What's your worst playdate experience?

[PumpkinSly]

Aibu to ask what your worst playdate stories are (if you can still call it a play date at 9). DS has been to his friends this afternoon and has come home covered in what I can only assume is dog shit. The friend has two dogs and DS has come home with shit all over his shoes, trousers, t-shirt, and even in his hair. It doesn't even smell like normal dog shit. It is very cheesy in smell and it's all over him. He reeked. He said he spent time playing in the garden, but who lets kids play in a dog shit covered garden?! FFS! He's washed, we've cleaned the interior of the car, and his clothes are in the washing machine, so no long term damage. But I am sorely tempted to message the mother and tell her the state DS has come home in. DH thinks it's not worth it, and maybe he is right, so please, tell me your playdate nightmares to distract me.

I remember your thread 😊

When DD was about 9, I held a playdate with another girl she was at school with. The child whinged we only had one personal computer (this was nearly 20 years ago!!) and didn't like any of the food I served.

I dont think I'm a saint - in hindsight I think I was an idiot!
Gosh, I would never have been upset by behaviour like this from a child who has LD.
None of these children had LD. I think they were just all over indulged kids from parents who either followed the gentle parenting technique to the extreme, or who simply never parented their kids.

This is really sad on so many levels.

Reading these stories really shows how many children live in abusive or neglectful homes, where the parents genuinely don't give a shit anymore. I think many just use playdates as some kind of respite to get away from their own kids or a slot of time to get other things done. To be honest, what they do for work or how the family appears "outwardly" is irrelevant because abuse happens in all kinds of homes.

Many of the children also sound ND which results in poor behaviour that's unlikely to get them invited back again. Non-stop talking to an adult is a common red flag or ransacking a room out of sheer excitement. Parents also have some responsibility to teach their children social skills do they don't end up being on someone's worst playdate list. However it also seems that a number of parents are so used to their ND kids being "full on", that they're glad when the target gets deflected to a playdate parent.

It's sad because many of these children will grow up into adults and feel mortified at the things they did as kids or their parents did which felt "normal" at the time.

The two which stick in my mind were the non-collected child, they'd stayed for a sleepover and were meant to be collected at 10am as we were going to see a show in the afternoon. No sign by 12 noon, so we ended up driving round to their house and banging on the door. Eventually the little girl said that she goes to her neighbours if mummy and daddy aren't in!

The second is when I was looking after my friend's three year old when she went into labour with her second child. He fell at the park and spilt open his chin and we spent the next 3 hours at the A&E where mum was upstairs in the labour ward!

"wouldn’t be so bad if my then husband would climb a ladder but he wouldn’t'

Any reason you couldn't climb the ladder? 🤔

None of these children had LD. I think they were just all over indulged kids from parents who either followed the gentle parenting technique to the extreme, or who simply never parented their kids.

It's also worth mentioning that very obedient and perfectly behaved children are usually extremely badly parented. The only reason they will instantly do what their parents say is because they know the consequences behind closed doors if they refuse. Families with multiple children who look and behave like the Von Trapp kids always raise red flags with me. They are usually taught to preserve the family image and peace at all costs, and emotionally neglected as individuals.

My DD once had a playdate and her friend came with her nanny (this wasn't in the UK). Nanny hardly spoke English so all communication was via friend (obviously this was quite akward). Anyway they stayed for HOURS and some point I just left them to it as the nanny was there and it wasn't like I could even make conversation with her.
Eventually they leave and I go to DD's room. I look at the wall. There are nails hammered into the wall and DD's medals from various things are hanging from them. I ask DD where the hell those nails came from and she told me friend's nanny had hammered them in. I asked why on earth she did that and where she got the tools from. DD told me that she had asked the nanny (via the friend as DD doesn't speak local language either) to do it and had gone and got her our tool box and then the Nanny had gone ahad and hammered nails in to our wall 😂Like, WTF??? We rent and aren't allowed to make holes in the wall too!

They are everywhere and if you are white assume you will agree.

Too busy wrangling the children.

Had one of DS younger friends over once, few years younger than ds. Took them to the park, he ran off down the road so fast I couldnt keep up with him. Poor DS was laging behind while I was chasing his friend. Neighbour had to grab him for me. 🥲
Decided to keep them in the house/garden so he couldnt run off, took my eyes off him for 5 seconds and he had gotten into my first aid kit and took all the plasters out and started sticking them all to the garden furniture & toys, all in my kitchen even found one on the celling like how?!
gave them a ice pop each, he literally climbed inside my deep freezer and grabbed loads out and ran down the garden with them. Ds was getting upset at his friends behaviour.
at this point i knew i had to call it a day - rang his mum couldnt get hold of her for TWO HOURS. When i did she asked if I could drop him to her mums as she was at the pub. Of course he then ran off down the road again trying to get him to his nans house!
eventually got him there “oh did his mam not tell you hes a runner?”

