Playdate hell

[scortja]

I am not good at playdates but recently decided it would be the best for DS to try again.. He's just gone into Year 2 so thought it might be easier and they might be better behaved..

So - just brought home DS's friend who always seemed really sweet but it all seems to be going wrong - how do I turn it around?! Should I just call him mum to pick him up - that seems unfair to her! Help!

DS's friend is pretty worldly compared to DS and has demanded Lucozade, XBox, Playstation, money, Netflix and Transformers - all a no. He's thrown toys at the window to try and break it/them (firmly told not to otherwise he'd be going home), he's been pushing and shouting and telling DS2 that he hates him..

Now he's saying he's going to tell their teacher that DS pulled his pants down - which DS has taken to heart instead of laughing off.. DS is now not talking to him and DS's friend is playing with DS2 who is 3.. I have two hours to go and i have to try and feed him ..

Is that for me Dixie? I wasn't troll hunting. I was supporting the OP in my thread that has now been deleted.

sadwidow that is massively, massively selective quoting. You must know that it is, too.

I appreciate all of us have our moments on MN, and things may be hard on you at the moment for other reasons, but sometimes the best option is to lay down your spade.

My advice is that you never invite friends over for a play-date until YOU get your strategies and skills in order.

I've never had any problems with playdates, actually. But I would suggest you apply the advice to your conduct on certain threads.

THIS is the very reason I avoid playdates. I have had one but insisted the mum came too.
I know I am not cut-out for 'kids from hell' and I don't so well in confrontations especially as I live in a village and many of DS's friends are 'my mum friends' too. Many 'play-dates' are done on neutral territory.

Oh, and I am a teacher; primary too! Whole different ball game in the classroom which I can handle.

But OP he DIDN'T actually stop did he? He completely outsmarted you by just changing the misbehaving onto something else. What were you threatening to send him home for - the behaviour or the actual things he was doing? Personally, it should have been the behaviour but you seemed to be using the 'what he was actually doing' as a means to assess whether to send him home or not.

Parents should have been called BEFORE the upturned furniture. Sorry, but you have been a right numpty about this and walked all over by a 6/7 year old who was actually in control, not you.

Hope you've learnt your lesson, albeit the hard way!

I swore no more play dates after a little shit tried to start a fire in ds's room, then blamed my younger ds. ( he was coincidentally excluded from school for attempted arson later)
I drank much whiskey when Dh got in, so I feel your pain op.

my face looks pretty much like this at the moment!

What a vile lot of messages on here! fucking hell

OP- have whatever and vow never to have the little bastard back again.

We had this!

Eventually I had to call the other Mum (who I liked) and try to sensitively raise the issue. Long story short, my kid was a liar, we are terrible parents, I was exaggerating, she even shouted for her husband to come and LAUGH AT MY MADNESS over the phone, it was horrible. It was a waterfall of hate.

I also got "Well, everyone complains about X SPITTING on them. X's NOT SPITTING, X's just blowing raspberrys" X's really not. X's spitting).

Said child has asked to come over loads since then. I just breezily say "Ask Mummy to text me a good date!". Needless to say have heard nothing.

Friends at the school gates mean fuck-all. Choose who you can now - because when they're 13 you'll have enough weird friend problems without having to say "yes I KNOW we had him round all the time when he was little, but now I'm worried about you being mates".

If My child asks? "They can come over as soon as they understand the rules of our home."

May have shared this before but years many, many years ago, I had a birthday party. I was a horribly shy child and my parents had invited the few children from my class I spoke to. And the vicar's children. It was a church school, and they were always invited to everything.

During the course of the party these kids misbehaved. Shouting, pushing, and jumping on and off the back of the sofa. My parents had little money and the sofa had cost them a lot of money. They asked the kids not to jump on the furniture. They carried on. Then Dad told them not to. They carried on.
He got their coats, took them home and when their parents said "Oh, little Jonny and Sally are home early..." Dad told them exactly WHY they were being brought home early.

