The (Play) Dating Game

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  Posted By: Janey07 @ 03/10/2009 3:17:14 PM

  I can relate even though now my girls are all grown up. We used to live in an upscale Charlotte suburb where most of the moms stayed home taking care of their bodies first children second. I was out of place from the get go because I worked, I wasn't a big spender and I was a few years older than the median age of about 32. Things got worse when I sent my older daughter to a private high school which was a great school, but full of very wealthy up and comers who looked down on me for not having as much and for not working. what was wrong with this world? All of us were spending a lot of money to educate our kids yet the old "I have more money than you do" rules seemed to apply.
  
  Now a few years later my daughter who is now in college told me that the other moms would gossip about me even IN FRONT OF HER. I just found this out! Because I worked and they did not, I asked them to pitch in more for the driving although I was willing to offer bartering (I am in a service business) for the extra day of driving. I figured since they didn't work and I did they would be willing to do a bit more. No such chance! Anyway, the mean girls mentaility lives on way pass middle and high school. It's sad, but the best thing to do is find yourself in other things because making friends with the other moms can be a losing battle.

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  Posted By: Seventies Mom @ 12/31/2008 10:20:52 AM

  i totally relate to the pain of which Ms. Augusto speaks. When my little twins were one, we joined a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group. They had the time of their lives every two weeks. But when it came to scheduling get-togethers on off-days, that was another matter. Several people said they wanted to get together, but when I would try to pin a specific date, it was clear that they really didn't mean this. I think that is something that Mr. Davies doesn't really understand about women. Women do what seems to be the nicest thing on the surface, but the outcome is that underneath all that niceness is people who promised to get -together, but actually don't want to. Men are more straightforward about it, and I appreciate that. As an adult, I can handle that, although for a long time I questioned myself about how "acceptable" I was, because it wasn't like people were beating a path to my house to get to know me either. But I would go back and give up all the great birthdays I ever had if I could spare my kids the pain of all the implied rejections of no invitations at all. The really heart-wrenching thing is when birthdays come around and your child or children aren't invited to parties because they don't have any play date friends, or when one twin in consistently invited, but the other is not. How can you throw a party for twins when one is popular and has ten to twenty people who want to come, and the other you have to beg to get two? You can't, obviously, but even with two parties, the one with fewer friends is going to notice. Or when a child has "special needs" and no one invites him to a party. My son has only ever been to two parties in his life -- both when he was in kindergarten and first grade (he is eleven). And when it comes to being proactive, I can call all I want, but you cannot make people respond to invitations. How sad for a kid to invite thirteen kids and get only two responses? And they may even be turn-downs. I have heard other parents say that they have stopped booking skating rinks and bowling alleys for birthdays because they are tired of spending all the money and then having no one turn up; so I guess we are not the only ones. But I think if we had the "open" neighborhood of my childhood (and we have at least 13 kids in elem. on our block!) there wouldn't be this wholesale elimination of kids from others like there is now. I think the comparison to professional networking and social climbing made in the article is dead-on, although sometimes I am at a loss as to what certain people or families have that we seem to lack. WE were the neighborhood family on our block and my mother always made sure that every kid was doing something, even if she had to pull out a checkerboard and play on the driveway herself. Those were halcyon days and it is sad that often people take extraordinary interest in their own kids but seem to lack empathy for other people's kids.

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  Posted By: geashlin @ 09/30/2008 9:58:41 AM

  I am against playdates. We as parents have to set the standards for or kids and for other parents. Many adults feel the same way. Kids, don't play together anymore, when I was "younger..." The real issue is fear and since we are afraid that something may happen to our kids we keep them in making it more dangerous for the few kids that are out. Their numbers are in the sigle digits making them easier pray for the would be interloper. It's our duty not to rob our kids of the simplest of lifes pleasures...discovery. We are becoming a culture of introverts, HELP!