I hate the term “play date.” It annoys me to no end. What happened to knocking on the neighbor’s door and asking, “Can Susie come out to play?” Now everyone has to check their schedules, make sure it doesn’t conflict with some other event, and inevitably, one or both parents have to drive several miles to drop a child off or meet at a park.

Whatever Type A parent who started the whole play date thing ought to be shot.

To be fair, we are much to blame for the situation. We send our kids to a school that is not in our neighborhood (though the local public school is nowhere near our house, either), so all their friends live in other parts of town. It makes it tough for kids to have friends. Then there are the friends who have left the school, but still want to have play dates.

And of course, we have to know where our kids are at all times. No running around the neighborhood till all hours during the summer. Being a kid these days is no fun.

But just because I’m partly to blame, doesn’t mean I have to like it.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion. Tags for this post: page-b01, Teresa Truelsen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.