Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think parents should reciprocate when DC invited to play?

403 replies

Picturesofmatchstickmen · 11/03/2016 19:20

Genuinely interested in what others think...DH just shrugs but he's very laid back! Notice this particularly with DD2 (9) I often have her friends over at weekends, take them out to places, also always happy to help out if people need a lift to a school or club event. DD hardly seems to ever get invited anywhere though. These are girls she is good friends with, plays with at school every day. Plus parents are always more than happy for their DD to come to ours, so I don't think it's that they don't like her. I do know these parents, not close friends, but I cannot think of a reason why they don't reciprocate.

DD has written a list of who she would like to come to her birthday, and it's all her usual friends but as I was looking through it, it struck me how few of these girls have ever invited her to play. There is one girl she has been friends with for four years and I've had her over several times, and DD has not been invited over once. I know space is tight at their place, but I also know if DD had ever been invited to the park with them, where they go most weekends, she would have jumped at it! It just seems a lot of parents if the girls my DD plays with are happy for their DC to go on play dates but don't want anyone else coming to them. if DD is invited somewhere i always try and reciprocate some time over the coming months, I wouldn't regularly accept invites and never reciprocate. Has anyone else experienced this? AIBU?

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 13/03/2016 20:24

People are so ridiculously paranoid now that "playing out" isn't allowed.

Play date is a horrible expression- I think it came out when my oldest was about 5. Where we live it's called "Going round Emily's"

DancingDinosaur · 13/03/2016 20:30

By the time your child was old enough for 'playdates' ginslinger your child would be pretty much in the 80's though.

CaptainCrunch · 13/03/2016 20:43

There's a massive difference between the 70s and 80s. My nieces were born in 1974, when I was 9 and their childhoods were very different from mine.

Floggingmolly · 13/03/2016 20:47

A rose by any other name, Bertrand... Why are people getting so hung up on what it's called, rather than what it is? It's a ridiculous Americanism alright, but it doesn't change what it is.

jaykay34 · 13/03/2016 20:49

I can see where you are coming from OP, but I think you have to consider other people's circumstances too.

A parent who works full time probably won't be as accommodating as ones who don't work or work part time. I only work 3 days per week but I do find that I really do value the two free evenings we do have - and the same with weekends.

My eldest children are b/g twins who had completely different friends and they would wind each other up when I had friends round. Due to limited car space, I would alternate the one who could bring a friend home - then the other one would get jealous and hence an evening of kids constantly arguing.

Also as they got older, I found most evenings would be taken up with at least one after school activity so there wasn't always time to fit friends in.

Saying that, I have always tried to reciprocate having friends over and helping out other parents where I can. However, I can see why it may be difficult for some parents and why your child may not get invites back. Perhaps you need to take it less personally and consider the bigger picture, rather than get upset over it.

It's much easier now my eldest are at secondary school and the "playdates" are a thing of the past. My youngest is a singleton so it may be easier with him when he gets to that age !

KERALA1 · 13/03/2016 21:34

Okay captain and dinosaurs I totally imagined my childhood experiences Hmm

DancingDinosaur · 13/03/2016 21:45

Well I didn't imagine mine Wink

zoemaguire · 13/03/2016 21:47

"People are so ridiculously paranoid now that "playing out" isn't allowed."

Last comment before I get back to life - we live on a road which has cars parked up on both pavements, and down the middle of the parked cars, vans and cars travelling at speed. The next road along is a busy main road. I'd love to give my kids the kind of freedom I had as a child, living on a quiet suburban estate, but you'll just have to forgive me my crazy paranoia in not letting my 2, 5 and 7yos play 'out' on half a pavement next to speeding cars. Such cotton wool parenting, I do know...

DancingDinosaur · 13/03/2016 21:51

I just let mine out in the garden, not running up and down the road. Works for me!

CaptainCrunch · 13/03/2016 21:53

I didn't imagine mine either Kerala and I pointed out you're almost 10 years younger than me and your childhood was actually an 80s one. Trust me the 70s were very different.

rewardformissingmojo · 13/03/2016 22:21

flashbang good point, it has been feeling a bit pressured, good to know I can relax a bit!

