Playdates Are Awkward Blind Dates with Moms

Playdates.I thought I was done dating.

But I was wrong. Now my kids are setting me up on blind dates with their friends’ moms (and sometimes dads, too). Ugh.

I miss the days of playdates being only with kids of my other mom friends. When they’re too young to pick their own friends.

But as kids get older, how they find their friends changes.

Now, I am going on blind dates with moms I don’t know.

It starts with one of our kids making a friend with another kid. That is wonderful. Very happy for them to have found each other.

But then, they want to play outside of daycare or school. Also good — they’re developing critical social skills to help them navigate life.

So, like anyone striving to be a good parent, I try.

I catch a parent in the hallway and we discuss, “getting them together sometime.” You all know the line.

I smile, they smile. Kind of awkward.

Sometimes it ends there.

Other times it doesn’t. We make plans and exchange numbers. One parent is always more enthusiastic about it than the other. I am usually the less excited one.

And my lack of enthusiasm isn’t because I don’t want to help my kids have deeper friendships. It’s selfishly because I find playdates to be painfully awkward.

I am awkward.

While I can make small talk and be social, as I get older I find it harder to engage in polite conversation. You would think those skills would improve with age. Not for me.

It isn’t just the small talk. The misalignment in parenting styles is awkward, too.

Sometimes I am more laissez-faire than the other mom. They are overly involved with the kids, worrying and pestering them, taking all the play out of the playdate. I would prefer to sit down, sip a coffee, and just watch without talking at all.

And on the flip side, sometimes I become the more helicopter-type parent. I worry that I should intervene when I see a disagreement being taken a bit too far. I think about interrupting the play and ask the kids to be more careful. In these cases, I worry that I will annoy our kids and the other mom.

In both cases, it always ends up being awkward.

Sometimes parents want to start discussing the “right” way to parent (which is always their way).

There are other times conversation drifts into politics or religion. No thank you, basically perfect stranger.

One time, I encouraged the kids to race around a path in a park. Innocent enough, right? Well the path was more of a gravel type. The other kid wiped out, skinned up his knee, busted his lip, and lost it when he saw the blood.

After I shared my first aid kit, the mom and kid basically ran out of there and we haven’t heard from them since.

Except for when we awkwardly passed each other in the halls at daycare.

And there are other playdates when nothing goes wrong. But it’s still forced interaction between moms who don’t really know each other, and are stuck together for a while.

Some moms love playdates, others do not.

Some of you may have read this far and be thinking, “Same.” Others of you may be thinking I am just complaining to complain, and I should just be grateful.

Look, I get I should be glad they have friends. Not every kid is so lucky. And I am grateful, which is why I do it anyway. And, I will continue to go on these arranged mom blind dates as often as I can.

But my gratitude and recognition of their value doesn’t negate my aversion to them.

Playdates are awkward blind dates with other moms, and I stand behind that opinion.

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Caitlin Stoecker
After meeting here during college, Caitlin and her husband, Tanner, settled in North Fargo and live a pretty upper-midwestern life full of trying to appreciate the small adventures. As a mom to a son born in 2017 and a daughter born in 2021, Caitlin tries to balance all of the mommy things with taking time for what makes her a human outside of being a wife and mother. Along with spending her days working as a program manager, she enjoys finding unique family experiences in the Fargo-Moorhead area, volunteering, reading, and simply being honest about the realities of motherhood in all its vehement glory.

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