Play dates with girls.....

oh cripes.

the kids don't have bicyles?

would they keel over from having to walk a couple of miles?

Isn't that what kids do? Bike and walk and run around all day?

Don't kids hop on their bikes and pedal over to the park, or the beach, to the school yard and just naturally meet up there?

I'm not sure I agree soz.

I admit -- I skipped a whole generation of childraising. I'm closer to the age of Mo's bio-grandparents than his bio-parents; my sister, who is only a few years older than me has two grandkids.

But my mom worked and she NEVER had time to arrange for us to play elsewhere, much less take us there, much less run us around to organized activities. Neither did any of my friends moms who worked, which was nearly all of them. If I, or they, wanted to go anywhere we walked or rode our bikes.

My neighborhood is populated by stay at home and work at home moms and dads and even the weekends are all about playdates.

I do think fear, and by fear I mean the media, plays a HUGE part in the playdateness of modern life. Kids, like dogs, are expected to be leashed. Most of the kids in Mo's class aren't allowed to even cross the street by themselves.

I agree about fear.

I'm not talking so much about transportation as spontaneous (nonscheduled) play. Going out the door, seeing kids, playing with them.

My mom worked too but that was very unusual in my neighborhood. There were always stay-at-home moms to "anchor" things -- if there was a piercing scream when someone got hurt, an adult would come running out to check.

One of those moms watched me after school, so I was part of that crew, even though my parents worked.

Kids often just aren't HOME because their parents are working. They're in childcare, and unavailable for play.

Forgot to say:

I think the fear is therefore directly related to the fact that there are fewer "anchors" around than there used to be. Not sure about your neighborhood but in general, there are way more families where both parents work, which means fewer daytime anchors, which means (rationally or not) that people get more fearful about letting their kids roam freely (as they pass empty house after empty house).

Back in the day, my time of play in a neighborhood being 1950-55 (I say, while all yawn) I'm not sure all that many more mothers were home in my homunculus of a neighborhood. They might have been out shopping, or off directing a choir, or sewing in a back room and not paying any attention..

I don't remember mothers out on the street, or that we ran to them (well, hardly ever). We roamed many blocks away. I remember specifically working the rebar in a neighborhood of housing construction that just stopped, maybe fifteen/twenty blocks away, so that we could explore down in the concrete foundation areas. No parents far or near knew what we were up to.

Hmm, was that the start of my liking for architecture?

Ah, basement areas, not just a few feet down.

I see this thing in India too (at least in the big city I live in...).
They have playdates here too...and well...children are so much like "us" now...they expect a phone call before their friend comes...

My dad never took me anywhere and I didn't have a bicycle till I was 14. As chai said, we just walked a LOT, despite the hot sun or rain. I went to the library, music classes, swimming classes and played in the park or on the streets.
And all this wasn;t bad - that was the fun part of being a child. Having no set plans.

And we just made friends with anyone...
Today's kids, I notice, mingle only with people of their kind, their background...
I had rich friends (who had pocket money and i didn't), really really poor kids as friends, dumb friends, smart ones, those who didn't know any language that I did...

There is so much formality and scheduling now...it scares me.

Btw, all this was in the 1980's..

I have three adult children and 5 grandchildren. My husband taught middle school - ages 12 - 15 for 35 years. He has lots of stories to tell.

I ran an outreach center for families in need for 10 years. If that's not enough "insight", then i don't know what is.

Encourage groups of kids "hanging out " together. I would not set up a one on one relationship at this age. (opposite sex)

Group interaction is the best at this age.

I definitely agree with everyone here that the "go out door, play with other kids who are there" model is the best one. But if the kids aren't there? Then what?

'Cause that's what we're faced with. If sozlet just hangs out in the vicinity of the house, in plain sight, nothing happens (we've tried it many times). If sozlet goes and knocks on the doors of likely playmates, they're not home. If sozlet goes to the park, that sometimes works, and we do that. But it often doesn't work. (Nobody there, mostly.)

And she has FRIENDS from school she wants to see, as well, and playdates are just the best solution to that problem and the others mentioned above.

