Both boys get all excited about having friends over. They talk about it for days and wait looking
out the window for their friend to arrive.
The friend arrives and rather than jump right in and play, they spend
the first 20 minutes basically showing them all the stuff they have and talking
their ears off. Which is particularly funny to watch because compared to many
kids in this area, our kids don’t have a wide variety of toys. We basically have lots of cars, dinosaurs and
legos. (Hence one child said how “boring”
his last playdate at our house was).
When
they finally tire of showing their friend around, they pick what they want to
play and if the friend (and this happens quite often) says they don’t want to
play, they play it anyway by themselves.
This leaves a 4-6 year old child in a strange house and on several occasions
looking to me for entertainment. I try
to intervene with “you should play what your guest wants to play” or “what
would Frank/Jane/Jim/random child of the day like to play?” Maybe these are all social skills that they
have not learned yet.
So is the point of
the play date to kind of help them learn it?
I kind of thought the point was to have someone other than me to play
with for a couple of hours? Seriously it
is incredibly painful for me to watch (especially Lukie who is particularly
inept at play dates, but asks for them constantly as he is a really social
kid). It is more like he is looking for
an extended audience for his antics rather than a playmate. Most of Samson's playdates are spent with him and his friend running and hiding from Lukas. Which is probably fun for them, but now I get to deal with a sad/pissed off Lukas. If this is painful I am not looking forward
to the awkward “attempting to talk to girls romantically” years.
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