Confessions of a Work-at-Home Mom: The Playdate

Playdates are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they’re a chance to catch up with your best buds while your kids play (somewhat) peacefully nearby. It’s a reprieve, a revivification.

On the other, it’s two to three hours of hell.

Maybe someone invited the mom who wears matching Coach heels and handbag to a playdate, only to complain for an inordinate length of time about how her manicurist used the wrong shade of red on her toenails at the last of her bi-weekly spa appointments. Maybe the playdate host’s child insists on beating your child about the head and shoulders with weapons made of Duplo blocks, no matter how many cookies his mom offers him “if he stops playing all roughy-toughy.” Or perhaps everyone goes home sneezing because one parent has no shame about bringing a child with a faucet for a nose and a hacking cough to a playdate – whatever it takes to get her weekly dose of gossip.

Lucky for me, I’m not very well acquainted with the dark side of the world of playdates. Mostly because many of ours involve the polite, affectionate little man sitting next to my son in the photo above.

He’s a boy who loves to share and show his playmate all of his toys; a boy who gratuitously offers my son and me yummy snacks and drinks; a boy who now brings his baby brother along to his playdates, regaling us with the funny, baby-like things he was doing in the car on the way over. That he brings his mom, my good friend and Tulsa Kids columnist Holly Wall, along with him makes him all the more desireable as a playdate buddy.

Now if I could just stop my son from hogging all the toys, attempting to eat all of the snacks and mining his nose for giant boogers as soon as it’s time to play, we’d have it made in the playdate shade.