She does have a wide variety of friends -- rich, poor, those who don't speak English (at least when they met, now he speaks a lot more), etc. But yeah, they get together in pre-arranged ways, most of the time.

There just aren't that many other options. AND, I don't think it's that nefarious.

Once they get together (in pairs or in groups) they have free reign, and just do whatever. I don't watch over them or give them activities or otherwise schedule their time once they're here. They just goof around in patented kid fashion.

I do struggle with the free range kids part, when it comes to venturing further than our block. I think the kid's ready for a lot more than her dad does, and we have an ongoing debate about that. I talk to parents of her friends about what they let their kids do, and they tend to be more in line with my husband. But I think we're getting closer and closer to the age where everyone's comfortable with a lot more freedom. Older kids (about 10 and up) are very free range here, riding bikes and meandering around in unescorted packs, and I'm definitely looking forward to that.

I agree, plus there is a factor of convenience here too. I don't want kids just
showing up at my house without invitation, as it is not always convenient to
entertain them. There is homework to be done, and other activities that my
kid might be engaged in, and having kids show up unannounced might not suit
me or my kid.

We live in a gated community with lots of parks and canyon forests where
kids can roam freely and my daughter did that with her friends, but her friends
all had these "play dates" arranged prior to it. It's part of life nowadays.

I have entered a different stage altogether now: going to the mall alone with
friends! I haven't mastered that one yet! I do allow her to go with her friends
into our little village after school and they hang out at Starbucks or walk around the village and beach, but that's as far as I go - for now!

Yeah, I know what you mean. I do wish that there was more spontaneous kid play around here, kids wandering around and knocking on doors and doing stuff with no pre-planning involved. But... A friend of sozlet's is in an area with a critical mass of at-home parents and kids around her (the friend's) age, and there is a lot of that kind of informal stuff. I said to the mom that they were lucky and she looked at me like I was insane.

Evidently these kids just barge in at all hours -- I think they keep the door unlocked but also even if they just answer the door, these kids just push right past -- "where's K?" -- and raid her fridge and freezer. She told a story of starting to make dinner and realizing that major ingredients were mysteriously gone since she went shopping that afternoon. They stay long past their welcome and generally drive her crazy.

The playdate thing is a necessity for me. There is only one other child my kids ages within a mile. The other kids in the neighborhood are toddlers and under. They do play with this other child regularly without setting up playdates " knocking on each others doors, etc., but he is the only one.

My girls also attend a private school so none of their classmates are nearby. To play with them, we have to set up a time to go over or have them come over our house. Besides setting this up " the play is the same as if the child lived in the neighborhood " no planned type of play.

For the question of the kids don’t have bikes " my 6 year old is not going to ride a bike 5 miles alone on a heavily trafficked area. But I don’t think that has changed as my parents wouldn’t allow it either.

This was my house growing up! I loved it and I loved my parents for letting our house be the place where everyone was welcome. Everyone just came in our back door and straight down to the basement to see who might be hanging out. It was great!

Mom used to complain about everyone gobbling up all the food but I think she liked knowing who our friends were and what we were all up to -- being able to keep tabs without having to watch over us -- more than she missed the food.

I hope my house is like that for Mo and his friends.

I do love the craziness of their house. It's what I think I'd like here -- maybe I wouldn't if it actually happened. Dunno.

My cousin, Norma, had a house like that.
She had 4 children n thay had friends.
She n her husband had a lot of friends too.





David

You're right, soz. I know playdates are necessary today...
I am "friends" with a lot of kids in the apartment, in my extended family and I see that's necessary. Maybe it has a lot to do with the kids themselves or maybe the changing environment...i don't know.

I'm glad sozlet has friends of all kinds. But I wasn't referring to her at all - I speak only from what I see here...At least in India, I see that kids do not have the opportunity to mingle with kids from different social and financial backgrounds (it's not like they don't want to). They play with and go to schools where everyone is like them - financially well-off background, educated parents etc..
Just would like kids to play with whoever, whenever..wherever...