Am I the only Mom who groans a little bit when I hear a message on my voicemail about arranging a play-date? Am I the only one who finds the term "play-date" slightly annoying? I suppose this could be my own introvert tendencies coming to the surface but frankly, I think we parents could afford to relax a little bit about having our kids' days scheduled to account for every single minute and worrying that they won't acquire the social skills they need in life if they don't have at least two play-dates per week.
I drop my son off at daycare at 7:30am and I pick him up between 4:30 and 5:00pm most days. That means he gets about 30 minutes of time to play with his daycare buddies before leaving for school, 20ish minutes walking to school with his buddies, 20ish minutes walking back to the daycare centre with his buddies and then at least an hour to play with his pals before I pick him up. That is roughly two hours of playtime with friends outside of school time. This happens five days a week. He also gets time for unstructured play with his school friends at recess and lunch at school. I am not even throwing in the time he spends with other kids at soccer, swimming lessons and birthday parties etc. Frankly, I think what my kid needs after these long days, interacting with people and following rules, is some downtime!
One of the most important skills we are told employers will want and need in employees when our children graduate, is creativity and the ability to be innovative. I know that during quiet time at home,I see my son become his most creative and thoughtful. Just this morning, he spent an extended amount of time trying to figure out how to perform a few magic tricks with the props in his magic kit. He then moved on to waving the magic wand around acting out a scene that I could not decipher. After that, he did a little bit of singing while driving around his Playmobil ambulance. Out of nowhere, he started reminiscing about our trip to Disneyland last year. This turned into a full blown conversation about our favourite rides.
This brings me to another reason I love to have some unstructured time with my son in the evenings and on the weekends. It is MY time with him! Maybe that is a selfish sentiment, but as a single parent who has to work full time, evenings and weekends with my child are so very precious. It is when we get to have some fun together outside of the daily grind during the work week. It is when we get to connect and talk about life. My son is quite young still and I already feel this precious time slipping away from me, as his schedule becomes more and more demanding every year. I am very supportive of him participating in as many extra-curricular activities as he wants to and is able to manage in a healthy way. I realize that these activities will just become more and more time consuming as he gets older, along with his school demands increasing. I fully intend to enjoy every last minute of one on one time I get with my son now because they will continue to dissipate away on me as the years fly by.
I think that parents of only children especially feel pressure to arrange multiple play-dates for their kids but I hope that they remember that often these are the kids who enjoy and need their own quiet time even more. Building positive social skills does not require interacting with other children all. of. the. time.
The playground is one of our favourite destinations on the weekends. We can play together or I can sit back and watch my son find other kids to play with. It happens so naturally and I would argue, requires more social skills on my son's part than me picking up the phone and arranging a play-date for him. Perhaps we are making it too easy for our kids and in turn actually hurting their social abilities by taking charge of their friendships? I realize the world has changed since we were kids and rode our bikes around the neighbourhood until we found our friends but maybe we can consider ways to release some of the control back to our kids in more spontaneous and safe ways, rather than adults arranging all play-dates.
Don't get me wrong, I am not completely opposed to arranged play-dates! Of course there is value in them! For me it has been one of the ways that I get to know the other parents. I am never at school for drop off or pick up and I certainly don't get the chance to meet them by volunteering at school. I also know many people like to be much busier than I prefer to be. To each their own! What I am saying is that I wish we didn't feel pressure to be arranging social situations for our kids all the time. Don't stop inviting my son over to play and then inviting me in for coffee when I drop him off! That and chatting on the sidelines at the soccer game, is pretty much the extent of my social life these days! But please don't be afraid to tell your child you'd rather just hang out with them today when they request you call Johnny's Mom. And please don't stress out that your kid has trouble keeping friends when I say "no, thank you" because I just want a quiet Saturday afternoon watching my boy perform magic tricks for me. And please do come across the street to the playground the next time you see us there.
This parenting thing is not easy! I say, let's eliminate any unnecessary pressures and expectations that we can and enjoy our babies more!
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