To think that children aren't as good at playing together anymore?

[Hoverflies]

When I am at the park with my dc (6 and 3) I mostly just see children playing with their parents and not really mingling with each other unless they already know each other. My dd has tried a few times to talk to other children at the park and they just stare at her or run off. She is also shy about talking to new children and both DC want us to play with them all the time at the park, just like I see the other parents doing.

I'm not a confident person but I used to love making friends with other children at parks (well usually pub beer gardens in my childhood!) And especially on holiday, my brother and I would just go up to people and become friends for the rest of the holiday! We are going away soon and I would love that for her but it just never seems to happen and if she ever does interact with other children it feels like I or the other parents always have to intervene in some way which my parents never did. If we argued as kids we just had to work it out and not come crying to them every five minutes!

This isn't to say that I don't want to spend time with my kids, but I just want them to be able to play more with other children and for parents to actually sit and talk to each other and finish a sentence!

Teacher here. Lots of children can’t hold a conversation either. So few enjoy reading, playing games, imagination is lost - not all children but I’ve been teaching 26 years and there has been a huge change.

I'm not sure it's the right approach but as a parent I aim for boring. If we are in the park I am usually reading a book or chatting to the other parents. Want to play? Fabulous, off you go. I'm here if you need me.

Obviously there are times when I do play with them but it's not my default.

I was the same

Yes I agree with you OP, kids don’t seem to mix in the same way they used to. My son has just turned 18 but even then this was starting to be an issue, however I do think it’s got worse looking at my sisters’ kids lives who are much younger.

I remember roaming around with a gang of neighbourhood kids wherever I was when growing up and it was so fun, it felt like we were in our own world, we had so much freedom. Up to a certain age my parents would have come to the park with me and of course pushed me on the swings or whatever when I was too little to manage myself but once I reached the age I didn’t need them to access things they would have sat on a bench there relaxing and maybe chatting with other parents while we kids played together with whoever was around. And later on in childhood we’d have gone off to the park (or actually the local forested area and river) on our own.

It’s interesting that @Pieceofpurplesky thinks it’s due to a lack of imagination (?due to screens etc). That might be playing a role but I personally wonder if it’s because we as parents have become a bit too overinvolved which doesn’t allow them the space to build peer relationships. I would have played with my child at the park a lot of the time, although that’s partly because I wanted to myself 🤣🤣 and partly as he is a bit socially anxious/awkward and wouldn’t just go off to play by himself if I told him to. Maybe if he had a sibling it would have been easier for him.

Looking back I can recognise with hindsight from the other end of things that I have probably been a bit too overprotective and involved with my child and have been a bit of a helicopter parent much as I hate to admit it. Even when he was at nursery the nursery workers had to tell me to stop dressing/undressing him as he needed to learn how to do it himself and was old enough. It had just never occurred to me that he was old enough at the time! I’m not totally sure why this happened with my generation (I’m tail end of Gen X, technically a Xennial). Maybe partly because social attitudes about what was safe/acceptable/reasonable for children in society generally changed. I remember at the time being a bit shocked by another mother locally who would just let their child around age 8/9 just roam around on a bike with some other kids around the neighbourhood for hours on end and call on friends to ask for them to come out to play. He’d call on my child and I’d invite them all in to hang out in our house instead of roaming around on the roads by themselves so I could make sure they were all safe! I look back and think I may have got that wrong at least from age 9/10/11 I should have been encouraging him to go out with them really and be more independent.

However I feel like my helicopter parenting is nothing compared to my younger sisters who are firmly Milennials. Not only that but they use screens a LOT more than I ever did at a very young age. I love my sisters and their kids but hate that every single mealtime the kids will sit with a screen in their faces, even if we are out at a restaurant. And not interact with us at all as they are so absorbed in the screens. It makes me sad they are missing out on family interactions and I also find it kind of rude. It’s the same if I call on them if we’re just hanging out in their house, the kids will be in front of a screen and barely say hello to me unless we are out doing a specific activity.

Play dates -who invented play dates -kids used to just hangout together.
I think it’s parents worried to leave them outdoors without supervision

I tend to roll my eyes at play dates.
But I suppose now nearly all parents need to work full time, these things need to be arranged.

I agree. Too much screen time and helicopter parenting.

Maybe it's area dependent? My DS always finds kids to play with in the park, but he really is very sociable and will literally talk to anyone. Lucky really as he's basically an only child as his siblings are adults.

I’m boring and I don’t play with them when we’re out. My 8YO is really sociable and knows so many people now locally that quite often she bumps into someone from school, an activity or a holiday camp, and when she doesn’t know anyone she’ll have a gang of new friends in minutes. My 4YO doesn’t care much yet but often finds a like minded new mate to run around like a nutter with 🤣

My dc have a park next to their school and the children all play so freely together after school and the parents chat and completely ignore the children allowing them to play really naturally. I notice that when we go at other times there are parents who are literally standing so close to their children at all times and telling them to be careful and not go on certain things so the children don’t get any opportunity to play with other children. The difference is obviously because the parents know the other parents and feel the park is a save space due to familiarity but it is quite stark.

Yes OP, I really noticed this when we were on holiday recently. Family resort in Greece, lots of families. None of the kids playing with each other, parents in the pool with the kids. When I was younger, I’d always make loads of friends on holiday and no way would any of the parents have been in the pool playing. Kids can’t seem to make their own entertainment, I found it pretty sad.

