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.

Vile behaviour. I am so sorry she did that to you.

Goodness all of ours have been quite tame tbh but this thread is great reading.

We did once have a party at home for DD when she was 7 though and one of the children snuck upstairs and trashed her room. No more home parties after that.

DD had her friend around for a playdate one saturday. I was unaware that there had been a sick bug doing the rounds in their class. Both DD and her friend succumbed to the sick bug whilst at my house. Taking it in turns to throw up in the loo/sink. Best playdate ever 🤢

We’ve had broken toys, bogies wiped on living room walls, piss all over the floor.
Worst party date was in a toddler ball pit at a soft play centre and my toddler came out with soaking wet socks. Someone had let their child piss in it. When I complained a very harassed member of staff had to get a black bin liner and empty each ball out, all the while giving me dirty looks!

Took DS when he was about 3 to a kids party (nursery connection). The party was in the gardens of the party boys house. Seems the parents of the party boy used the opportunity to have an adult party too so the hot tub was switched on and the champagne was flowing. A magician had been employed for an hour to entertain the kids and a DJ was also set up. It was a beautiful warm summer day so all entertaining was done in the garden. I initially thought 'oo this could be nice!' but no...

On closer observation, the hosts and their friends must have been drinking steadily prior to the start of the kids party as the Mum was pretty incoherent and all adults were in/out the hot tub, dancing around the garden to the booming DJ music; it was SO loud. The poor magician was trying hard to wrangle thirty 3-4 year olds and was looking in desperation for a sober adult so I phoned my DH and said he needed to come rescue us! 😂by the time he turned up (45 mins or so), the adults were all carted (still can't be sure if there wasn't sex going on in the hot tub at one stage...) the magician had packed up and left and the neighbours had called the police because of the noise!!

That is actually pretty harsh of them. Surely any parent knows that 4 year-olds can say embarrassing thing sometimes! And that an adult's idea of what constitutes "lovely food" rarely lines up with that of a 4 year-old. I think they were quite unkind to be honest (assuming you apologised and told her that's not a polite thing to say).

This doesnt surprise me TBH. Ive witnessed a few (covid) dog owners who think walking their animal (i refuse to call them pets as they are not treated like such) is beneath them. Let the dog out for a shit 2 or 3 times per day and never clear it up. That soon becomes hundreds of shits all over the place. Its not the dogs fault.

Ive seen households have to tell the children to stay indoors whilst they cut the grass in the back garden because there is flying dog shit all over the place. One of our neighbours (not a neighbour but near enough) spent an entire evening shovelling dog shit because one of his neighbours reported him to social housing.

If you cant walk your dog 2-3 times per day you are abusing your dog. I dont care if its 2 mins, 5 mins, 15 mins, you should walk your dog, pick up its shit and give the animal some dignity.

Oh and yes, this household has a young child and has friends over to play in the summer. I imagine they often end up covered in dogshit

Picked up my daughter and her friend form Pre school. As it was a sunny day and the friend was complaining of a headache we decided to stop pat the park first to blow off the cobwebs. After a few minutes the friend came up to me and said she didn't feel well so I told her to sit on the bench while I got my baby out of the swing. My daughter went and sat with her then I heard screaming and my daughter ran over to me crying. Her friend had projectile vomited all over herself and my daughter's leg! I have emetophobia so went into panic mode. Thankfully the mum (also a close friend) lived 30 seconds from the park, so I walked her home to her mum, then took my kid home and bleached them both from head to toe! (read bathed).
Just glad she did it at the park and not in my house!

Sorry,,but that did make me laugh!

Not exactly a playdate as it was unplanned and we didn't even know the child!

Took DD who was around 4 at the time and infant DS to a farm park. She started playing with a little boy a couple of years older on one of the play structures, I got a brief wave from two women who appeared to be mum and grandma.
We moved on from that area....boy followed....went to the strawberry picking....boy followed....to another play park....boy followed.

At this point Mum and Grandma have disappeared so I said to him do you know where mummy is as we're going to have lunch now so DD can't play. Obviously used to this he says oh it's ok I'll wait for her, I said no you need to go find your mum. He just moved a few feet away to sit and watch us eat so I felt obligated to offer him some.

Head to the petting zoo with him still in tow, don't even know his name, adults still nowhere to be found.

This went on for the entire 3 hours we were there, no one ever came looking for him. Eventually it came time for us to leave so I went to a member of staff and said sorry but this child has followed us around all day, he isn't with us, we don't know where his parents are but we need to go home now so I suggest you make an announcement and if they don't appear to claim him you need to call the police.

A child lured my elderly dog over with a pizza crust and then smacked her in the face.

I had this child back at her own house in about 10 minutes.

Think the child was probably neurodiverse. However, their mother should have interrupted after a few minutes.