Not looking forward to full on playdates :/

gosh thats awful i would have called the childs mum

Gawd, we have a child like this that unfortunately lives a few houses away and turns up all. the. fucking. time.

His favourite time to arrive is at tea time. He is told to go as we are eating. He comes back 15 minutes later!!!!!!!!!! He is driving us mad(just look at all those exclamation marks!) as he seems impervious to any hints or repeated rebuffs, he has a rhino hide! Even after I gave him a huge bollocking for hurting DD when they were playing outside hevturns up again the next day!!

He winds DS up something awful. I turn him away every time but dh is a ninny and let's him in, meaning its about 10 minutes before I send him packing for some misdemeanor.

He has one hell of a brass neck!

His mum doesn't care either. the boy is 7 and is allowed to walk out of the house and amuse himself however he chooses, as long as he isn't bothering her she doesn't give a shit what he gets up to.

I enjoyed that rant, its good to get it all out.

Thankfully mine were hardly into play dates, so I got off lightly there

I did, though, have to ban one horrible little shit from my house in terms she couldn't have failed to understand. She had latched onto DD2 like a leech and was bullying DD3, who was then still in year 1 or 2.

It isn't pleasant, but you don't have to put up with shitty behaviour, which was what it was.

sorry but I don't get the big deal.

1. hey boys we are going to make Sunday's (etc) at blank o'clock - any bad behaviour = no treat.

1. hey boys if you can't share that toy it's going on top of the fridge

1. Boys, if you can't speak to each other kindly I'll sepatrate you into your own corners

1. Little bob if you cannot follow our rules than I will call your mum to come get you.

Then follow through. I agree with the poster who said you let your kids down by not trying and teaching them proper boundaries/conflict management.

Does this boy always treat your son like this? That is the conversation I'd be having now....what his expectations are on how a "friend" should treat him.

Bizarre IMO to just stand there and do nothing

Kids are sharks, they smell blood and fear from miles away. You need to smack those little fuckers upside the head the second they even think a mischievous thought.

I've watched children before for a friend who needed to work a shift. They weren't listening to me, running amok in the house. I told them to cut it out, they didn't. There wasn't much I could really do when they knew they just had to outlast me until their mom got them. I called the mom, and she had to leave mid-shift. We had a falling out over it, but if she raised them a little better we wouldn't have had that problem.

It's not up to you to sit there and put up with another parent's mistakes. They made their bed, let them live with their spawn. Why should you have to?

If an adult came over and refused to respect my house, I'd kick them out in a heart beat too. People won't respect boundaries that you don't enforce. You don't have to be mean about it, but next time stop caring about the other mother. If it was my child, I'd want the phone call and I'd be coming down on her like a ton of bricks when I got her home.

Probably not stellar parenting from me but when mine had friends over I made it clear to them that they were in charge and I would hold them responsible for letting their friends do anything that the DCs knew I would not tolerate. The result was children who developed backbones and told their guests off. Much like Bessarabiantiger, I only let them have a friend over if they were able to look me in the eye and assure me the friend knew the rules. We had a code where I would call out to the DCs and ask them how things were going or complain about something I had heard or seen if I thought things were getting out of hand.

This all sprang from an incident where DD1 (aged about 5) and her friend locked themselves into the bathroom and decorated it all over and as high as they could reach with toothpaste, using the family toothbrushes. Same friend wanted a specific brand of yogurt and a particular kind of bread, and wasn't polite at all about that or other requests. The child never came back. I explained why to DD1 and used her afterwards as an example of behaviour she had to hop on even if that involved threatening that I would turn into the Hulk.

The family was regarded as really lovely -- lovely parents, lovely children... I never laughed inwardly to myself as much as I did the day I heard that DD2's 1st grade teacher, who taught the friend's little brother in the same class as DD2, had suggested military school as a possibly necessary option for him and the sooner the better. The teacher was quite the battleaxe and there were many elements of her classroom style that I didn't like much, but all of those children in that family could have been infinitely improved by the swift application a wooden spoon to the ass (channeling inner Irish Mammy here, please bear with me) or indeed a few years in military school.