When a kid shows up obviously sick for a play date

[Anonymous]

What do you do? I hinted “wow Larla sounds pretty sick” a couple of times and mom just shrugged it off and said it was a cold. It felt too rude to tell them to leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you do? I hinted “wow Larla sounds pretty sick” a couple of times and mom just shrugged it off and said it was a cold. It felt too rude to tell them to leave.

Either you’re going to be an adult and put the needs of your kids first or you’re going to put your own needs first and avoid the discomfort.

You chose the latter.

All you had to say was “Yeah, it looks like this isn’t going to work today. Let’s try again next week when Larla is over her cold.”

[Anonymous]

You ask them to please leave and "let's reschedule when Larlo is better." How dumb to have to crowdsource this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You ask them to please leave and "let's reschedule when Larlo is better." How dumb to have to crowdsource this.

This, we love visiting with Larlo, but are concerned about getting our family sick. Let's reschedule when he is better. Thanks for stopping by.

[Anonymous]

I would not call it out. That feels super rude. Also kids have colds all the time. Id prefer that its not in my house but its not the end of the world. Also little kids often sound worse than they are. And if this is a school friend, youre already exposed.

If weather allows I might suggest an outdoor activity and I would wipe down the toy room after they left (but I used to do this at that age anytime there were people in my house anyway because kids are gross!). I also would have done the same as you and commented on the symptoms to see what she says. It could be that its week 2 of a cough and the kid is not contagious and they got her checked out at thr dr yesterday or something.

But also, yeah, some parents are just rude!

[Anonymous]

Oh hell no.

I would say, I’m sorry, we are going to need to reschedule. We don’t want to pass along an I’ll see to the more vulnerable members of our household, family, etc.

Second , less good option is to take them to an outdoor park.

[Anonymous]

I’d never invite them back.

[Anonymous]

The sick kids mother should be horse whipped.

[Anonymous]

Is this a classmate?if yes, they are in school together for 6-7 hours… a play date at your house won’t make a difference.

[Anonymous]

It was not rude to tell them to leave. You should have done that.

[Anonymous]

Also in the camp of telling them we'll reschedule.

[Anonymous]

I’d ask to reschedule, but I don’t understand some pps being so angry at the parent. Different people might look at a cold-y child differently. As an elementary school teacher, I see some kids who seem to always have runny noses—I’m sure it hardly registers for their parents anymore.

[Anonymous]

At this point I just let it ride, but I suppose I remember that about the person if we ever really don't want to get sick before a trip or something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You ask them to please leave and "let's reschedule when Larlo is better." How dumb to have to crowdsource this.

Can you be kinder to people? Social anxiety is very real (and imho seems to have grown post pandemic) and many people probably didn’t have parents who modeled these kinds of boundaries.

Asking for help is not dumb. And if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all

[Anonymous]

Unless I was going on vacation I wouldn’t care if it was a cold.
If I was the guest though I would have told you ahead of time..it’s rude to just show up.