Well done - I’m a fan of ‘consequences’ clearly linked to behaviour!

A mum stayed the whole (first) playdate, “to check” as she did not know me. Fine but instead of small talk, she stayed on her phone, the while time!!
fine by me - you are the weirdo! Not sure i want my DC go to your house now!

another mum, stayed the whole of the first playdate. It was a new mum, her DC had started in our school a week ago and got on really well with my DC who then invited her DC. She did talk to me (!!!), but 1) i am not british and 2) we dont have TV and while we were chatting, i found out she was actually a TV celebrity! I felt like i had to apologise that i didnt have a TV and that i had not realsied she was a celebrity. Quite awkward! But she was really nice and put me at ease. She must have decided we were ok enough as a family as the DCs are still friends 8 years later….

a mum was meant to host a playdate afterschool. I was home and about 4pm school called me to pick up my DC as the mum had forgotten about the playdate and had not pick up my son!! She tried to re-arrange for the following week but i said no (we are still friends and DCs too but it did piss me off)

A birthdays party is a soft play from 2 to 4pm. I came with my DC at 4pm just as everyone was leaving because i had put the wrong time in my diary!!!

i have 3 DCs so lots of stories but nothing too awful thankfully!!

We had a similar experience when meeting up with two of DS school friends at a Christmas funfair. I was excited on their behalf thinking that they would have the time of their lives and make loads of memories but the other children didn't seem that interested. They didn't want to go on anything or do anything or eat anything. They just stood there being cold or tired or whatever. It was bloody miserable.

I've had 2 situations.

The first was my 15 year old DD had a birthday party at home. She invited some friends (girls and boys). It was on a Saturday afternoon, and they were just going to do karaoke and have a dance/sing-a-long.
I provided food & soft drinks (mocktails).
Within 45 minutes of the party starting, a boy who had clearly smuggled in some alcohol from his parents house vomited all over the kitchen. It was everywhere - the sides, cupboards, floor etc.
I called his parents to come and pick him up - but they were out at the pub for a football game and refused. I told them he was incredibly drunk and needed to go home and sober up and he wasn't staying in my house. They sent his younger sister (13) to come and collect him and take him home. I ended up sending my eldest (18) with her to help him walk and get home.

The second was with a neighbours son. My neighbour isn't English and has a non-verbal Daughter. Her husband was an arse, and she had finally managed to divorce him - I'd been helping her a lot. I didn't realise she also had a son who is the same age as mine, as he had been living in her home country with her husbands parents and she only got to see him once a year.
Anyway, son (then age 8) had come to live with her after the divorce. He was fluent in both English and their native language. We had all gone to the park together over the summer and the boys played happily together - she wanted her son to have friends etc.
One day I invited him over to play as it was raining. Him and my son had gone upstairs to his room. After 10 minutes I hear almighty crashing and banging - and run upstairs to see this boy picking up and throwing all DS's Lego models on the floor. We're talking the big ones that cost ££ and take all day to build.
My DS was in tears begging him to stop but he was on a rampage. I firmly told him that wasn't acceptable and he needed to go home now - so off we went back to his house. I explained what happened to my neighbour, and she was very apologetic but didn't tell him off at all. 5 minutes later he's off at the park on his own playing.
He's now an absolute nightmare on our development - think destruction, vandalism and no care for anyone.

Very cathartic thread, OP - thanks! Even if for me it was a while ago…

On the topic of differences in wealth/houses etc, ther was a vey well-off mum who corralled the mums and children in her kitchen when it was her turn for a toddler meet-up. Now, her kitchen was huge and in itself, it wasn’t a bad idea - I’m not criticising this mum. But when some of the mums moaned later, one of the group said “I don’t blame her - shes got a beautiful home. It’s not as though they’d be trashing a council house, is it?’

We lived in a council house at the time. You certainly meet ALL kinds of people when you have kids!😁

I'd not be sending him back there and I'd not have them round at mine.

At 5, a mum from DS‘ kindergarten class asked me to watch her son for 2 hours as she had an appointment. The boys weren’t friends, but I figured it would help out this lady who didn’t have family support. DS saw it pragmatically: ‘yes, he can come round if his mummy needs that’.

Turned out her son absolutely hated mine and refused to say a single word to him. Even worse, if my son was within 2 metres of him this kid would scream at the top of his lungs in a fabulous old lady voice: ‘must that child be here? What can you do with a child like that?’

I had to keep them separated, explaining to my son that he had done nothing wrong. At 5, the guest needed constant supervision. He destroyed a complex game set up my son had created with Playmobil by walking over it several times. DH finished work early to help out as the parents just weren’t contactable. It was raining and bitterly cold, so going outside wasn’t an option.

