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Hosting children in your home

3 replies

Ifthisiswheretheworldisheadingcountmeout · 24/06/2024 11:01

How do you host other children in your home? I.e. if your child has their own seat, or a special cup, or precious toys and then you have other children over who want to sit in that seat/use that cup/play with those toys etc. Do you say yes to the guest or your own child? No judgment, just looking for some examples of how people handle things. For reference my children are 5 & 3.

We tend to put toys that they'd prefer not to share away before a playdate happens, and try not to bring anything out which there may be an argument about (i.e. they both have plates which they painted themselves which I know they'd be sad to see someone else using so I just leave them in the cupboard when we have guests and we use the normal plates). Otherwise there's a level of 'you have a guest so it's polite to let them play with your things/be served first at dinner, have the first choice of ice lolly' etc. However as the kids are getting older (basically since we hit school) this seems to be producing a high level of entitlement from the guests and after a few hours I can tell my children are really at their limit of how much compromise they can take. They still feel really quite little so trying to have reasonable expectations. Wondering if I could be handling it better, or what others do.

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
FlabMonsterIsDietingAgain · 24/06/2024 11:05

Anything really important is put away, everything else is up for sharing and that's made clear to DD before the play date and during if needed.

She is given the option and time beforehand to identify the things she's not wanting to share and to put them away.

Ifthisiswheretheworldisheadingcountmeout · 25/06/2024 13:51

Thanks, sounds similar to what we're doing with special toys. But how do you then handle if the guests are coming over and insisting they get the first play with x toy, dibs on seating etc? Seems to be happening with nearly everyone who comes to play so I'm assuming it's quite a normal thing for this age (usually kids between age 4 and 7). My two are so good at sharing, but towards the end of a play date (I try to keep them to about 2 hours as that's generally our limit) you can really see they're struggling with constantly being told 'I'm the guest so I want a go'. Often I'm the only grown up present so I either have my child being super upset because they've reached their limit, or the child who's come to play being distraught because they've been made to share more fairly. Blooming minefield.

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WYorkshireRose · 25/06/2024 13:58

This is why I don't like play dates for that age group. Older, fine, they can sort themselves out. Young enough that the parent stays, likewise fine.

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