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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, it doesn’t matter.  Your child will make friends in school and in the neighborhood without you doing anything at all.  As she gets older she can plan and schedule what she wants.  Did your parents plan out bunches of social engagements for you in elementary school? Mine certainly didn’t and I still had a great social life. I have three kids: high, middle, and elementary.  The families we were friends with and vacationed with in elementary- our kids are no longer close  friends with.  They all find their own paths.  [b]We never did play dates[/b]- it makes no difference to their social lives.  [/quote]

To me this is so odd!  Growing up, I would have a friend over after school at LEAST once a week.  Or go to their house.  Having friends over after school was so normal, and it was where our friendships really got deeper.  Now, vacationing with another family- that's something that seems so foreign to me. I don't want to share a beach house with another family just because our kids are the same age and like eachother.  No. [/quote]

We didn’t have play dates because parents worked.  It was no big deal at all and I don’t feel like I missed out on anything.  We had a neighborhood full of kids of varying ages.  Interestingly, the neighborhood kids and my school friends had no crossover.  I wasn’t friends with the neighborhood kids at school.  We played with each other in the evenings and on the weekends- like built forts in the woods, went on long walks to no where, congregated in someone’s basement for hours, kickball games in field or someone’s yard. Dawn to dusk old school activities. It was great fun and some of my best memories- but these were kids I would have never been friends with, had they not been my neighbors (different grades, classes, different interests, some different schools).  It was like a special club we all were part of but never mentioned outside of our club.  This kind of spontaneous socializing is far more valuable than the contrived playdates of today.  [/quote]

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