I don’t know what to tell you. My kid’s always made their own plans and just told me when and where to drop them off (at the last minute, of course).
The classic question which you seem never to have heard is “Can Timmy come out and play?” uttered since time began by kids. And I’m not a Boomer, either. In my neighborhood were three kids roughly my age, and two of those moved away when I was about 10. But I still knew how to go find kids to play with.
To the OP - how are you setting up the playdate with the other parents? It works much better if you’ve got a specific date & time to suggest when you make the call, rather than just “Oh, we should get the kids together.”
And by 7, my kids playdates were always dropoffs, not parents sticking around. True, being the host for such isn’t quite as convenient as doing the dropoff, but you can always prep the kids (carefully) to set up the next playdate when the other parents come for the pickup - “Mom, I had so much fun! Can Timmy come over to our house tomorrow?” and use that as a basis to set up the next playdate right then and there, preferably at Timmy’s house.
Uh…no. That’s not the way it worked. It was more or less a matter of knocking on the door/ringing the doorbell, and when the door was answered, saying to the parent who answered, “Hi, I’m x…can y come out to play?” or “Hi, is y home?”
Not my problem, but I guess this explains why your generation doesn’t know how to socialize, and seems to be raising a crop of kids who know even less about how to socialize. However, I still find it laughably funny that this kid can’t make friends among the kids who live on the block, but then again, that’s just evidence of how much of a social misfit he is, I guess. I mean, surely there are other kids, around, whether we’re talking city, country, or suburbs, even.
Again, there are no other neighbourhood kids around? I find that hard to believe. I went to a different school than most of the kids on my block, but I was still able to make friends with them.
Oh, I read it, and if that’s what our society has come to, then it’s all rather sad, isn’t it?
You mean the part where our society has decided that children require supervision, and it’s obnoxious to foist responsibility for supervising your children onto their friend’s unwitting parents without at least a “Hey, you mind if Timmy comes over?”
I’m gonna use small words here. This isn’t about Timmy’s ability to make friends. This is about arranging activities for Timmy. You don’t just send your seven year old out the door and say “Hey kid, find sumthin’ ta do”.
Children require some degree of supervision, sure, but that’s not a matter of being overbearing to the point where you feel you have to control all aspects of their existence, including who they can play with and when they can do so.
Worked for us. Now that I’m a parent I’ll admit that just kicking your kid out the door and telling them to be home before dark is ( for some reason ) no longer acceptable. But seriously, at 7 they can make their own plans.
For sure.
But then again, my mother always preferred that I check in by telephone occasioanlly throughout the day, just to keep her apprised of what I was up to, and who I was with if this was different from what was originally planned when I first went out.
Imagine, I could do this in an era of no cell phones, even. Go figure.
You know, I live in the city, and no way am I just pushing a seven year old out the door and leaving it up to God, and I’ve gotta tell you, I am far from a hovering kind of parent. Most of my friends live in some level of suburban sprawl, and their kids friends are NOT within walking distance.
When I was a kid, I lived in an actual neighborhood, with other kids. Most people simply don’t anymore. Where is this magical Mayberry where you all live that you’re comfortable with a seven year old going off on his own?
What did you do if you had a friend in school who you wanted to hang out with outside of school, who lived too far away for you to get there by yourself? That’s one thing playdates are for. My kids play with the neighborhood kids, sure, but they also want to see their school friends too, and they live too far away to walk or bike there.
Right outside my door.
But then again, I was always the kind who said to the kids, “Go out and play with whoever’s out there.”, or “Go knock on Y’s door and see if they want to play soccer at the field across the street.”
I guess I never saw the idea of kids using the internet or spending the day playing video games to be anything productive. Whenever a new family moved onto the block, I made it a point to go and meet them, and take the kids with me so they could meet their kids.
In my generation, it was called “meeting the new neighbours”.
I still don’t think you’re understanding. We don’t pick her friends…she does! If we have to drive her, then yes we do get to decide when she can play with them. If it’s the neighborhood kids* then not so much so long as someone is around to keep an eye/ear on them. We only have one full time kid her age on the block; we have another kid her age who is here half-time (divorced parents). There are a couple of kids between the ages of 2-3 and one 15 year old so they are outside her range. Other than that, folks on our block either don’t have kids yet or have grown children.
*With that said, we still do decide (for whatever reason) when she gets to play. Sometimes she doesn’t get to play because of the time, consequences of behavior etc.
Sigh. People who think kids should be on the internet all day don’t bother to make playdates for them. Don’t let that distract you from your “the world’s gone to hell” rant, though.
Damn! You had a telephone on your bike?!? Lucky!
'scuse me? Who do you think invented social networking? My generation. Who started texting? My generation. Who grew up on message boards like this one? My generation.
Oh, but that’s right, it’s not face to face, so it doesn’t count. There aren’t real people on the other side of that technology. They’re not interacting with their friends via text messaging. Thus they know nothing about socializing.
“Those kids today! I tell ya, they don’t know how to socialize! They just spend all day talking to their friends! Bah!” You could have just posted “I’m old” and we all could’ve surmised the rest of your posts from that. Why’d you waste your time typing it out?
And that’s why you don’t get it and probably never will. What don’t you understand about “We’re not baby boomers”? There are no kids.
Your Mom sounds like a control freak.
Most people these days don’t live in a suburb full of stay-at-home moms. Back in the day I could be pretty sure that if I wandered from house to house I could find at least some of my friends at home.
But my kids have it different. Most of their friends come from families where both parents work. So you can never be sure who’s at home, and who’s off at some afterschool program. And even if a few kids ARE at home with their moms after school, those of us who are working are sensitive about asking stay-at-home parents to mind our kids day after day when we can’t reciprocate.
So we call in advance to make sure my kids’ friends are around before letting them go over. And sometimes, because people’s schedules are complicated, it may take a couple of days before it can happen. That’s all a playdate is. My kids still pick their own friends. We just help with logistics.
Well, considering that both my parents worked, I just contended myself with playing with the kids on my block until I was old enough to go and hangout with my schoolmates.
When we were old enough, we usually met each other halfway, or even at school, which had a big enough playground. What the hell, we were there five days a week during the school year anyway.
Exactly. In the neighborhood where I grew up, the hilly terrain made bicycles next to useless, and apart from a couple, all my friends lived too far away to walk. That means Parent A had to drive Kid A to Parent B’s house, having previously arranged with Parent B to ensure that it was OK, because Parent B had to be there. After the kids played, then hopefully Parent B would drive Kid A back to A’s house, in a spirit of cooperation and reciprocation. Remember here, we’re talking here about early primary school ages, and not older kids. When we got a little older, then Parent B. didn’t necessarily have to be there but we still had to be driven by our parents, until the older kids in the gang began to get their own licenses and cars. Even then, the younger siblings still had to be driven by someone, all the way through early high school. As for the younger children, we didn’t call them play dates in 1965, but the principle was the same.
Moderator note: So in conclusion, In Winnipeg, the pussy-calling is really not called for here. The same goes for suggesting that the OP’s kid is a sissy or whatever you want to call it. Stop it, now.