Mismatched schedules for friends

[Anonymous]

I have 3 kids and it feels like we are just off schedule with everyone else. We traveled for half the summer. When we were back, other kids were in camps or also traveling. If we reach out to plan something, parents will say they are unavailable.

When school starts, I know scheduling won’t get any easier since everyone is so busy. My kids all play multiple sports. Even if one kid is free, we may be in the car driving sibling(s) to practice or to a game.

Anyone else feel like it is hard to plan a play date?

I have one kid starting private school 20 min away and I’m sure it is going to be that much worse since now his classmates will be scattered around the DMV.

[Anonymous]

It sucks, my kids don't like to be busy, not that I'd want them to be anyway, but everyone else is busy it's crazy. I wanna give my kids an old school childhood. It's so hard though.

[Anonymous]

You have three kids. One in a different school 20 minutes away. These are all choices you made, not sure what you were expecting.

[Anonymous]

We’ve had a few summers like that. We also have multiple years when my child has a MW or MWF activity schedule and everyone else has a TuTh schedule or vice versa so can’t often have play dates or their parents say things like “you’re never free to do anything”. Somehow the only people who have flexibility to do things are the ones who my kid doesn’t want to hang out with anyway.

We are lucky that we have an understanding in our neighborhood that anyone can ring anyone’s bell at any time and the kids try to squeeze in play whenever they can. Low expectations make whatever they can do feel like a gift. The neighbor girl came over for 30 minutes at 9 am this morning, and my DD was at her house for 45 minutes before bedtime last week. It’s nice to not make everything a 3 hour play date or special outing.

They all go to different schools and I like that they have easy friendships with each other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sucks, my kids don't like to be busy, not that I'd want them to be anyway, but everyone else is busy it's crazy. I wanna give my kids an old school childhood. It's so hard though.

+1 except I’ve made the brave choice to not force them into too many activities just bc the other sheep are doing it. We keep plenty of unstructured time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 kids and it feels like we are just off schedule with everyone else. We traveled for half the summer. When we were back, other kids were in camps or also traveling. If we reach out to plan something, parents will say they are unavailable.

When school starts, I know scheduling won’t get any easier since everyone is so busy. My kids all play multiple sports. Even if one kid is free, we may be in the car driving sibling(s) to practice or to a game.

Anyone else feel like it is hard to plan a play date?

I have one kid starting private school 20 min away and I’m sure it is going to be that much worse since now his classmates will be scattered around the DMV.

Why are playdates so important? Your kids see their school friends in school 30+ hours a week. Are you afraid that other kids are hanging out together without your kids? You may need to sit down for this, but yeah, that is happening. So what? Your family prioritizes sports. You can't have it all. Private school kids tend not see each other outside school as much as public school kids do, and that is just part of the private school experience. Again, you priortized something else, so you need to make peace with your choice and let go of all this anxiety around what other people are doing without you.

[Anonymous]

Well duh. What did you expect with 3 kids? The summer thing’s normal. My kids did not expect to see much of their friends then. We used it as a social, not just a school, break. During the school we accept that the more people and activities are involved, the more complicated it gets to plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 kids and it feels like we are just off schedule with everyone else. We traveled for half the summer. When we were back, other kids were in camps or also traveling. If we reach out to plan something, parents will say they are unavailable.

When school starts, I know scheduling won’t get any easier since everyone is so busy. My kids all play multiple sports. Even if one kid is free, we may be in the car driving sibling(s) to practice or to a game.

Anyone else feel like it is hard to plan a play date?

I have one kid starting private school 20 min away and I’m sure it is going to be that much worse since now his classmates will be scattered around the DMV.

Why are playdates so important? Your kids see their school friends in school 30+ hours a week. Are you afraid that other kids are hanging out together without your kids? You may need to sit down for this, but yeah, that is happening. So what? Your family prioritizes sports. You can't have it all. Private school kids tend not see each other outside school as much as public school kids do, and that is just part of the private school experience. Again, you priortized something else, so you need to make peace with your choice and let go of all this anxiety around what other people are doing without you.

Just because kids see their friends or might see their friends at school 30 hrs a week doesn't mean it's good socialization. Socializing at school or other activities is a good thing, another type of socializing. But, it should not replace good old fashioned unstructured, unorganized free play/ hang out time. Something that kids/teens today are sorely missing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have three kids. One in a different school 20 minutes away. These are all choices you made, not sure what you were expecting.

+1 it’s all about your choices.

No, we don’t really have these issues, but we limit out kids to one club sport, send them to public and bought a house that we knew had a lot of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 kids and it feels like we are just off schedule with everyone else. We traveled for half the summer. When we were back, other kids were in camps or also traveling. If we reach out to plan something, parents will say they are unavailable.

When school starts, I know scheduling won’t get any easier since everyone is so busy. My kids all play multiple sports. Even if one kid is free, we may be in the car driving sibling(s) to practice or to a game.

Anyone else feel like it is hard to plan a play date?

I have one kid starting private school 20 min away and I’m sure it is going to be that much worse since now his classmates will be scattered around the DMV.

Why are playdates so important? Your kids see their school friends in school 30+ hours a week. Are you afraid that other kids are hanging out together without your kids? You may need to sit down for this, but yeah, that is happening. So what? Your family prioritizes sports. You can't have it all. Private school kids tend not see each other outside school as much as public school kids do, and that is just part of the private school experience. Again, you priortized something else, so you need to make peace with your choice and let go of all this anxiety around what other people are doing without you.

