To expect a playdate to mean playing not staring at a screen

[PhoebeMcPeePee]

My DC were at friends for tea today for a total of 3 hours & bar a short break for tea spent the entire time playing on a DS/iPad/laptop or watching TV
AIBU to think if you invite a child over to play there should be at least some (if not all in the case of youngest age 4) actually playing . Both now completely wired & grumpy not to mention annoyed at me because I won't let them watch some tv as agreed earlier in the day. Would it be really rude to ask a parent not to allow screen time when I drop off?

Kids seem to love playing computer games together, it's a social event.

Weather is awful otherwise it would be the park.

Sometimes I am so tired from work I can't think up improving activities with which to dazzle other parent at my sheer fabulousness as a guardian of her offspring's development.

Often the children who have very restricted access to TV/computer are the ones hanging about waiting for me to push magic button.

Op you are being very precious.

If another parent has my dcs for a few hours I see it as a favour. Ds1 has one friend with an xbox in his room (they are 7) and he goes over there regularly, eats pizzas and ice cream and games non stop. This friend is a lovely, lovely boy. Then in the playground at school they play the games again in an imaginary way.

It's fine in my opinion. Other parent may have had a stressful phone call or two. You never know. Is it different to coming home from soft play with a bump or graze or something?

ubik1 sometimes I am so tired from MNing that I can't think up improving activities for my own DCs, never mind anyone else's.

How old are your children OP? You say the youngest is 4? Is that the friend, or your child?
Are you being PFB?
Normally kids play, running around, chasing, trampoline, lego, x box, tv, all toys, whilst they are at my house.

But generally, my 10 year old loves xbox and minecraft more than anything. So I wouldn't mind if the main kart if the 'play date', was this. In fact I would expect it. Like others gave said.

I think YABVU and I'm just grateful that anyone even has my kids!!

FGS don't say this to anyone! You won't win any friends. And people will just think you are a precious uber parent, who is perfect , with thiei perfect kids , who eat nothing but organic soya wheat salad!!

Haha Aelfrith - yes op has her work cut out trying to get us lot to admit to the benefits of limited screen time - mumsnet is indeed the 21st century 'mothers little helper' although gin is also required in times of extreme stress

If we have other children over I will encourage them not to spend all their time exclusively with screens - but that is all it is - gentle encouragement and a suggestion that they might want to do something else. I am certainly not going to police and enforce it.

If another parent asked me to avoid screen time I would consider them a PITA and would not be issuing further invites

I am not sure I would consider it 'rude' - I am sure you could ask very politely - but I would think you were precious and annoying and I would not invite your children to my house ever again.

Me too. My house, my choice. And don't go all po-faced if your child returns from mine with her nails done in pink either.

Sounds like they had a great time actually and will think their friends parents are really cool :)

But what is this Mine craft of which you all speak, i feel my DD (8) is missing out on something here...........

Minecraft is an app or PC game where stuff gets built and mined. And some dragon is fought apparently. As games go, it's quite good. Not too violent or gothic.

oh, that sounds quite good - because it was called minecraft i assumed it was like "warcraft" i might take a look at this, thanks.

I still remember and wake up screaming from nightmares about my canal boat trip with a four year old whose mother has very strict rules about 'screen time'.

Rules which frankly I would have abandoned after three hours stuck in a canal boat. No, he did not want to see the lovely aqueduct, in so far as you could discern anything through the driving rain. He wanted to play on the iPad.

It would have been much better to let him play on the bloody iPad than have him trying to throw himself off the back of the boat in his boredom and frustration.

Screens are not evil. Not much in moderation is harmful.

I'd feel annoyed if a mum kept dropping hints until I finally invited her kids over for a playdate (aka babysitting for holidays) and then moaned that all the kids did was watch TV. If I invited them myself of my own volition, then it might be a bit strange to have the TV going all the time unless the weather was bad. Generally I wouldn't accept kids over for 'playdates' (don't particularly like that term) unless the mum or dad were going to be there too. It's very interesting how the requests always seem to escalate in the holidays no?

I would be really annoyed by this too, OP. Kids are happier and have more fun if they do something more interesting than stare at a screen, and I am willing to take a bit of trouble to make it happen. You don't need rules about screens, just a few different tempting activities.

It is the kids who spend too much time on the screen who don't know how to play in any other way

Spero, it's awful of me but imagining a liitle boy repetitively trying to throw himself off the back of a boat made me laugh...a lot...

What the fuck is a play date? Screentime?

Am I missing something here or does all this wankspeak boil down to: 'my kid went round their mate's house and played on the computer'

So what? It is the midst of winter and miserable outside.

What do want instead with their free time?

Them to work out a strategy to save the rainforest?
Learn the violin to concert standard?
Master euclidian geometry?

I'm guessing if they gone round to a friend's house, the last thing they want is adult orchestrated 'fun' because there is nothing more joyless rhan turning leisure time into a rwgimented activity.

Kids are happier and have more fun if they do something more interesting than stare at a screen

Whose kids would that be?

And who gets to clean up afterwards and comb glitter out of the cat's fur? Where do you do all the fun stuff in a small house and how do you keep the toddler from sucking down blue paint?

OP, I wouldn't be thrilled, but I wouldn't dream of saying anything - primarily I'd be grateful she'd looked after my kids and they'd had a good time.
DD1 (6) invited a friend over recently - he brought his own iPad with him and spent the entire time (bar snack) playing on it extremely loudly in the middle of our living room while my kids watched (and weren't offered a turn). Eventually it ran out of battery and they had 10 minutes of playing (happily) together before his mum arrived. Thoughts on what I should do next time (what I did was rolled my eyes at DH a lot and suggested other things they might like to do occasionally, which I don't think was the best possible way to handle it).
I should add I'm not in a hurry for there to be a next time!

O yes Mimishimi I can laugh about it NOW but I was failing to find the funny at the time. It's almost as if she would have preferred him to drown rather than have 'screen time' over his allotted 20 mins per day!

In the end I had to pick him up and deposit him back inside boat as 'asking him nicely' not to dance about on the very back end of the boat was having little effect either.

Rules and routines are great but sometimes you have to know when to break them.

My daughter watches loads of TV. She also plays on a lap top and a tablet. Strangely she also manages to go outside and play and still seems to have an imagination. She is also doing fine at school.

Without 'screens' I couldn't parent. If you want to do it differently, fine. Don't let your children go to others homes where they might be corrupted by 'different' attitudes.

But maybe have a think about what messages you are giving by making something so rationed and hence so desirable.

Really interesting item on radio 4 yesterday about 9 year olds in an American school being left to get on with a maths lesson via tablet. They all laid on the floor with their own tablet and headphones and could work at their own pace, rewind and repeat as necessary. School says they have fantastic results.

But hang on, it's using a 'screen' so must be work of the devil?

It's 2014! Screens are going to be a massive part of your children's lives!

Delightful post ComposHat - well done !

minecraft is online lego with added zombies *but you dont have to have the zombies

and, yes, all this fuss about kids playing over at a friends house. let them do what they want. i can hear those helicopter blades whirring.

Sorry hmc this thread is a lot of shite and a terrific fuss about going to play at a friend's house. If people are so highly strung that they feel the need to micromanage every second of their child's leisure time and won't allow them a few hours where they don't do anything constructive with an adult hovering over them, then it is them not the child who has a fucking problem.

my girls are desperate for Minecraft

It's at the point that their friends come round and gaze wistfully at Minecraft songs on Youtube (after some improving work on the viola, Mensa endorsed building blocks and classical music appreciation, natch)

Moshi Monsters and Bin Weevils do not cut it any longer, I'm afraid