Never again, even DS said it wasnt a good idea to have him back!
He ran off another time (not in my care) all the way into town in just his underpants. So at least it wasnt just me he did that too. Didnt feel as guilty then!

Oh there’s a type of child who arrives and just has to tip out every box of toys on to the floor…and then walks away. They then proceed to walk or run across the spilled contents, crunching things underfoot, for the next hour.

So glad those days are behind me.

Had an after school play date where the nice boy’s younger brother was also left with us, no warning. Younger brother (age 6 or 7) just followed me around, then looked up at me and asked “Why ARE you so fat?” NB I’m not huge. It had clearly been a topic of conversation he’d heard.
School friend refused to eat anything but meat, so they eventually had the steak we were planning to have that evening. The mum (rich, not nice school gate Queen Bee) arrived to pick up, plonked herself down at out table like it was her house and did a smarmy- judgemental she’s-better-than-me chat.
Thank God she didn’t have the class to offer a return play date.

My worst one would read like a poo-troll post, so I’ll say no more than that!

🤣

The worst was a woman I made friends with at a single parent group

We had 9 kids between us

The younger ones where fine but the eldest was worse than your worst nightmare

He pulled every single toy out and tipped them in the floor,board games/lego/play dough etc and then jumped on the lot

Tried to get into my fridge,freezer and cupboards to yank every item of food out while taking huge bites out of the fridge bits

Tried to kick next doors rabbit hutch through so he could strangle it

Kept opening my front door so he could swear at anyone walking past-i locked the door so he tried to mive to the window instead

Tried to put my windows through

Tried to kick my front door panels out

Pulled my TV over,smashing it

Dropped my stereo on the floor

Jumped all over my sofa

Pissed in the toybox

Ripped some of the kids clothes to bits,dumped it all on the floor and pissed on it all

Shat in my boots

Pulled my curtains down in 3 rooms

Spat every 3 seconds

Tried to pull my gas fire off the wall

Ripped up some of my books

Swore like a sailor

Stole money from my change jar

Shat on my bathroom floor and rubbed it in

His mother just sat there,smiling at me and making no attempt to stop him

I was a people pleaser at the time and couldn't find the words to tell them to leave,I just kept dropping massive hints for them to go-of cause she ignored them,I ended up phoning my sister in law who came round and slung them out (now id be 'out!now!')

12 years later,he went to prison for murdering her boyfriend

I’m old so you can imagine - my MIL’s era was the late 50sand 60s. When mine were small, I remember her being very taken aback by the behaviour of visiting children. She advised me not to let them have the run of the house - and definitely not to let them go upstairs. I dismissed this advice as ridiculous , old-fashioned and over-fussy.

Looking back, she was SO right! The sheer wanton wreckage that I’d find upstairs - in all rooms, not just the children’s- was shocking. It went far beyond the sort of normal playing untidiness. I came to realise the hard way that there really are some children who set ou5 to be destructive- it’s how they have fun. God knows whether they did it at home,or whether there was some kind of psychological factor at play…jealousy of some king, a determination to assert their dominance- who knows?

Young mums…my MIL was right!😲

Oh these are sparking memories from when mine were younger 😂
-runners: I used to have them dropped off at beaver/ cub scouts events (ie in a field or campsite!) and parents would casually say ‘oh he’s a runner’ and go to waltz off. They’d get massively affronted when I stopped them to say we didn’t have capacity to run after their angel as we’d have 30 other kids to watch and just generally didn’t do 1:1 sprinting after children. I’d say they’d need to stay or get their 8/9 year to agree to stay with the pack. Funnily enough after been told they couldn’t otherwise stay they never actually did run off…
-box/ shelf emptying children: yes!! Wtf is it that some enter any room solely to up end everything in it- and their parents think this is normal???
-wealthy parents sneering: my pet peeve were two over the years with pristine houses who treated my house like a literal bin. Drop stuff on the floor, leave marks, watch kids break things… total double standards

… this got me into a Monday rant!

Sorry OP but your DS is 9 not 2. Have you held him the slightest bit responsible for the state he's in?

Not me, but a friends daughter had a play date, aged about 7/8. She told me she'd left the 2 girls playing upstairs, and they made her a lovely collage by cutting up all the photos out of a photo album 😱

Jesus Christ 😫😫😫

That sounds like fox shit to me (cheesy pungent smell) - could have just been in the mud in their garden. I’d not assume it was dog shit, but still pretty rank they didn’t notice. I would send a text.

A school friend of DS came to tea and told us that his Mum says that our family is "laughably bourgeois" and that "He better not go home speaking with an accent like the Mother's/ mine".

@CrispieCake

Like a Saturday night on Union Street in Plymouth

I think you might live near me! This caught me by surprise and I let out the deepest belly laugh, I don't think I've ever made that noise before! 😂

OMG AutumnLover. - I think you ‘win’.

The most shocking aspect is the mum’s behaviour. What on earth had happened to that boy for him to behave like that?