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Community Corner

White Knuckle Parenting: The Playdate Timeline

Sure, when you pick your kid up after the playdate, I tell you it went great—and for the most part it did—but this is what I left out.

Do you want to know what one of my favorite things in the whole world is? Playdates—at, you know, someone else's house.

The thing about playdates, though, is that if you want to ever get the call that says, "Sure, drop off all three of your kids for a couple hours at my house," you have to extend the invitation as well.

In their defense, even playdates that you are forced to host can be great. Often, adding an extra kid to the mix is exactly what you need to keep your own kids happy and occupied, even if at other times playdates are like throwing an incendiary device into a watermelon patch.

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Usually, however, they run by a pretty standard schedule. Sure, there are variations, but here is how things tend to go down at my house.

Hour One:

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Minute 1: They are so excited to see each other! They race all over the house! They find every lightsaber, sword, and dart gun in the house in an attempt to massacre each other! There is a lot of screaming! About 95 percent of it is happy!

Minute 21: They ask to play video games. I say no.

Minute 22: They ask to play video games. I say no.

Minute 23: They ask to play video games. I tell them that we have a playdate to play with other people, not to stare at a television. I am emphatic.

Minute 24: They decide to continue with their Nerf gun wars.

Minute 37: I find one of my kids hiding somewhere with a video game and wrestle it away from him.

Minute 41: The host kid freaks out because his friend doesn't want to play the exact same game by the exact same rules at the same time that he does. I send a little brother in to entertain the visitor while I talk my son down/get more and more annoyed at him. "But, Mom, he won't do what I tell him to do!" my child sobs. "This is why we can't have nice friends!" I shout back.

Minute 51: I cook microwave popcorn in hopes that a snack will unify everyone.

Minute 53: It works!

Minute 58: I start finding popcorn in parts of my house where I never even saw the children.

Minute 59: The visiting kid gets frustrated about something and starts to mope around. It is impossible to ascertain what the problem is. I watch the kids for a few minutes in hopes that they can work it out until it becomes clear that they cannot. I decide to assuage them with video games.

Hour Two:

Minute 4: I feel guilty for letting them play video games and tell them "Ten more minutes before you have to play WITH each other."

Minute 19: I look at the clock and realize I missed my own deadline.

Minute 20: Everyone yells at me for a little while before happily heading off to play again.

Minute 36: A sibling gets sad for not being included in the playdate. I sneak him a handheld video game and tell him that if anyone catches him, I will deny ever having spoken to him.

Minute 45: Every child in the house, but for the one playing video games behind the couch, comes to me en masse to tell me they are bored. If the playdate is for a kid younger than 7 years old, I slap together a quick art project or activity to keep them busy. If the kids are older than that and don't have special needs, I tell them to get lost and figure out what to do by themselves.

Minute 55: I try to start the kids on an activity that will make me look good when the other parent comes by to pick up their child. I try to make it something that will make me look like an awesome, interactive parent who has played with the kids during the playdate, but still given them their space, instead of one that sat on the couch reading The Hunger Games and occasionally shouted at them.

Minute 56: The kids want nothing to do with me.

Hour Three:

Minute 12: Everyone in the house finds something awesome to do together and the greatest time in the history of times is being had. Everyone is getting along. No one is bored. There aren't even pseudo-weapons involved. This is the best ever! Naturally, the playdate is scheduled to end in three minutes.

Minute 20: The other mom comes over to pick up her child just as someone has a full-blown tantrum and someone else throws a bucket of Tinker Toys all over the living room floor. I look bad.

Minute 21: I make small talk with the other mom as she tries to coerce her child down off the top bunk and into shoes and a coat. I'm just glad it's not me.

Minute 30: Having returned to our regular three-child household, I sit and wait for the reciprocal invitation to arrive.

Minute 31: My kids tell me they're bored.

Now, I would like to make clear here, that if you know me in real life and I've had your child over for a playdate, I'm not talking about your kid here. I'm talking about those other people's children. Your kid and my kid get along famously. They play chess and eat apples when they are here. Sometimes we play classical music and do math problems as well. I swear.

And if you want to know how my kids act during a playdate, I bet I could find a time to drop them all off at your house for a couple of hours.

Jean, a.k.a. Stimey, writes a personal blog at Stimeyland; an autism-events website for Montgomery County, Maryland, at AutMont; and a column called Autism Unexpected in the Washington Times Communities. You can find her on Twitter as @Stimey.

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