Playgroup Politics
Oct. 14th, 2005 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerMolly started at a new preschool this fall. The year she turned three, we enrolled her at a preschool run at the park three blocks away, and she went there for two years; it was a good experience, very laid back (I like that in a preschool), but there's only one teacher, and we really thought Molly should go somewhere else for her third year. (When we started there, our school district had a program called High Fives that was kind of a public pre-K for the kids who were turning five in the fall. It was half day and sounded, honestly, just like what we used to call kindergarten. As opposed to kindergarten, which these days sounds like what we used to refer to as, "first grade." But High Fives got mostly axed by budget cuts, and I digress.)
Molly is adjusting to the change much better than I am, I have to admit. She likes her teachers, her classmates, the playground, the big indoor room they play in on rainy days, etc. She has bonded with a little girl, N., whose mother lets her play on the playground after school most days. The post-preschool playground time is how she bonded with R. and M., her best friends from last year.
Molly gets an entirely new set of kids to meet and get to know; I get a new set of mothers, and worse, a different set of play-date norms. At the park preschool, here's how play-dates went: one mom called another mom and proposed the play-date. For early play-dates, the whole gang got together: girls, mothers, younger siblings (if any). This allowed us to scope out each other's houses. Any guns lying around, puddles of toxic waste, pet rattlesnakes? No? Then for future play-dates, we could negotiate whether to all get together, or just drop off the visiting child.
Play-dates are ostensibly for the kids, but they have fringe benefits for the mothers. Either you get to hang out with a fellow grown-up for a few hours while your kids amuse themselves and let you chat, OR they function as an informal de facto babysitting arrangement. (Sometimes the babysitting arrangement is more formalized -- that's when you call up and say, "can you babysit on Tuesday morning?" instead of "would M. like to come over today or tomorrow?" But we mostly only did those when we had some actual need for a sitter. The secret joy of the drop-off play-date is that it's unscheduled, non-previously-committed free time.)
(And I just have to note -- I love spending time both with M.'s mother, and with R.'s mother, and I'm not just saying that because I suspect at least one of them reads my LiveJournal. They're funny and sarcastic. We share similar politics and stress out over the same things. We love the same places in our neighborhood. I mean, they're cool. It was a win-win either way, whether we did a dropoff, or a full get-together.)
So anyway. R. started kindergarten this year and M. is still at the park preschool (it's only her second year there). We're still getting together, but Molly is making new friends at her new school, and wants to see them for play-dates, too. New friends, new mothers, new unspoken social rules to stress me out. At the playground yesterday, N.'s mother was talking to a third mother about how she just couldn't even imagine letting N. just go off to a friend's house without her being there to supervise. So is that the norm at this preschool, or is N.'s mother the exception? I have no idea. I'm guessing that all these mothers at least do the scope-out-the-house thing before letting their kid go somewhere unsupervised, but if Molly has a play-date with S., another little girl she's hit it off with, and after a visit at each house I ask her mother, "So, do you want to just leave S. here this time?" will she feel unwelcome, or suspicious, or will she think I'm a bad, bad mother? Or, if I keep showing up with Molly and staying through the play-date if she invites Molly over, will she take that to mean that I'm weird and suspicious and overprotective?
At least I know for sure that for the forseeable future, a play date with N. also means a play date with N.'s mother. Which is okay, she seems perfectly nice, except that when we chat (I've tried to get to know her because Molly likes N. so much) I spend the whole time worrying that she thinks I'm a huge enormous dweeb and not nearly cool enough to eat at her table. I don't know if she's actually giving off a "don't talk to me, you dweeb" vibe, or if she's a little shy, or if this is entirely in my own head, spun out of all my lingering junior high neuroses.
If she calls me a dweeb next week, though, I think that's probably going to mean that she reads my LiveJournal.
Molly is adjusting to the change much better than I am, I have to admit. She likes her teachers, her classmates, the playground, the big indoor room they play in on rainy days, etc. She has bonded with a little girl, N., whose mother lets her play on the playground after school most days. The post-preschool playground time is how she bonded with R. and M., her best friends from last year.
Molly gets an entirely new set of kids to meet and get to know; I get a new set of mothers, and worse, a different set of play-date norms. At the park preschool, here's how play-dates went: one mom called another mom and proposed the play-date. For early play-dates, the whole gang got together: girls, mothers, younger siblings (if any). This allowed us to scope out each other's houses. Any guns lying around, puddles of toxic waste, pet rattlesnakes? No? Then for future play-dates, we could negotiate whether to all get together, or just drop off the visiting child.
Play-dates are ostensibly for the kids, but they have fringe benefits for the mothers. Either you get to hang out with a fellow grown-up for a few hours while your kids amuse themselves and let you chat, OR they function as an informal de facto babysitting arrangement. (Sometimes the babysitting arrangement is more formalized -- that's when you call up and say, "can you babysit on Tuesday morning?" instead of "would M. like to come over today or tomorrow?" But we mostly only did those when we had some actual need for a sitter. The secret joy of the drop-off play-date is that it's unscheduled, non-previously-committed free time.)
(And I just have to note -- I love spending time both with M.'s mother, and with R.'s mother, and I'm not just saying that because I suspect at least one of them reads my LiveJournal. They're funny and sarcastic. We share similar politics and stress out over the same things. We love the same places in our neighborhood. I mean, they're cool. It was a win-win either way, whether we did a dropoff, or a full get-together.)
So anyway. R. started kindergarten this year and M. is still at the park preschool (it's only her second year there). We're still getting together, but Molly is making new friends at her new school, and wants to see them for play-dates, too. New friends, new mothers, new unspoken social rules to stress me out. At the playground yesterday, N.'s mother was talking to a third mother about how she just couldn't even imagine letting N. just go off to a friend's house without her being there to supervise. So is that the norm at this preschool, or is N.'s mother the exception? I have no idea. I'm guessing that all these mothers at least do the scope-out-the-house thing before letting their kid go somewhere unsupervised, but if Molly has a play-date with S., another little girl she's hit it off with, and after a visit at each house I ask her mother, "So, do you want to just leave S. here this time?" will she feel unwelcome, or suspicious, or will she think I'm a bad, bad mother? Or, if I keep showing up with Molly and staying through the play-date if she invites Molly over, will she take that to mean that I'm weird and suspicious and overprotective?
At least I know for sure that for the forseeable future, a play date with N. also means a play date with N.'s mother. Which is okay, she seems perfectly nice, except that when we chat (I've tried to get to know her because Molly likes N. so much) I spend the whole time worrying that she thinks I'm a huge enormous dweeb and not nearly cool enough to eat at her table. I don't know if she's actually giving off a "don't talk to me, you dweeb" vibe, or if she's a little shy, or if this is entirely in my own head, spun out of all my lingering junior high neuroses.
If she calls me a dweeb next week, though, I think that's probably going to mean that she reads my LiveJournal.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-10-14 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-14 06:10 pm (UTC)I really should get Tommy involved with his peers. I feel like a "bad parent". But dammit, when I'm home _I_ want Tommy to myself! Then again, he has peers at daycare, so I guess I'm not depriving him too much.