Or should a play date be two hours max?

[TargetPractice11]

Still annoyed about something that happened on the weekend.

Invited friend and his 3 year old over for "morning tea" at 10am. They arrived at 10:30am, and stayed until 3pm.

I have a baby and two preschoolers. My preschoolers are adorable playmates for around two hours. Then they get feral.

The three kids running around repeatedly woke up my baby. My friend passively observed that this was occurring but made no move to go.

I made many hints. I did not serve lunch. We were all famished when they finally shuffled off at 3pm.

One of my many hints to leave was 'so- what else do you have on for today?'

To which my friend said he was hoping for a nap as he'd managed to keep his kid out all day and allow his wife to relax.

😡

I am exhausted- up all night with a baby. I would love a fucking nap.

DH and I always subscribed to there being a 90-120 minute hard stop on play dates. Did we just make that up? Or is that the socially acceptable limit?

Meet in a park or soft play In future, some people just can’t take a hint.

Id have picked up on that hint even if I hadn’t realised I was outstaying at that point!

I think maybe you need a more direct way of saying it next time though. Maybe - ‘ooh I think DC is getting a bit over-excited now and needs some quiet time. This has been fun! Let’s do this again’ and get a date in the diary!

I think you should have politely got them to leave. Practise ways of doing this.

"Well this has been fun! Do the kids want to play one last round of xyz before we need to pack away and say bye bye?"

I guess it sounds reasonable actually, but I’ve pretty much always had play dates go on all day. At that age, 4 or 5 hours would be normal for us. Especially if the parents stay so we can have tea/lunch/couple glasses of wine. Now that my kids are 10 and over, their mates come round for literally the entire day. They can show up on the morning and still be here after dinner time so they get fed two or three meals a day. But we play a game that can take 7 hours on it’s own, never mind them doing anything else.

It really depends on your social circle and how you like things. You have to get tougher at telling them to leave or have imaginary plans. All it would have taken was “We are going out to another friend’s for lunch in half an hour, so let’s start getting them packed up.”

I agree with the 2 hours and off you go idea.
I would hate to feel I’d outstayed my welcome.
A good idea if this crops up again would be to say “come from 10-12, I’m meeting x at 12:30 but it would be nice to see you,” - just give an end date of some kind and a reason to be leaving the house shortly after that end time.

Of course your friend is a man.

His wife asked him to take the kids out so he thought he’d outsource the parenting another woman.

To add, mine are older now and their friends come round for endless amounts of hours but they don’t bring their parents with them and I’m free to get on with whatever I want. Plus the dc are less likely to be running feral through the house because of their ages!

Most people would probably pick up on the queue but if, as in this case, they didn't want to, it's best to be clear. I always find the afternoon a better slot as it's easier to move on with "I need to get started on dinner etc".

I don't think either of you were wrong. I'd often have friends hang out for a few hours on a playdate. You both had different ideas if how the day was supposed to go.

If you invite them again perhaps be more specific and say 10.30 to 12.30 as need to get the baby down for lunchtime nap

This, just go out for a couple of hours, stop inviting them to your house.

I have to say this was my thought too. I had a playdate once on the 23nd/23rd of December- 2pm nice walk in the park/ woods near our home. They tea ( Southern tea so the drink/ hot choc for the DCs and flapjacks) little play at home ( he had 2 DCs around 4&6 ish) at 6pm ( bear in mind it had been dark for hours by this point) he sat on my sofa and put on the news ! WTAF luckily his wife called the house profusely apologised and summoned him home.

He's always late so I thought home would be easier. Also I stupidly thought it would be better for the baby to be able to sleep - now I realise the baby is the perfect excuse to leave!

Go to his house next time!

@Shinyandnew1

He lives in the city centre and it's impossible to park so always comes to us.

Annoying because we can never trash his place in return!

You might need to put restrictions on your invite, say would you like to come for the morning on Saturday we are"busy" after lunch.

4 or 5 hours? Aren't the children hideous by then?

Mine are cute for 2 hours max.

You need to practice polite ways of getting rid of people! That’s so British of you it’s made me laugh. I would say “right I’m going to have to turf you out now as there’s things I need to get on and do, thanks so much for coming” and stand up. Standing up seems to spur people on to go. If people are taking ages to leave in the hall I often go and start opening the door, haha. Probably not very polite but some people need it spelling out. He sounds rude if he’s late too.

I would usually meet friends either at the park or soft play so that it was easy enough to scarper once i’s had enough

but Yanbu

Play dates are always outside the house unless the parent leaves and you can tell them a time to come back.

The kids really went from 10am-3pm with no lunch and didn't complain about it? I never knew a pre-school child who would happily miss a meal (or didn't get ridiculously hangry as a consequence of missing a meal).

You have to pre-empt this sort of behaviour by having a prior (invented) commitment that brings a reasonable end time to the playdate.

I had scones, cakes and fruit from morning tea so they sort of grazed on that for a while.

I assumed they would go home for lunch so I told them we would have lunch later.

I didn't want to make lunch as I thought they would see it as an invitation to stay even longer!

And yes- they were all hangry! I was hoping he'd take the child home for lunch due to the hanger but happily hung out at ours for hours on end instead.

I'd have just said, 'sorry we're heading out this afternoon so we'll have to wrap this up'.

So he co-opted you into being main carer and entertainer for his kid, and then he was going to go home as the Great Father to have a nap whilst his exhausted spouse has to deal with and feed a tired, hungry toddler?

Amazing.