How often does your child have play-dates? (boy, activities, playing)
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My six year old daughter has a few neighborhood friends that get together regularly (after school and or on the weekends). She also has a few friends from Kindergarten. She may see them maybe 1x or 2x a month. My son is twelve. He is a boyscout and so most of his outings are boyscout activities.
As toddlers my kids would get together with friends maybe once a week. In elementary school there was a combination of playing outside with the neighborhood kids and getting together with friends from school. Although other parents on this board gasp with fright my kids did a lot of unsupervised playing in the neighborhood when they were in 3rd-5th grade.
My kids went to a charter school for elementary so the kids lived all over the place. They got together on weekends but not usually after school, except on Fridays. There were plenty of kids in the neighborhood though.
My 12 year old's friends from the charter school are now in 3 different middle schools and they are still a pretty tight group. My son sees those friends every few weeks. In middle school they really make their own plans and just have the adults plan drop off/pick up. My son has practice 3 nights a week so most of his social time comes on the weekend, although sometimes he may have someone over on Friday afternoons.
In high school my kids see their friends after school a few times a week. Of course HS kids will hang out together for just a little while sometimes. My oldest drives so kids are always coming and going at my house. My middle does not drive so take him to friends houses or have visitors most Fridays and Sundays.
I just wanted to add that by 8th grade, my house was a train station---kids coming and going constantly. It wasn't uncommon to have six or more kids sleeping over all at once.
In my neighborhood, children my daughter's age cannot really play whenever they want. Parents work, parents are separated, parents don't like being outdoors, parents have their own family that they want their kids spending time with.
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We also run into problems with this.
DS is 4 and in preschool/daycare all day M-F
DD is 7 and in private school with aftercare at the school.
For non-neighborhood kids,
DS has had 1 playdate total.
DD has a playdate about once every 3 months
Playing with neighborhood kids, once or twice a month. A little more frequently in the summer. I wish this was more but we are pretty much limited to weekends esp. during the school year and weekends can get so busy for everyone. The elementary school kids in our neighborhood go to 6 or 7 different schools so that doesn't help either.
I don't really think my son needs playdates after playing in daycare. My daughter's aftercare is all free play with a 30-45 min break for homework, so although I would like her to have more playdates and play with the neighborhood kids more, I feel good about her having a daily opportunity for unstructured play with friends.
My son - about to be 8 - has a couple of scheduled play dates a month, but tuesday-friday after school most of his friends play for between 45 minutes to an our and a half on the playground outside school. We parents sit in the shade - when it is hot - or in the sun - when it is cool - and chat. It works out rather well. This work because the school is a neighborhood school and is no more than a few blocks from any of us.
If we didn't do this I am sure he would have many more playdates. In the summer of course he will have a couple a week.
When my kids were younger the only time they actually had organized "playdates" (I still find that term odd) is when a child didn't live close enough to just go out and play with. There were kids in the neighborhood and honeslty, everyone just went outside and played. They played in our yard or house, or someone else's yard or house, they rode bikes, they went to the park....it was just called "playing"...and it happened all the time.
Yes, I agree with you, my kids did the same thing, they played outside rode bikes, skated, skate boarded.....who needed a "play date"
.....I don't like the term "play date" either is seems somewhat ridiculous........:c onfused:
Yes, I agree with you, my kids did the same thing, they played outside rode bikes, skated, skate boarded.....who needed a "play date"
.....I don't like the term "play date" either is seems somewhat ridiculous........:c onfused:
The closest I had to a playdate was going with my mom to one of her friends who happend to have children other than that I never interacted with other kids until I started kindergarten. The closest my children ever came had was me or my ex calling so and so's mom and making sure it was ok to come over/ have them over.
The closest I had to a playdate was going with my mom to one of her friends who happend to have children
Eeehhh...the good ol' days, huh?
When the couple/marriage was at the center of the family and children were the natural satellites...when children befriended the children of parents' friends instead of mothers feeling pressured to befriend other children's mothers (even if they hardly have anything in common).
Yes, I grew up with the same thing. My friends were from school (and implicitly neighborhood) and I also had a few very close friends who were the children of my parents' close friends. They still are to this day and I look forward to meeting them in a few weeks when we fly overseas...in a place where my parents built a house fence to fence (left and right) with their life-long friends. Talk about "enmeshed".
But our parents were friends first - and THEN we became friends because of that. It was the CHICKEN first, then us, EGGS followed.
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