Planning a Play Date

When your child is still little, they are simply learning about the world and they’re happy to just hang out at home and for you to keep them entertained. However, at some point you’re going to want to start getting them out to interact with other kids. Sometimes this will be really simple if you have some close neighbors that they can play with in the backyard. However, you may not be so lucky to have kids that are close in age to yours close by.

Even if you do have a friend that your child can play with close by, you may find that you want something a little more official for your child. Perhaps you want something that is scheduled and happens the same time when you get together. Similarly, you may simply want to get your child together with a child that lives further away or with a parent that has a more complicated schedule than your own. 

Whatever the reason, you may be wondering the correct way to go about planning a play date and what you can expect. Overall, it’s quite simple and straightforward, but we will lay out a few ground rules that you’ll want to follow as you get started in scheduling play dates for kids.

Keep it small

When first trying to get your child together with other kids, keep it small. First off, you simply don’t know how your child will react to being with a bunch of other kids. Similarly, the more kids that there are, the more likely that someone is to get hurt. Keep the gathering small so that you can learn a little bit more about getting kids together for play dates - your kids will probably find it more enjoyable at first to have someone specific to play with.

Another reason to keep it small is so that you figure out how this is all going to work for you and your kids. Having 3 or 4 kids over to your home is simply overwhelming for a parent that isn’t used to a bunch of kids. Even with additional parents there, it’s simply a lot of work to watch younger kids playing together. As kids get older and you can let them play on their own more, it will become easier to get your child in a larger group.

Schedule a time and place

Don’t just wing it at first. Figure out a time and place that you’ll be getting your child together with another child. Perhaps you will be meeting at a park or perhaps you’ll be meeting at a home. Whatever the case is, make sure that you also have the time set for when you’ll be getting together. You don’t want to be meeting in the middle of a nap time, and you don’t want to be sitting and waiting forever for the other child.

Last minute play dates can work out well if you’ve got a very flexible schedule and the other child does as well. However, a lot of parents will have a hard time making this type of schedule work for them, so scheduling who is going where and when usually works better. You can look at switching between locations every other week or always meet at the same location. Keep the communication open with the other parents whatever you do.

Bring food

Make sure that your child has some type of food that they can eat in case it’s needed. If you are at your own home, this isn’t really a problem as you can simply pull something out for your child to eat (make sure you have something at home they can eat as well). However, when getting together somewhere else, you’ll want to have a snack or meal with you just in case. You could always go home, but if you’ve scheduled for a couple of hours then it’s nice to be able to keep that scheduled time for playing.

If your child is older and going over to someone’s house for enough time to be there during a meal, then make sure that you send them with something to eat or that you’ve scheduled with the other parent that they’re going to eat at that child’s home. If you’re hosting the kids, plan to feed them something if they’ll be there during a standard meal time. Ideally, you communicate this with the other parent so they know what will be eaten.

Let the kids play

The whole reason that you are getting your child together with the other kids is to interact with other kids. Let them play together. You shouldn’t sit and control what they’re doing the whole time. While you should keep close enough to hear what they’re getting into and what they’re doing, don’t be controlling. Your child must learn to play with other kids, and doing so without you is also important.

Help your child learn to not hit and how to share their toys. Let them learn these things on their own as much as is possible, but don’t let them hit or be mean. This may take some time for your child, or you may be lucky and they’ll simply be really good with other kids. You simply won’t know unless you let them play and experience interacting with other kids on their own.

Conclusion

Play dates with kids are a great way for them to interact with other kids and to keep play time scheduled and not too chaotic. Plan ahead and let your kids have an enjoyable time playing with others.