This is the Madeleine mccann effect. We are the generation who were very clearly told that if your child is out of sight for one second then you are an awful parent.

DD5 had a friend round the other day who...it turns out jas no idea how to play, unless an adult is directing!

DD was saying things like "shall we play dolls?" No... "Would you like to go on my trampoline?" ...no "how about we play with my cars....dress up... Play a game.... Drawing... reading..." All no, eventually she asks "can your mum and dad play monsters with us?".
DD says "oh I'll ask, do you want to be the nknst?".
No.... Can your mum and dad decide?
I was most bemused!
I said I wasn't playing monsters, but they could, and look there's a den you can hide in (little Wendy house) ... Off you go. DD runs away pretending there's a monster... She just stood there 🤷‍♀️

It’s one of the things that had been exacerbated by Covid restrictions. Our children are going to hate us when they grow up and realise what we have done to them.

My DC always made friends on holiday, mainly driven by DS who was more confident and sporty, that always helps. I was the kind of kid who would make a friend anywhere, and i’ll still talk to anyone. DD is fairly shy, and that makes it harder. I was also allowed to go out to play the summer I turned 7. My parents said there’s always kids playing in the avenue up the road, go and make some friends. And so I did, and was never home. I still have a lot of friends.

Well, it's not as easy anymore is it with parents at work until later, kids in more organised activities. /After school clubs, Friends living in different parts of town/villages etc.

You don't have the ease of sending your 7 year old going to Sophie's and knocking, because she's not home until 6:45, and hasn't had her dinner yet. Or best friend Jessica lives 8 miles away. Or other friend Margot is at swimming until 4, then goes to gymnastics until 5:30 and is then at at Dad's every Wednesday. Or actually you live on floor 12 of a block of flats and there's no where safe for 7 year olds to play without supervision, because there's teens roaming around.

We don't all live in a little village in the 1950s where everyone goes to the same school and lives a few doors away...

So sometimes, yes, you have to schedule when they'll play together!

My DD is lucky that she has a boy next door and they knock for each other, and play in the back gardens but this is generally at weekends.

I see it sometimes but I think it's the result of hovering parents.. my kids always make friends at the park, on holiday, when watching each other's sports etc., but I quite often just leave them be (there's 3 of them so they have their own little gang but it's rare they don't find others to join in with them). The only times it doesn't happen, or it's a bit strange, are when other parents are following their kids round the park. That said, mu youngest is quite shy and I'm not sure he would ever go and approach someone to play unless they had a football.

I think it's a mixture of too many organised activities, too much screen time, overprotective parents and a lack of safe outdoors spaces where kids can play and interact.
I find organising playdates very waring but my kids wouldn't see their friends at all outside school if I didn't.

Well when I was that age I eas playing out without my parents so I dont see why parents need to be with their kids all the time to start with

I don't have this issue with my kids at all. The older one is very confident and will just join in with a gang at the playground or ask other kids to play and the younger one is still into parallel play or trails along after the older one. The last holiday we were on, DC1 made a gang of friends and insisted on sitting next to one boy at dinner which was awkward as his parents clearly wanted family time and we had to drag DC1 away under pain of no ice cream 😂.

I don't know how much it has to do with area or upbringing but we live in an area with lots of playgrounds and parks and where families tend to live in very small houses or flats with no gardens. Very few families have space for their own play equipment or for kids to kick a ball around in the garden. So there is very much a culture of kids stopping by the playground after school and at weekends and we see many of the same faces regularly.

Thankfully not true for us. Lots of free play outdoors after school & in the park near us. It’s possible your kids are a bit young still. My daughter only really got her confidence to go off on her own and make friends at 5/6.

I don’t expect adults to come up to me when I’m out in public, I’m not sure why my daughter should have expected the same of children when she was younger.

She absolutely hated random kids coming up to her to talk. She was more than capable of playing with other kids, she just didn’t want to do it with strangers.

I think 6 and 3 is still quite young. Maybe the 6 year old will be on the cusp of approaching other children to play with, but I’m not sure a 3 year old would be. I remember making friends with kids on holiday but I was a fair bit older - maybe more like 9/10/11? My 5 year old has < 1 hour of TV a day and we don’t own a tablet, but despite this he would not approach another child he didn’t know in the park, so I think it’s too simplistic to blame it on screens. He’d run around for hours with a school pal, but a stranger? I’d be very surprised.

I haven't really noticed this to be true, the park near us all the kids play together, my kids are always making new friends and finding kids to play with wherever we go. But then both of mine are oddly social and talkative (they do not get that from me!)

I’m not sure. I was born in the 1970s so grew up very much in the past…I went on lots of holidays to campsites and stuff. Never once did I make a friend on holiday and the thought horrified me. My parents didn’t hang around either, I was saying to my husband the other day that I don’t have a single memory of my Mum taking me to the park. My brother and I played together on holiday even though (a) he is nearly 5 years younger than me and (b) he always was bloody annoying and we never played together at home! At home I had one best friend from age 7 that I spent all my time with (we are still friends now age 51) and I hated playing in groups.

Weirdly, as an adult I am very very sociable, love meeting new people and will strike up a chat with anyone. Something switched in me when I went to University. But as I child, absolutely not.

So maybe your dd is just a different personality type to you?