Reply to Single parent playdate cycle

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My rising first grade makes fast friends, which is great. But, between seeing friends from Kindergarten on weekends and getting asked for playdates with kids she met at camps over the summer, and now new kids she has met in first grade, we've been swept into a heightened playdate cycle. This last year we did a lot of meet ups at our local playground. Nice and easy for everyone. Recently, she (or her friends) have been asking for one on one playdates at one another's homes. I've begged off mostly, but feel bad about it.

The biggest barrier I feel is time. I've been divorced for less than a year and have sole custody and work 60 hours a week (from home). My kiddo is enrolled in one activity during the week and the other days she goes to after care. On Saturdays, she has two activities. There really isn't any time to have a play date except for Sundays, which is also the only day I don't typically have to get the two of us out the door at an early hour or stay on a schedule. It is my day to do errands, clean, have family time with my kiddo, and get some work done. My second hesitation is hosting. We live in a small space, an upper level of two-family rental in a neighborhood with giant single family homes. My small home is an outlier, my single parent status is an outlier. If the parent brings the kid and stays, we're all kind of stuck sitting/playing in a small space. If the parent drops the kid, then I'll be managing multiple kids and activities for them solo. I am also wary of the reciprocity -- I would never want to accept a play date at someone's home and not reciprocate, so we just haven't done many. My kiddo also isn't quite ready for drop offs so I stick around for bday parties and the like and I don't think would feel comfortable dropping her at another house without me being there yet.

Do I need to suck it up and start scheduling a few of these? Or just keep a no playdate rule (save for impromptu park meetups) for sanity? What do others do, especially if you're crunched for time? I HATE looking (or feeling like a look) like the frazzled single mom but I truly am really busy, and you all know how tough it is adding juuuuuuuuust one more thing to the plate. I also at the same time don't want to lose an opportunity to make some friends from acquaintances. We all know married people can be kind of weird about socializing with single parents, so if given an entree am I wasting an opportunity to exoand my own circle? Reading into this too hard but would value thoughts from other single parents trying to do All the Things. [/quote]

I would move to an apartment and start hosting playdates.[/quote]

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