Tbf when we invited one girl, her parent explained that she wasn't in a position to reciprocate - but that was fine. I have no problem with that.

rewardformissingmojo · 13/03/2016 22:45

Aaaargh just rtft, it was me who felt the pressure to return the playdate favour within a week, didn't mean to kick off such a discussion! Clearly IWBU. Which is a relief, frankly - there aren't often enough days in the week. I wouldn't have expected such promptness from anyone else.

zoemaguire · 13/03/2016 23:24

I don't think the garden counts as playing 'out' in the 1970s terms described above. Though it is 'out', obviously! The terminology is getting mighty confusing:)

DancingDinosaur · 13/03/2016 23:48

Don't think I said it did, did I Zoe? Just saying what we do as we live on a busy road also. They can still build bug houses, climb trees and do all sorts in that garden without me running myself ragged doing the playdate thing :-)

zoemaguire · 14/03/2016 07:42

Yes but that's not what I was responding to, it was the suggestion that not allowing kids to play 'out' out was paranoia. I'm glad your kids do all sorts in the garden. Think how much fun they could have doing it with friends as well as siblings:) Anyway, as you say, I don't think we are going to agree.

DancingDinosaur · 14/03/2016 08:04

Yep they do that in the playground. And as my dc are close in age and great friends anyway, I don't feel the need to recreate something they already have. So as I said already, no point in carrying on the conversation with you is there. And on that note I'm off to work. Happying playdating now, Wink

zoemaguire · 14/03/2016 10:33

I was a sociable kid. All the same I find it hard to express how grim i found the playground much of the time. 20 minutes of fending off kids you didn't want to play with and dodging the massive game of British bulldog taking over 80% of the space, then time to go back inside. Great! Let's stop using the fucking term 'play date' and ask: is it optimal for a child to never, ever see any of their friends outside school? This thread has been an education for me, because I don't know any children at all for whom parents have actively made this choice as best for their kids (as opposed to through difficult circumstances).

Icompletelyunderstand · 14/03/2016 10:49

I think there is a class element attached to this too though. I grew up on a council estate and all the kids in my immediate locality were always out in the street or over the park. I had two really good friends who were the children of a doctor and an academic respectively. They lived in a different part of town (naturally) and were either not allowed or not available to hang out in my street with the rabble, Partly because of differences in parenting style and concerns about safety or the wrong sort of influence I imagine, but also because their different location meant a lack spontaneity.

I used to have arranged visits to play and have tea attheir houses which I loved, it was like a different world for me. I don't remember them ever coming to mine though. My mum wouldn't have said no but perhaps their mums did!

DancingDinosaur · 14/03/2016 11:42

See you're assuming its an active choice rather than circumstances. If I had lots of time on my hands then maybe I would do playdates. Or maybe I wouldn't, who knows. But I don't. And nor did my parents. But I don't think its something that needs to happen for a child to have a happy childhood. I had a good childhood. It was fun. With my siblings who are also really close friends now. Just like my dc are really close friends. You can't say playdates are better, its just doing something differently. And fwiw, I didn't have those issues in the playground at school. And my children don't appear to either. We're all shaped by our experiences and mine are different to yours. I don't think my children will be adversely affected, I certainly wasn't!!

BertrandRussell · 14/03/2016 12:27

I just can't imagine automatically saying no if one of my children said "Can X come round to play? " Surely the reply is either "Yes, of course" or "Not today because Y, but how about Thursday?" Isn't that what most people do?

Icompletelyunderstand · 14/03/2016 12:43

I have known several women who never allow other children in their homes and they are generally the type who don't like other adults in their homes either. That are always happy to go to other people's houses when asked though, they just dislike anything at all that encroaches on their home turf and disrupts their own routine. Unless it's their own parents, usually.

I feel sorry for children with parents like that. There are surprisingly large number of them though, as many MN threads about Christmas have demonstrated.

DancingDinosaur · 14/03/2016 18:08

Well you can pity my poor children if you like Icompletelyunderstand. Although your generalising isn't completely right. It doesn't look like you really live up to your user name though does it. I don't think you understand at all. After all how could you if you don't know each and every persons circumstances. But why let that get in the way.

BertrandRussell · 14/03/2016 18:38

So what do people do if their child says "Can X come round?"

Or if another child says "Can [insert your child's name] come round?"

UbiquityTree · 14/03/2016 19:22

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KERALA1 · 14/03/2016 19:47

God I am petitioned on a daily basis. How do people get away with just saying no every time?! If I did this I would be viewed as the meanest mum ever.