Playdate Spinoff

How often does your DC host or go on playdates? How old is your child and do they initiate them?

Are there other factors that play into it? You work full-time and weekends are for family time, etc. Is your neighborhood full of kids and your house is a revolving door.

My DC is 7 and I'm trying to gauge if I should push the issue more. I work full time and my weekends are for family time and getting my life re-organized from our crazy weeks!

Message edited 9/22/2018 5:17:23 PM.

Playdate Spinoff

DS is the same age. I work full-time and weekends are crazy, so honestly it's like once a month. He goes to Cub Scouts during the week.

Playdate Spinoff

You didn't give enough choices in the poll. But, it's probably at most once every 2 or 3 weeks. My daughter is 10 and my husband and I work full time.

Re: Playdate Spinoff

My choice is not up there.
Once a month or so....

Re: Playdate Spinoff

It's hard for me to say.

We have a very active block with a lot of kids the same age on it, mostly boys. So my DS plays with the neighbor kids almost daily (after school, weekends here and there). It's not a planned thing, just like "oh, so and so is out riding his bike, I'm going out, too." Or a bunch of kids play wiffle ball for an hour on someone's lawn. Or in bad weather or cold months, the neighbor kids will go over each other's houses (including mine) to play. The doorbell is always ringing, lots of impromptu "play dates."

My DS is also in a ton of sports - travel baseball, lacrosse, flag football, basketball - with lots of friends on his teams. So we see friends a lot on weekends and evenings. And sometimes someone will issue an invitation to DS to come over after a game and play or swim, or we will go out to dinner after sports with another family.

I'm friendly with a lot of DS's friends' moms, so we will often say "let's meet up at the school playground" or "let's go to the beach" on a day off. We shared a beach cabana with families whose kids are DS's friends.

It's much less common for someone to call me up and say "would DS like to come over and play next Tuesday?" It's usually not that formal/planned out. But nevertheless, I feel like he is with friends a lot.

My DS is 9, in 4th grade.

Message edited 9/22/2018 6:22:17 PM.

Playdate Spinoff

An actual playdate where my DD is invited over or we invite kids over...maybe a couple times a month. But she sees her friends at birthday parties, which there are usually a couple a month too. It’s hard now because they all have activities after school, but they all don’t fall on the same day. So if my DD is free one afternoon after school, her friends may not be.

Re: Playdate Spinoff

Message edited 9/22/2018 8:19:04 PM.

Playdate Spinoff

More than never but less than once a week. More like once a month.

Playdate Spinoff

my DS is also 7- just started 2nd grade. he talks about friends from school, but never really gets invited on play dates, and i don't do a great job initiating them either. i think because like you said everybody is busy. even as a SAHM i find after school and weekends are for family stuff... DS does cub scouts a couple times a month, and he does a boys "gymnastics" class once a week where theres a couple boys from his class. plus his school does some after school clubs and i usually sign him up for a few weeks of one of those. so he does get in a little bit of time with other kids LOL
our neighborhood has a bunch of kids, but they're all on a different street, so they have their own thing going without DS. Our street is all older people, so unfortunately is really rare that the other kids stop by and ask him to ride his bike or whatever... so our playdates are usually planned out, and like once or twice a month when he has a day off school or something. it is what it is

Playdate Spinoff

If meeting up at a playground or library counts as a playdate, then I would say it's about a couple times a month, more during the summer. But if we're only talking about going to a friend's house or a friend coming to our house, that is much less frequent, like once a month or less. It's much easier for me to send out a group text to her favorite friends' moms to see if anyone wants to meet up somewhere to play for a little while, rather than invite them over and have to clean, host, make sure their kids aren't destroying my house, etc. Dd also is very busy with several extracurricular activities and we like to reserve DH's days off for family time.

Re: Playdate Spinoff

Playdate Spinoff

Maybe once or twice a month.

My son is almost 10 and we don't have many kids his age on our street. He has his friends at school and then he has his friends from basketball. Any playdates he has is only because my husband makes it happen and that is because he became friends with the kids's dad. My husband is very sociable where as I'm the anti social one.

Message edited 9/23/2018 4:31:22 PM.

Playdate Spinoff

Hardly. When my kids were younger we did play dates. Now that everyone is in school, the only time available is during school breaks or holidays. Weekdays we have school and after school activities. Weekends are for family time because my dh is at work till 11 or later during the week.

Re: Playdate Spinoff

Maybe 1 - 2 times per week or less depending on the time of year.
I have 2 boys ages 9 and 7.
My 9 year old has 3 other best friends. All the boys are athletic and they hang out a lot. They are on the same soccer team as well and basketball.
We also have a very active block with lots of kids so on some nice weekends after soccer the kids will play on the street (we live in a cul-de-sac) and ride together or just hang out.

We are pretty friendly with a few families with kids the same ages so will do dinners together and trips. We go on vacations with another family a lot as well.

My 7 year old isn't as much into sports, but he plays with his best friend often bc I'm close with the mom and he has a lot of girl friends he hangs out with. We are pretty busy, but we also like to have fun so will do dinner get-togethers often.
I work from home so it does make it easier.