Anonymous wrote:She will assume it's something bad about her or her child if you don't give her a reason.

Not necessarily. If your kids have other friends and do playdates with them, and there someone with a blanket “we don’t do playdates” rule, i would know the problem is them, not us. But if I saw them playing with other kids i would then know it was us.

My kids have no interest in scheduled playdates. They are spontaneous and like to walk around the neighborhood and see who's out playing. Which is easy and great but they never play with schoolmates as they go to parochial school and no one lives near us. So I am always encouraging playdates and they refuse them.
That said, there was one neighbor I did not want them playing with. Because the kid was destructive (throwing rocks and digging in my garden), extremely rude, would show up at 930 pm asking to play, and when I had a chat with the mom I could tell she was under the influence of something. So I told my own kid "you're not allowed to play with Eddie anymore because I don't like the way he acts" and it worked out. If the mom had been normal I'm not sure what I would have done. They ended up moving in the middle of the night!