Reply to 3rd grade DD circle of friends excluded playdates

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I am not trying to be snarky, but honestly confused. When we have friends families over, the adults and kids all hangout and kids are welcome to participate (such as we might talk about the election or a funny Fallon video or recent vacations). Do most families shoo the kids off to play with each other, and keep this adult - child divide, even if some of the kids want to join in? How is wanting to participate in a conversation bad manners, just because they are a kid? Honestly curious here, I was an only child from a dysfunctional family so I may have missed the memo on raising my own kids and falling into some 'little adult' fallacy.

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It's fine to have a bit of conversation between adults and kids, which we usually do if a meal is involved, or when the kids first arrive.  But most of the time is spent kids playing with kids.  My son is an only so he can be with adults most of the time, play dates are his time (outside of occasional times at school, camp) to hang out with kids in a unstructured environment.  That's why I do them in the first place.  Every now and again we will play a board game or something with the kids, but most of it is unstructured time for the kids to figure out something to do and work things out.  If a child was not able to do that for most of a play date, we would probably not invite them back often, since it would defy the purpose of the play date for us.[/quote]

Expanding on this, is it possible that the friends are the ones asking their moms not to reciprocate? My DD and her friends would get frustrated with a particulalar girl who only wanted to engage with the parents on play dates, whether it was a one on one or a group. They tried to engage her and encourage her to pick the activities etc. but after a while, they stopped asking to include her. They wanted playdates to be social activities for them.  It just wasn't as fun when she kept leaving to spend time with the parent. Maybe to help your DD become more comfortable, you could talk with her about different ways to stay engaged with her friends, bring over a favorite board game, a simple craft requiring no adult assistance, etc.  Have you asked her if not going on lots of play dates bothers her? It may bother you more than it bothers her. Some kids are just more introverted than others, too. [/quote]

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