I hate that term "play date"

@Lash,

Lash wrote:

Yeah. Nothing wrong with busy parents arranging an afternoon with a friend...with crazy schedules in the current average American family - you have to be organized....it's the terminology that chafes me...but I may be alone in this. "I've booked Alice a Memorial Day sleepover..." Chai may be a little wistful of moms (or dads) who can stay home, affording their children the luxury of hopping on a bike and tooling over to a friend's house - who would obviously be home, too... beatific summer days, laying safely on the dappled lawn of one of your five best friends on a quiet street in the suburbs...

Oh hell no, I'm not wistful.

Both my parents worked. They had their own business.

I sure didn't have that many beatific suumer days either.

Like you, it's the term (hey, like in the title of this thread!) "play date" that just sounds so self important.

It's been said "we've got to call it something" Confused

What were we calling it before?

Mame brought up the idea (which I agree with, as an observer of life) that children don't seem to get the opportunity to be disappointed as often. Which, I believe can be character building.

I'm not talking about living a life of disappointment. But hey, ya gotta learn to deal with it.

Play date sounds like the parent is over involved with making sure the kid is productively occupied at all times.

Let me tell you what I learned when I was a kid....I learned NOT to ever say in front of my parents "I'm bored" because there weren't kids around, or because they were busy working, couldn't take me somewhere.

I learned saying "I'm bored" quickly got me productively occupied with mowing the lawn, shampooing the carpet, washing the car, etc.

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

I learned saying "I'm bored" quickly got me productively occupied with mowing the lawn, shampooing the carpet, washing the car, etc.

Ah, now that's character building! Wink

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@chai2,

Ha, yeah, it's the same here. Sozlet knows not to say she's bored.

I wrote some sort of "in praise of boredom" essay a while back, I do think it's so important.

At the same time, there's no reason for kids to have little to no contact with friends when that contact is a phone call away. Unstructured hanging-out time with other kids is also extremely important, IMO. Not just school or whatever.

Again, if you're just complaining about the phrase playdate, yeah, it's stupid. Entered the lexicon somehow.

1 Reply

@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

Ha, yeah, it's the same here.
Sozlet knows not to say she's bored.

NO freedom of speech ?

sozobe wrote:

I wrote some sort of "in praise of boredom" essay a while back,
I do think it's so important.

Tell us your point ?

sozobe wrote:

At the same time, there's no reason for kids to have little to no contact with friends when that contact is a phone call away. Unstructured hanging-out time with other kids is also extremely important, IMO.

That has just been natural for 1000s of years.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

sozobe wrote:
Ha, yeah, it's the same here.
Sozlet knows not to say she's bored.
NO freedom of speech ?

She can go ahead and say she's bored. Then we'll say "great, go weed the sideyard."

She does do that stuff just in terms of contributing to the household but she knows that saying "I'm bored" will most likely get her a chore to do. So she finds ways to entertain herself rather than complaining of boredom. Reading, sewing projects, whatever.

David wrote:

sozobe wrote:
I wrote some sort of "in praise of boredom" essay a while back,
I do think it's so important.
Tell us your point ?

My point was that kids need to experience boredom rather than having everything handed to them on a plate. There are many important aspects of rescuing oneself from boredom -- creativity, self-sufficiency, self-esteem, lots of good stuff. I wrote it (I'm not sure if it was anything so formal as an essay, just something I posted here) when she was much littler, and had nothing to do and was complaining about it, and then disappeared for a very long time. I got worried about her and went in search of her and she was in the middle of raptly constructing a very complicated plastic hanger sculpture.

David wrote:

sozobe wrote:
At the same time, there's no reason for kids to have little to no contact with friends when that contact is a phone call away. Unstructured hanging-out time with other kids is also extremely important, IMO.
That has just been natural for 1000s of years.

It's also been natural for thousands of years for people to be in tightly woven social groups with lots of contact with one another. People now have a lot more space, things are not as tightly woven. Phones bridge the gap.

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Okay I've clued in on what bothers me about the term "play date".

It hit me when I heard someone say "play toy" and I thought about how much I hated that -- what other kind of toy is there? All toys are made for playing.

What kind of date is a preschooler going to have if not a "play date"?