The mum didn’t pick her child up until 8pm, and didn’t answer her phone.

We spent a lot of time over the following week reassuring DS he’d done nothing wrong. He hadn’t, he even shared his toys and parents without a murmur.

When she asked again for childcare 3 years later as ‘she trusts me as a mum’, I wrote her exactly what had happened last time and that it wasn’t in her son’s best interests to place him somewhere he was clearly so unhappy.

She’s never asked again.

Oh I've just had flashbacks! I was reading this thread and thinking that I didn't remember my lot having any disasters (that I knew of or was told of) but then it all came back to me...

DS1 (eldest of five) had two brothers round to play after school. They would have been about eight and the younger brother five. I can't for the life of me remember where my other kids were, because I only remember the three of them - my others (aged four and down) were probably stunned into silence.

I cooked spag bol and left them in the living room to eat, having been playing in the garden for a while. I was in the kitchen next door (probably feeding the other, stunned, kids). When I popped my head in to see how they were doing, they'd been throwing spaghetti at the ceiling. Some of it was still stuck there, the rest was on the floor.

After the boys had been picked up, I found that they'd also been swinging on my washing line and had broken it (we had half an acre with climbing frame, slides, trees, plenty of other things to do).

My kids are now in their thirties and every time I pass the house that these two brothers used to live in, I give an inward snarl. I also learned a valuable lesson about ALWAYS keeping visiting children in my eyeline after that day.

I had a sad one (for me), I was invited to the house of a friend of my NCT friend for a group playdate with our babies, there were maybe 7 mums there, some I knew some I didn't. I'd never met the host but she was someone who hosted a lot, kind of the centre of the social circle. Within 10 minutes of being there I knocked over a glass of lemonade, it went over the table and floor, I felt so embarrassed and cursed myself internally but I dealt with it in what I thought was a pretty normal way, cleaned up the mess, apologised to the host, carried on with the playdate, thought it was okay. I'm normally pretty sociable and alright at making friends so I didn't think that much of it.

But the host was obviously furious, never spoke to me again or invited me to any of her many meet ups and that meant I was excluded from the NCT group too, I hardly saw any of them ever again.

This is pretty much what sent to the mother. She replied saying the boys had been out playing on some go cart things they have and ds must have driven through some poo and sprayed it up his back. I guess that makes sense but how he got it on his shoes and trousers is beyond me. It seems to have happened shortly before he was collected so he didn't have chance to spread it through the friends house. What luck!

He probably was, but I'm autistic/adhd and so are both of my children..... and I still don't let them hyper focus on adults and talk at them like that 😅

I still get annoyed at the mum when I think back 😅

My DD hyper focuses and has a special interest, but I rein her in 😅

Pure neglect

You could smell their house from down the street

Their carpets where an inch thick with dirt,filth,dog shit and God knows what else

The surfaces where the same,so where the walls and ceilings,everything was black with dirt (i once saw a child vomit on the kitchen floor and it was still there 3 weeks later)

I really wish I was joking when I say they where just given sweets/crisps to eat and had never heard of salad or fruit-they simply didnt know what a vegetable was (the child in question had to have every tooth taken out by the time he was 7)

Both parents blamed each other for their shit parenting (they where as bad as each other,although dad was the slighty 'better' parent but it was a low bar,shed sit smiling at you while ignoring him and dad would do the 'pack it in',get ignored and give up) and the kids paid the price

(thankfully ss where involved and did remove the children but took an age to do it)

His younger siblings where 'fine' (as in not 'naughty',but that was pure luck) but he had 'something' about him that I couldn't put into words (I once commented that 'he will kill someone one day' and I still feel awful-who says that about a young child?)

Fast forward 12 years and he murdered her boyfriend before walking away laughing (my dd happened to be walking home that day and saw him,covered in blood and laughing before walking away from her,he was caught a street away because hed walked into a taxi rank and started bragging)

The court said that he had a personality disorder and I can't disagree but it's a bloody waste of a young life

If he hadn't have come from such neglect,maybe he wouldn't have done it,we will never know

Not quite a playdate but me and DH were out. DD's nanny was babysitting DD and DS. DS was about 10 at the time and we had a neighbour who was a bit older but used to spend quite a bit of time with DS at ours or theirs so I agreed (with the nanny's agreement) that he could also be there for a sleepover.

She rang me about 2 hours in to say that this boy was behaving extraordinarily badly - rude, lots of shouting etc and the final straw came when apparentl yhe came into the kitchen and started demanding food and going through our cupboards.

We had NEVER had this from him but we had picked up a few signals that we'd been keeping an eye on that he was a bit poncy/snobby/racist - in that insecure way that is somehow even worse?

we had to call his mum and tell her to collect him and apologise profusely to our nanny.