Play Dates
For the life of me, I canae seem to recall when I first heard that term, "Play Date." For certain, my sons were old enough that I could breathe a sigh of relief over being disqualified from the conversation. The term doesnae call forth pleasant imagery for a kiddie whorehouse survivor. I boycotted The Dating Game for every one of my solo years, both before and after marriage. The busy mothers tittilating over their Play Dates looked like adult versions of the mean girls who made my public school years a living hell. Plea-ea-ea-ease disqualify me from *that* conversation. I promise to list the rejection as a benefit of aging, right alongside being unappealing to their male counterparts.
Big Bro's social breakthrough last weekend has Big Sis feeling her social isolation. Monday morning I was feeling her pain fiercely enough to brave my social anxiety and approach the mother of a child in her class whom we had been passing in the parking lot since the beginning of her attendance at the day care about a "Play Date" for the two girls. I thought the convo went well enough for busy bees buzzing through the gridlock. We had been passing daily for long enough that I hoped to be able to finish the conversation in busy bee snippets as the week progressed. I needed time to figure out this generation of Busy Momspeak. Given my personal preference, I'd druther be studying Mandarin, but God forgot to ask my opinion again before She saddled me with a second parenting career. I am feeling like Big Sis's social isolation really is a problem. She deserves friends.
As fate would have it, my own busy buzz disrupted the arrival routine this week. I spent most of the week dealing with the crisis in Big Bro's school while Hubs drove the girls to school. Hubs didnae have the exposure to know which busy mom I had been passing in the daycare gridlock. It is hard to tell those busy mothers apart. No, the youthfully tinted hair isnae marker enough to describe by. Morning drop off is quite the gridlock at the "Small Town" daycare. Men stand out in that particular gridlock vividly enough that Hubby's performance anxiety kicks in before he hits the parking lot. Old women, too, butttttaaaa. . . Different thread. . . Even if I had noted this busy mom enough to distinguish her from the rest, Hubby isnae likely to be able to get past his performance anxiety far enough to carry through on the dialog in my absence. Not even Ken is socially skilled enough to handle busy moms. Barbie took all Ken's things on her way to co-opting GI Joe's disability pension. The Babe is a baracuda. Watch out for those dangerous curves.
Big Sis REALLY likes this particular classmate, as do I. In class, they make a charming duo. I felt like I had broken a promise to Big Sis in allowing her brother's antics to usurp her social life again. In an attempt to compensate, I wrote all our contact data out ahead of time so that I could slip it to the child's mother during the Friday morning daycare hustle. Mother didnae even have time to take the slip of paper. She snubbed me and ran like a 70's HS Mean Girl promising to "Do Lunch." All White Lies and pretense. My obssessive thought loops have been intensely noisy ever since. Nothing new. Same ol' strictly personal psychosis, different dialect. This is the venting step in my therapy exercises. I donae know this mother any better than I know any of the other mothers in the gridlock. I donae even know her name. She wears medical scrubs during the morning gridlock, but that isnae much of an indicator, unless you count the fact that I boycott medical parks whenever possible. Why do you call those foul-smelling abominations, "Parks?"
As I have vented here, the doll I used in the finger pointing exercise has been coming vividly to mind. Where did that piece of injection molded plastic make off to? Baby Sis's toy box is where I will look if I decide to continue that particular exercise. Baby Sis is having a rough night and rustling through her toy box at this unseemly hour might even be a good idea.
Works in progress. . .
Replies
I remember when my kids were young...i with no social skills struggled to connect with other parents for playdates. It is especially hard when you have trust issues. Right there with ya Arfie...hugs.
Hmm could that mom that ran have social anxiety too? Maybe a sense of inadequacy? Good luck with sorting my friend.
I consider it a simple fact that parents, too, are unique individuals. The list of possible reasons the woman ran rudely on her busy way is quite long. The fact that I donae even know her name makes that list of possible reasons even longer than list of possible names for a middle aged busy woman. There isnae a valid reason to review that long list and my therapy exercises are designed to keep me from falling in that very psycho rabbit hole. This unknown woman's reasons are hers to sort.
Mine is to figure out, "What the fuck is a playdate?" It still sounds like something the elder sib I call, "Pimp Sis" would set up for me without my consent.
My kids were young before the "Play Date" was mainstream tradition and I crashed and burned hard enough with the mothers of the play date moms that learning the next generation of social mind fucks holds even less appeal than geriatric rape. I never even learned the "Let's Do Lunch" version that was popular back when I had the Barbie Doll figure I worked hard to hide. I treasure my ignorance of the next generation. Mandarin really does sound like the simpler study.
Arfie, the closest thing in my own child hood experience to serve as a "play date" example growing up overseas south of the border would be when the ladies of the American Women's Club would bring us gringo kids together once in a while so we could play together in English. It was kind of weird and forced to me, I had a gang of Uruguayan kids I ran with every day on my block in the barrio already.
Then when the war got bad and the rebels starting kidnapping gringos for ransom and killed one in my neighborhood, the US Embassy had the American Women's Club closed down because it was a security risk as a concentration of targets for kidnappers. Not fond memories. It was more fun just to kick a soccer ball around with my boys from the barrio. It's great that you're willing to arrange "play dates" for your grand kids, but I'll bet you that they may well find their own pals to play with, too, like I did.
The current kid culture doesn't seem too similar to what I raised my sons with, much less the streets of Uruguay. So far as I can tell, children no longer have the freedom to find one another here in the US. Even on a park playground, the watchful adults outnumber the playful children. In the classrooms, the children are tightly restricted so that one adult can manage the 20 or 30 to one odds.
I would like to believe this gentle girl can find her own playmates as children still do in some places of the world. Here in this 21st century agricultural community, I am doubtful of the odds. I believe helicopter parenting is now required by law. It most certainly is required by the government officials involved in the lives of these 3 orphans.
For what it's worth
I've always felt sorry for the kids from the "Little Americas" I've encountered during my wandering ways. Their childhoods were more stable than mine, but diplomacy is for grown-ups. Not *this* grown-up, but the general gee carries.
It's great that they're settling into making new friends that they want to spend time with... Maybe some normalcy peeking through....
I think culture has gone from one extreme to another.... Our generation remembers too well the things that we don't want to see happen.....and although we can't prevent everything we can try and stop the bad that we can
One thing I do like about now is that many people don't want to bury their heads and I think that, that's important...… Big hug Arf….. I hope that you have a nice, peaceful weekend with the family