Playdate DRAMA...

Who knew there could be drama involved in playdates?  Let me take you to the beginning to understand the current state of affairs.  Lil' Miss made her first special friend, Miss E, in Kindergarten and withn a few weeks we saw them walking home and realized they lived literally around the corner from us.  So the new friends mommy, Missus Sweden and I started talking and set up playdates for the girls.  It was kind of funny as we had no experience doing this and both admitted it to each other, but I told her that I felt we should for lack of a better word, 'inspect' each others' homes to make sure we were comfortable with the girls playing there and make sure we had contact info for each other and all should be fine.  She agreed and we had a new routine on Fridays.

So this was the state of affairs for a few months, every Friday we would have the girls play together for a few hours after school, alternating homes.  it was working really well, and then The Third Wheel was introduced over winter break.  She was the child of divorced parents and Missus Sweden felt kind of sorry for her so invited her to a playdate we had set up to have at her house.  It seemed to work out alright, but you know how threesomes turn out, generally not too well.

The next playdate was scheduled at my house and instead of talking to me directly TTW's mother asked Missus Sweden if she could come to the playdate.  So here I was with this child I hadn't really invited, whose mother had no idea how to contact me and who didn't even know where I lived, talk about poor judgment (please excuse me why I shimmy into my judgey pants!).  So we continued on this way, alternating between our house and Miss E's house with TTW added in for spice.  Then TTW's mom wanted to have a playdate at her home, um, NO!  Why no?  I had serious problems with her judgment, after letting her kid come to a home she had no contact info for, let alone had never seen, as well as her not being within walking distance, and the fact that she currently had a brother residing with her who until that time was a homeless drug user.  But how to bow out gracefully?  Thankfully The Child Whisperer came to my rescue with the perfect excuse, #1, Lil' Miss is not ready to be that far away from home (yup, blame it on the kid!), and #2, neither am I.  TTW's mom seemed to asccept this, although she was clearly not happy.

So things continued on but there were starting to be problems, Miss E and TTW were starting to have some issues with getting along.  TTW is a rather bossy child who is sadly lacking in manners (and I'll admit it, I don't much care for her) and Miss E had had enough of being told what to do constantly.  So every week now instead of Missus Sweden and I getting to watch the girls play nicely and hae some fun with them, we were having to intervene to stop the fighting.  Eventually Missus Sweden called up TTW's mom and apprised her of the problem, although she never pointed fingers or placed the blame on TTW, her mom went ballistic.  Apparently we were the mean stay at home moms who were 'cliqueish' and didn't like her.  She refused to accept that it just wasn't working because the kids weren't getting along, it was us evil moms that were the problem.  Sigh, really?  Didn't we leave this kind of crap back in high school, apparently not.

So currently we are back down to two very happy little girls going from one house to another on Fridays and having a fantastic time playing together.  It really amazes me how well these two get along, when they have a conflict I will inevitably hear them saying "Eeny, meeny, minny, moe..." to pick who gets to choose.  The truly amazing thing is that they did this all by themselves, no one directed them to resolve their conflicts this way.  Oh, and although they still play with TTW at school and seem to be getting along much better, her mom hasn't even said hello to either of us since then.  Hold a grudge much?!