Overly anxious regarding play dates?

[Lucytheluckyone]

Ok so my DD is 6 years old, she is an only child which 1. Likely makes it a lot easier for me to arrange and 2. Probably makes me think I need to overcompensate (!) when it comes to playdates.

Firstly let me start by saying my DD has a better social life than me, we have close friends who have girls the same age who she sees all the time, so this is more in relation to school friends. On top of this I am a CHRONIC over-thinker and get soo anxious about social things like this. Recently I’ve become anxious about how often she’s invited for playdates. Don’t get me wrong, she has been invited to a few but it’s few and far between. I feel like I am always the organiser and when the other party is unable to make a suggested date it’s like ‘oh another time’… but no actual date is given, I may be looking into it but I would at least offer another date that I could do? My little girl can occasionally be bossy, it wasn’t great in P1, now she’s in P2 it’s much better…but I’ve convinced myself the damage is done and the little girls in the class just don’t want to have playdates with her :(

Some advice?!

IMO (parent for nearly 20 years) most other parents are happy to palm their DC of on you but less inclined to reciprocate for whatever reason (work/cba/don’t like kids/messy house/clean house etc)

In my experience a lot of parents only manage one or two play dates a term due to work / clubs etc so I wouldn’t worry about it. There might be lots of parents swapping childcare because it suits them to share pick ups for example but true play dates aren’t that regular as logistics make it tricky for many families. Keep inviting and if parents invite and you can’t make the date work you could let them know X or Y days of the week usually work for us or whatever.

We found the same, play dates were often one sided but I was ok with that, most of her friends have siblings or big extended families, DD doesn’t so it was great for us for her to have play dates but other families were t in the same situation. Generally I’d arrange a couple of day trips in any given holiday where I’d take one of her friends with us and I’d pay things like the trampoline park or softplay. As they got older I’d do more adventurous trips, took them to the zoo and beach for the whole day. Now DD is 10 they play out a lot more and we have an open door policy so tend to have lots of random kids suddenly appear in the kitchen or garden. I’ve got a permanent gazebo with seating at the end of the garden so they like hiding out down there and hogging my hammock on dry days. They raid the freezer for ice creams and the snack box for crisps and spend hours giggling and screaming.

I have one DC of secondary school age. I'm able to look back with some experience / hindsight of arranging playdates with a young, only child.
Generally, as a mum of one, I have less of a demanding home life than other families, some of whom have 3 or 4 children. I also have more autonomy with my work life being self-employed. Some mums in the group work shifts/ nights.
It is more often the case that playdates happen at mine. I simply have more space/ time / energy to organise. Although with an older child, they do the organising now; but a lot happens at our home.
It doesn't work equally between the friends, but that's ok. I'm often asked for favours to help with transporting other children to sporting events and I happily do so because it's company for my DC. I don't expect favours in return. I'm not put upon by any means, I can sense other families are up against it in a way I'm not; and they are grateful.
What I'm trying to say, is that just because the playdates aren't working out equally, it doesn't mean there's an issue. I do think us mums of one are a lot more focused on arranging playdates because we need to be for our dc to have company. If you can settle into the idea that you are likely to be the mum in the group that's more pro-active in arranging; without it being completely reciprocated, you'll feel more ease I'm sure.

Thank you so much for all your replies! They have really eased my anxieties around this and I agree with them. I think I often forget how easy we have it, I can’t imagine I would be totally up for trying to organise play dates if I had a full time job and three kids so I do need to consider that when reaching out rather than immediately thinking there is a problem. Thanks again 🙏🏻