I could be wrong, but I seem to remember a time when you were almost expected to have your children’s parents be your friends to some extent or another. You ran into them all the time, you had at least one thing in common, you raised money together for school trips etc.
A couple of things have brought this to mind and I was wondering what people thought about it. I, of course, have my own ideas which I’ll share, but feel free to rip ‘em up if you need to.
One instance has to do with some people we met during the past year. Our daughter and theirs struck up a friendship (Caitlyn is very social, she has no fear of a playground scene in which she comes up and asks “would you like to play with me?”) which was continued over and over at the park right next door, it resulted in a sleep over at their house and the promise of reciprocation and future get-togethers.
And then it stopped. Not from our side, in fact each time we turned the corner into our neighborhood, Caitlyn would ask me to look over and tell her if her friend was home. If I saw both cars in the driveway we’d go home and call the house to see if there could be a play-date at the park or some such meeting. I don’t think I ever got directly through but rather had to leave a message inviting the girl and her family over for dinner, to the park, for a sleepover, various different possibilities for letting the kids play.
Honestly I was also looking forward to making friends that had nothing to do with church. At some level it was nice to think that I’d have a friend that I didn’t have to be “pastor” for all the time. But more than that it became troubling to me when almost none of the invitations was even responded to, let alone accepted and each time Caitlyn asked me to see if her “friend” was at home, I began to lie and say that she wasn’t. I wasn’t able to come up with an explanation for a four-year-old about how sometimes people aren’t there for you when you need them, let alone at all.
Now I’m not without understanding about how summer days can get packed with events and family. If you can’t make it, the you can’t make it and that’s okay. But I guess that it is the fact that if their daughter had even half of the interest in seeing Caitlyn that Caitlyn felt, then it seems curious that nothing was done about it. But I try (and admittedly fail) to make sure that the appropriate phone call is made, that the people who are waiting for a call get one.
I don’t know how this all came about, but it bothers me that people can be so fickle, or such slackers when it comes to the lives of their children. I’m pretty devoted, as far as parents go, and it would never occur to me to inhibit in any way Caitlyn’s possibilities of having a happy life. I’d do anything, even call in what has turned out to be a fruitless exercise.
The other thing that brought this to mind was just odd, rather than being troubling. Caitlyn has a friend from preschool whose class is right next to hers in kindergarten (curiously, so does the girl from the previous question). One day they asked if they could have a play date over at our house and I said sure. I can easily work from homeand I had no visits scheduled that afternoon so I spent it cleaning up behind the two girls. They had fun, so did I, it was good.
I couldn’t believe how many times they thanked me for doing it. Somehow an afternoon about the kids turned into a favor to the parents and they offered again and again to return the favor, to me.
I thought it was about the kids, I have the ability that fewer parents have of skipping an afternoon in the office and head home or wherever, but though it’s probably my imagination it seemed to turn into a way to relieve parents of the responsibility for caring for the kids for a day. Granted, Caitlyn is in after-school care here at church so I don’t bear that burden every day, but it just struck me as odd that the opportunity to give the kids a good afternoon would be seen a s a way for parents to have the afternoon off.
I mean, I like taking Caitlyn with me when I go shopping, or downtown. I like the opportunity to get out of work and hang out with her. I wasn’t doing them a favor, they were doing me a favor by letting em play 50% hooky and hang out with the girl. Even so, I just now thought of that reasoning, it wasn’t even in my mind at the time, I was just trying to be a good daddy.
I guess that it boils down to the fact that it seems odd to me, one family seems willing to foster friendship between the ids but also seems way too unreliable for me to risk Caitlyn’s fragile trust in them, the other seems so burdened (they do have other children) that they take a play day as a favor to them instead of the children. Honestly, I’d have taken all of the kids that day, it was no big deal.
