Play Dates

Don’t you just love it when you walk in the door from school pick-up after a busy day at work and there are strangers camped on your other doorstep claiming their child has a play date with your son?

Evidently Master Seven and his new-found friend – somebody I’d never heard of – had concocted the play date and omitted to tell me.

“We thought we’d better check it was still alright before dropping him off,” his mother kindly said.

I looked from her to her son to mine, reassuring her it was fine whilst simultaneously trying to shoot my Master Seven a “You’re in big trouble!” look.

The multi-tasking proved unsuccessful this time and I gave up, admitting to her that I had no idea about the playdate or, in fact, who her son was.

Still, he seemed a nice boy so I welcomed him in and decided to save the lecture for later. As it happened he was no trouble and the fourth child balanced things out nicely, resulting in peace while I cooked dinner and made lunches.

Master Seven got his lecture once his friend went home but he kept it quiet that he’d already lined up another two playdates – a double sleep-over in fact.

But it wasn’t me that copped that one. His dad rang up some days later and asked if I knew anything about a tandem sleep-over that was apparently taking place at his house that Friday. It was the first I knew so Master Seven received another telling off.

The next afternoon when I picked him up from school he thrust several scraps of paper my way.

“What’s this?” I asked, looking at the bunch of phone numbers on each.

“You said you needed to talk to my friends’ mums and dads first before they come over for a play date so I got all their numbers.”

And it turns out he’d also given out our number to all and sundry judging by the way the phone was ringing off the hook all afternoon from 3.15pm.

Master Seven was stoked to receive his first phone call that wasn’t a grand parent. Off he moseyed down the hall to his room where, from what I could make out, he proceeded to share in great detail what was in it.

By the end of each call, they’d jacked up more play dates to ask their mothers and fathers about.

It’s looking as though I’d better stop being a party-pooper and jump on this play date bandwagon. After-all, as one friend – a mother or teens - said: “It’s the sneaking in the window, unexpected teen visits that you have to look forward to!”