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Original poster

When you were a kid did you go on 'play dates' and was your mum 'a part of the school gate clique'?

68 replies

YuleingFanjo · 17/03/2012 22:18

Inspired by another thread (thread about a thread, sorry) which made me think maybe that's why I don't make friends with all and sundry but rather keep myself to myself and stick to the friends I know well.

I moved around a lot as a child but even when we were settled in one place for longer periods of time I didn't really hang on to friends. I have 2 friends from secondary school who I see infrequently and no friends from any of my primary school.

My parents were never really involved with other parents and I didn't have other kids come to the house to play with me.

OP posts:

SnapSnafu · 17/03/2012 22:48

There was no such thing as "play dates" when I was wee, nor was there a school gate clique, because every child walked home with friends rather than parents. From age 5. Late 1970s. We knocked on neighbours doors and asked if they were coming out to play, or we went in and played. We arranged it, not our parents.

Does that help?

usualsuspect · 17/03/2012 22:50

Nope , no playdates in my day we just played out or played with the neighbourhood kids.

We all went to the same local schools.

BitchyNoMore · 17/03/2012 22:56

why would i need friends? I had sisters to fight with.

Original poster

YuleingFanjo · 17/03/2012 22:57

Wasn't playing with your friends just play dates under another name? As a 70s child myself I do remember playing out but kids do that now don't they? I suppose what scares me the most about being a fairly new mum is the idea that I have to somehow be accepted at the school gate. Does it really matter as much as it seems to if you read mums net?

OP posts:

shesparkles · 17/03/2012 22:59

I didn't have 'play dates' and neither do my kids -they go out to play or they go to a friend's house to play.

What's the actual definition of play date?

Original poster

YuleingFanjo · 17/03/2012 22:59

I mean mums net, no space

OP posts:

usualsuspect · 17/03/2012 23:01

My kids never had play dates either , they had friends round or played out .

They made their own friends I wasn't really involved in their friendships

Beamur · 17/03/2012 23:02

I have no idea who my Mums friends were in the main.
Friends were the local kids in the street, I don't think I saw my school friends out of school until I was old enough to get myself to their houses or vice versa.
Playdates usually consisted of whoever I found playing in the garden (our garden seemed to attract other children) or in the park.

featherbag · 17/03/2012 23:02

Nope, my 5 cousins all lived in walking distance and we all went to the same school, there was no need for play dates as we (my DB and I) were always with our cousins! No schoolgate cliques as my mam and aunties took turns walking us until us older ones could walk the younger ones, don't remember them ever having anything to do with the other mams.

wannaBe · 17/03/2012 23:04

no. I went to boarding school from the age of five so any going to friends' houses involved going home with them for the weekend.

There was none of this not allowing your child to go to the house of someone you didn't know either - if that had been the case I would never have been allowed to have friends.

mrudagawa · 17/03/2012 23:04

We played out every night and all weekend. Nothing was arranged, we just played with anyone who lived nearby. We did live on a coucil estate though. Would like to know what posh children did in the 70s though. Did you just play out? BTW, I will never use the term playdate, it makes my skin crawl.

cece · 17/03/2012 23:05

N o organised by parents playdates. We just used to play with the kids that lived nearby to us.

No idea if there was a clique or whether she was in it. Although she did have a good circle of friends (still does come to that).

TheSecondComing · 17/03/2012 23:05

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

blackoutthesun · 17/03/2012 23:07

nope, i was born in the 80's and we were kicked out but had to be home before it got dark

RitaMorgan · 17/03/2012 23:08

Yes, I don't know about school gate clique but my mum certainly had a group of playground friends and was involved in the playgroup and PTA. Lots of going to friend's houses after school and having friends over.

RitaMorgan · 17/03/2012 23:09

Lots of playing out as well, but I went to school on the other side of town (faith school) so my school friends mostly didn't live near by.

exexpat · 17/03/2012 23:09

I went to play at friends' houses (didn't call it play-dates though) and they were usually children I was at playgroup or school with and whose parents my mother knew socially, often through various other groups (something called Housewives' Register, I think, even though she wasn't a housewife for long, and possibly also some early version of the NCT), not for any particularly cliquey reasons, just because she was a working mother and so didn't get to know the 'school gate mothers'.

Then I moved to the school she taught at and so she knew all the mothers, but in a professional capacity, which could have made things awkward, but actually didn't really seem to matter as far as I could tell.

We lived too far away from either school for me to have friends living locally that I could pop round to play with, and our house wasn't on the kind of road where you could 'play out', so I never had that casual sort of stuff going on.

Bohica · 17/03/2012 23:10

I didn't have pay dates as an 80's child and I don't arrange anything for my children now. The older 2 play out and meet with friends who all end up in our house at dinner time!

AwkwardMary · 17/03/2012 23:12

Nope...I also have only one friend from school but that's because all the rest were blethering idiots.

All of my real friends were made at Uni.

I played alone, out in the street with locals or with my siblings. Even playdates wouldn't have changed the fact that I am rather anti social anyway.

Playdates are a very middle class thing imo. Working class kids play out....middle classes organise play dates...I HATE playdates....I hate them...some kid you dont know comes over and you have to feed/entertain/put up with them for three hours.

I would rather my DDs went out to play but here in middle class land, the children might melt or play with one another or something terrible.... so no kids ever grace the road.

Ragwort · 17/03/2012 23:12

Yes - I went to tea with friends and had 'sleepovers' - although I don't think they were actually called sleepovers in those days. I am turning into my mum as she was very bossy a great organiser and PTA member. I know who her friends were in those days and I was often friends with their children. My two best friends were girls I went to primary school with (we are all in our 50s now ).

Dashi · 17/03/2012 23:12

I was never allowed friends around to play as my Dad was the headteacher at the school I went to, he felt uncomfortable having the kids from school around at his house. Fair enough. Luckily, the school was quite far away, so I had some neighbourhood friends who went to a different school.
There was no schoolgate clique as we all got the bus to school. No planned playdates, just knocking on the doors of neighbours.
Also a child of the 70's

scarletforya · 17/03/2012 23:14

When I was a kid Mothers had nothing to do with the school gates. We walked to school ourselves, it was only around the corner. Well, a couple of corners !! Kids just got on with it. Being dropped off or collected was unheard of!!

As for play dates HA !! Didn't exist. We came and went as we liked and parents didn't get involved!!

That was the seventies and eighties though. Different times.

exexpat · 17/03/2012 23:14

Hmm. Just looked up Housewives' Register - sounds a bit like an early, pre-internet version of Mumsnet: founded in 1960 by an editor of the Guardian Women's page in response to a suggestion that "housebound wives with liberal interests and a desire to remain individuals could form a national register so that whenever one moves, one could contact like-minded friends". Must ask my mother more about it.

Ragwort · 17/03/2012 23:14

exexpat my DM was in the Housewives Register too (think it still exists under a new name) - she recently attended a reunion of her HR friends, they are in their late 70s/80s now .

pictish · 17/03/2012 23:14

Up until I was 8, we lived in a small village where a lot of the parents were friendly with one another, and the kids roamed the village in a group. We didn't do play dates - we were never inside.
At the risk of sounding twee, it really was all hay bales, rope swings and bikes. We even used to play in an old scrapyard!

When I was 8 we moved to a small town, where again I had a lot of freedom, but in those days all the kids did. We were never in.

I think we've changed for the worse in that respect, I have to say.

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