Just because kids see their friends or might see their friends at school 30 hrs a week doesn't mean it's good socialization. Socializing at school or other activities is a good thing, another type of socializing. But, it should not replace good old fashioned unstructured, unorganized free play/ hang out time. Something that kids/teens today are sorely missing

Socializing at school isn't "good" socialization? LOL the level of anxiety regarding these insignificant details of how/when/where your children socialize in insane. OP, you chose a highly structured schedule. That means much less unstructured time. If you want more unstructured socialization then ditch all the organized sports and hang out with other families who ditched organized sports in order to have more unstructured leisure time.

You cannot have every single thing on your List of Things That Constitute a Perfect Childhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have three kids. One in a different school 20 minutes away. These are all choices you made, not sure what you were expecting.

+1 it’s all about your choices.

No, we don’t really have these issues, but we limit out kids to one club sport, send them to public and bought a house that we knew had a lot of kids.

Op here. I think it is where we live as well. We live in a neighborhood with large homes and lots. All the kids go to different schools. Without exaggerating, there are 10 kids on our street and every single one attends a different school. The one kid who attended the same school as my child previously has major behavior problems and we were so glad when he stopped banging on our door daily. My kid who was the same age as the neighbor now attends private.

[Anonymous]

It’s not the three kids, it’s the multiple sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 kids and it feels like we are just off schedule with everyone else. We traveled for half the summer. When we were back, other kids were in camps or also traveling. If we reach out to plan something, parents will say they are unavailable.

When school starts, I know scheduling won’t get any easier since everyone is so busy. My kids all play multiple sports. Even if one kid is free, we may be in the car driving sibling(s) to practice or to a game.

Anyone else feel like it is hard to plan a play date?

I have one kid starting private school 20 min away and I’m sure it is going to be that much worse since now his classmates will be scattered around the DMV.

Why are playdates so important? Your kids see their school friends in school 30+ hours a week. Are you afraid that other kids are hanging out together without your kids? You may need to sit down for this, but yeah, that is happening. So what? Your family prioritizes sports. You can't have it all. Private school kids tend not see each other outside school as much as public school kids do, and that is just part of the private school experience. Again, you priortized something else, so you need to make peace with your choice and let go of all this anxiety around what other people are doing without you.

Just because kids see their friends or might see their friends at school 30 hrs a week doesn't mean it's good socialization. Socializing at school or other activities is a good thing, another type of socializing. But, it should not replace good old fashioned unstructured, unorganized free play/ hang out time. Something that kids/teens today are sorely missing

Socializing at school isn't "good" socialization? LOL the level of anxiety regarding these insignificant details of how/when/where your children socialize in insane. OP, you chose a highly structured schedule. That means much less unstructured time. If you want more unstructured socialization then ditch all the organized sports and hang out with other families who ditched organized sports in order to have more unstructured leisure time.

You cannot have every single thing on your List of Things That Constitute a Perfect Childhood.

I'm not the OP, but socializing at school is fine, but it's not enough. Kids only have recess and lunch to truly socialize with friends. And those times are dwindling, some schools even ditch recess. Even if kids have recess, once adults deem kids " too old" for recess there is even less socializing time at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 kids and it feels like we are just off schedule with everyone else. We traveled for half the summer. When we were back, other kids were in camps or also traveling. If we reach out to plan something, parents will say they are unavailable.

When school starts, I know scheduling won’t get any easier since everyone is so busy. My kids all play multiple sports. Even if one kid is free, we may be in the car driving sibling(s) to practice or to a game.

Anyone else feel like it is hard to plan a play date?

I have one kid starting private school 20 min away and I’m sure it is going to be that much worse since now his classmates will be scattered around the DMV.

The summer is always a bit of a mess. Travel is based on work, camps, extended family, childcare etc. We do play dates with a family that also has three and play dates for our eldest on the weekends (she can do drop off) while our middle child will meet up with friends during the week with our nanny when she didn't have camp this summer (too young for drop off). Once all your kids can do drop off it gets easier because you can host multiple kids or one kid will go to a friend's and you'll host your other kids' friends.

During the school year my kids have activities after school but they see their friends at school and during activities so I'm not as concerned about getting in play dates. We'll try to do things here and there but the week is busy with sports and they have sports on Saturday so I'm not overextending myself for Sunday play dates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 3 kids and it feels like we are just off schedule with everyone else. We traveled for half the summer. When we were back, other kids were in camps or also traveling. If we reach out to plan something, parents will say they are unavailable.

When school starts, I know scheduling won’t get any easier since everyone is so busy. My kids all play multiple sports. Even if one kid is free, we may be in the car driving sibling(s) to practice or to a game.

Anyone else feel like it is hard to plan a play date?

I have one kid starting private school 20 min away and I’m sure it is going to be that much worse since now his classmates will be scattered around the DMV.

Why are playdates so important? Your kids see their school friends in school 30+ hours a week. Are you afraid that other kids are hanging out together without your kids? You may need to sit down for this, but yeah, that is happening. So what? Your family prioritizes sports. You can't have it all. Private school kids tend not see each other outside school as much as public school kids do, and that is just part of the private school experience. Again, you priortized something else, so you need to make peace with your choice and let go of all this anxiety around what other people are doing without you.

NP but kids aren't always in the same class or even school as their friends.