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@boomerang,

A hot one, obviously.

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@boomerang,

the dentist..

kidding, kidding

(I don't like the phrase either)

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someone once told me

"If you're bored, you're boring."

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@Lash,

Lash wrote:

Yeah. Nothing wrong with busy parents arranging an afternoon with a friend...with crazy schedules in the current average American family - you have to be organized....it's the terminology that chafes me...but I may be alone in this. "I've booked Alice a Memorial Day sleepover..." Chai may be a little wistful of moms (or dads) who can stay home, affording their children the luxury of hopping on a bike and tooling over to a friend's house - who would obviously be home, too... beatific summer days, laying safely on the dappled lawn of one of your five best friends on a quiet street in the suburbs...

Yeah, I get that. That stuff can chafe at me too -- like a parent is nothing more than an entertainment manager for their kid.

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@chai2,

Yeah, and my and my parents added "If you're uninterested, you're uninteresting"... good lessons.

Soz, I think it's just the phrase I object to. If your kid is 4, they're obviously not making their own social and travel arrangements, so you do it for them. I'd rather just say, "Sophie spent the afternoon at a friend's" than say "Sophie had a play date". Weird, eh? The words mean the same thing, but one hits me the wrong way entirely.

When my kids were small, I'd call a friend with kids and arrange to meet at a park or the zoo or something - was that a play date? I don't know, but they played, and the parents arranged it.

1 Reply

I always loved the term "play date" - it's exactly what it is, a date (made) to play together. What's wrong with that? When my daughter was at the age where
they had play dates (it's much more scarier now that she wants real "dates" )
we mothers called each other up and said "Jane wants a play date with Emily,
can we arrange something?"
So, we the mothers made out a specific date for them to play, thus play date!
Should I have made an appointment or arranged a kiddie meeting?
It is what it is, basta!!

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@Mame,

Mame wrote:

Yeah, and my and my parents added "If you're uninterested, you're uninteresting"... good lessons.

Soz, I think it's just the phrase I object to. If your kid is 4, they're obviously not making their own social and travel arrangements, so you do it for them. I'd rather just say, "Sophie spent the afternoon at a friend's" than say "Sophie had a play date". Weird, eh? The words mean the same thing, but one hits me the wrong way entirely.

When my kids were small, I'd call a friend with kids and arrange to meet at a park or the zoo or something - was that a play date? I don't know, but they played, and the parents arranged it.

I have no kids, but I remember being one of them.
I can remember my 3rd birthday n some of the time leading up to it.

When I was 4, I attended to my own social arrangements
in that I hung around with kids who came over,
and/or I went over to their places for (very informal, unplanned) social reasons.

I can 't remember once that parents became involved in this
nor that thay took any interest; thay had their own concerns.

(The only exception to that was birthday parties.)

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Yadda yadda yadda, that was 60 years ago. How can you apply something
from then to now? In case you haven't noticed, a 4 year old today lives in a
different world than you did. Then again, you lived in a completely different
world to begin with....

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

CalamityJane wrote:

I always loved the term "play date" - it's exactly what it is, a date (made) to play together.

Exactly. You say play date, and everyone knows exactly what you mean. You can say, "let's make a play date", or you can say, "let's find a time for me to bring Yaya over." Fewer words, fewer syllables, less time, same information.

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@CalamityJane,

CalamityJane wrote:

Yadda yadda yadda, that was 60 years ago. How can you apply something
from then to now? In case you haven't noticed, a 4 year old today lives in a
different world than you did. Then again, you lived in a completely different
world to begin with....

Candor moves me to admit
that I don't know much about the world of 4 year olds in the 21st Century.

David

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If parents had interfered in my private social relations (such as thay were),
I 'd have felt indignant. "What the hell is THIS??"

David

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@chai2,

I like that.

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...obviously, I was lured away into wistful retrospection ...those black-footed friends...swatting at tiny green insects...the days that lasted a month. It IS sad that's gone.

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@Lash,

I know what you mean. It's not completely gone, though, just maybe less available. I make it a point to try to give my kids something of this during the summers if I can, but it involves putting us someplace where it's possible for a week or so.

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I hate that term "play date"

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