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Dear Miriam,
A parent reached out to ask if our 8-year-old would like to come over for a playdate or even a sleepover. When we asked our daughter, she was uninterested and shared that this other child is sometimes mean to her. In particular, this kid makes a point to say how much she hates cats when she knows that our family has a cat that our daughter loves. Do we just evade this invitation with a vague “we’re busy?” Or should we be transparent and explain why we’re saying no?
Signed,
Problematic Playdate
Dear Problematic,
The good news is that scheduling with other families is so difficult that even if you really wanted to make this happen, the chance that it would while your children are still 8 years old is pretty slim. The other good-ish news is that people are pretty flaky in general and if you don’t follow through for whatever reason, the other family probably won’t think too much if it.
But more practically, it’s very easy to get out if the first part of the invitation by saying that your child simply doesn’t like sleepovers or isn’t ready for sleepovers with families she doesn’t know that well. Your child is young enough that this is plausibly (even if not actually) true, and I don’t think you’ll get any pushback for turning this down.
As for a playdate more generally, I would ask your daughter if she can imagine anything that might be fun to do with this other child. Maybe you can invite the parent and child together to the zoo or a museum or some other activity where your daughter would be doing something she likes anyway. This kind of outing would also give you an opportunity to get to know the other parent and for both of you to observe how the kids interact. A movie could also be a great option where the kids wouldn’t even need to really talk with each other during it but would have a shared experience to talk about afterwards.
If you go this route, you have a basis for saying something like, “It doesn’t seem like they had too much interest in playing nicely together. Maybe we can try again in a few months,” or, “It seems like they had a lot of conflicts that they couldn’t resolve themselves, so I’m not sure they’d have fun during a longer playdate.” Having something substantial that both parents observed on which to base this rejection could really soften the blow.
If you don’t want to give it a try, which I completely understand based on your daughter’s ambivalence, you could say, “From what I hear, it doesn’t sound like they really get along at school. Are you hearing something different?” Give her a chance to talk about her daughter and why she thinks this friendship might have a future. Even if your kids aren’t destined to enjoy each other’s company, you might be a valuable sounding board for tht other parent.
Kids at this age are learning how to relate to each other. It’s entirely possible that the other child sees their conversations about cats as friendly banter and not meanness. She might have a lot to learn about social skills and her parent is looking for kind children to help her on that path. That doesn’t mean your family is responsible to her or required to spend time together, but the outreach is clearly coming from somewhere and it might be worth finding out more about what’s happening in the background before rejecting the invitation completely.
Be well,
Miriam
