bits of parenting - is it because he views them as being 'horrible' to his child? Were his parents not very nice to him as a child and he doesn't want his own child to feel upset/humiliated or whatever, like he may have done, and thus he is actually really struggling to do these types of interactions? I'm laughing along with this thread - and the many responses which have had me giggling - but for someone to be 'left drained' seems to indicate to me that it was something he found really difficult and expended a huge amount of emotional energy for him and thus it left him knackered.

I'm very much in the school of get on with it and stop being a wuss (I apply this equally to myself as I would someone else) but with parenting style / parenting issues there's often an underlying reason that you see come to the surface in programmes like '3 Day Nanny' and the Jo Frost one.

Anyway, just hope you can sort it as also at the end of the day DH will actually have a better relationship with his daughter, and a safer one, if she listens to him and respects what he says and he needs to realise that. As we know children find rules and boundaries reassuring and it makes them feel safe (in my opinion anyway) - within the rules and boundaries they have freedom and they know where they stand and it's also a preparation for life which, whether we like it or not, is chock a block with rules and regulations and we might as well start preparing them for that from the earliest toddler years onwards and get them where they can effectively make decisions from a plethora of conflicting legal, criminal and moral information - it's a complex world out there and in letting DD continue running about it was also a case of 'the play date has ended but I'm going to let you disrespect me, and disrespect other mum as well whose time you're now cutting into. If he doesn't want to do it for himself, he should have done it for the latter reason - DD was being rude to both parties in this case, not just her Dad and other PPs are right, this needs tackling long before the tweens (which will be with you in just 3 years time....).

Brilliant advice re. the lunch today, thank you. I might just do that and refuse to leave. I'll take off my shoes and run around the sofa for good measure too

The PP who said they would have taken up the sleepover offer and left...no, not really an option. DD would assume that is how she will be rewarded every time she plays up and refuses to leave (she has been pleading for a sleepover for months).

The host mum has a 'kids will be kids' attitude to every display of bad behaviour although I'm sure even her patience will have been stretched by that carry on for an hour. She also has a different parenting style from her DH but in a role reversal of me and DP. If the host dad had been there he would have picked DD up and carried her across the street home after 10 minutes, he brooks no nonsense.

I'm looking into the 123 magic book although I doubt DP will be interested. He sees nothing wrong with his parenting and hates advice. DD runs rings round him and I've told him repeatedly it will get worse for him as she gets older.

Is this a joke? Are you serious? I don't think it's funny. At all. Your Dh is a idiot, who can't parent. And your dd is non respectful. When I say to ds's 'we are leaving in 5 minutes', that's it. 5 minutes later when I say 'we are going', we go. End of.

We get this from my 5yo dgs when he comes for a sleepover. When it's time to go home, we have a full on meltdown from him. My DS just picks him up and carries him out to the car

I do not think my DD's behaviour was remotely amusing Oblomov. She does not behave like that (or, better said, would not be allowed to behave like that) with anyone else so whilst I agree DP's parenting was poor I do not think she is generally a disrespectful child. She was however in the presence of two people who do not enforce rules with children which didn't help.

He sees nothing wrong with his parenting

Gah. What an idiot.

He spent an HOUR failing to get a 5 year old to leave someone’s house. He left without her after an hour. A d he “sees nothing wrong” with his parenting?

I mean, there’s laid back, there’s gentle, there’s child-led, all that, but there’s also ineffective and weak...

If he can’t effectively parent a 5 year old he’s totally screwed when she’s older.

And he’s ‘drained’, how wildly unattractive.

Eastie77

While your husband's parenting was non existent I can say with confidence no child of mine would ever act like that at 5, even if they thought they could get away with it, as much as your husband needs a good talking to I think your daughter needs to be disciplined over the issue also.

1. parenting classes for dh
2. no more playdates for dd for a month and explain why. Plus an "immediate" punishment of withdraw a usual reward: sweers/telly/favourite toy confiscated.

Ds(8) had a huge meltdown when my friends dd came to play and ive held back on playdates until he shows me he is in control of being able to calm himself down. Same principle.

It's quite worrying that your DH probably came home expecting you to do the parenting I don't think he was really thinking to leave your DD there, he was thinking you could go round and sort it out like a proper parent.

Just wait until she's 13, she'll be running rings around him