That sounds slightly creepy to me. Bordering on being a helicopter parent who wants her outreach to "touch" all the kids in the area.

I wonder if she's bored or unhappy being a parent or has some degree of OCD. I think over-regimentation of the lives of kids or their families indeed stifles the creative free time everyone needs.

Had we known a parent like that when our kids were little, I think we would have backed away from being involved.

I think, because we, as a society, are much more transient, neighborhoods are different. People often don't grow up in the same towns as their neighbors, families move in and out much more often than when I was growing up, so we often don't "know" our neighbors as well as in times past. I think people don't feel as safe letting their kids roam to neighbors' houses and few families have stay at home parents available for weekday or after school supervision of playing.

So parents seek out families they know through school or church or parenting groups and that usually involves going outside the neighborhood. I am the organizer of play dates for my grandson who is an only, so I try to invite some of his classmates (many of whom would have to go to aftercare at school) home with us to play - usually one or two after school dates per week, just because I think it's good for him and it fosters deeper friendships, which are important to me.

Elmer, I made it a point to describe the girls as well balanced b/c they seem to be. Guaca and husband--same. Had I thought the play date thing was detrimental, I'd have posted along those lines. And that's why I'm fascinated-- such regimented lifestyle, yet such joy. But is it sustainable?

Only one of my close neighbors have children, after hearing what goes on in their backyard I would never let Kali go knock on their door. I schedule play dates, nothing like the OP described, but, yes, make plans.

I've also noticed thru our nextdoor site that a woman posts almost weekly looking for play dates for her autistic son. I assume she's upfront about it, looking for like families. My guess is that in the pre-play date era socializing autistic kids was much harder than today. But again, when Mom is not around, will kids plan and organize their social affairs?

I think this is an interesting sociological question.

That sounds obsessive to me. Play dates for my two are only scheduled if necessary for outings such as skating, amusement park, movies and other activities that require driving or some planning. I think I would avoid your neighbor.

Hmmm. If Guaca is creepy, then aren't all the mommies in her date book also creepy? It's a wide network in my neck of the woods.

And come on, Guaca is very nice, you just don't like her name.

What????? Is her last name Mole?

Ha ha ha

It does depend where you live. Most moms today have jobs. Homes are empty. There is nobody there to answer the door. Many children are institutionalized all day with school, aftercare and/or daycare.

The parents that stay at home try to connect with other parents in whatever way possible to ensure their kids are having social interactions outside of school and structured activities like sports and classes.

"Mommies groups" get together and plan play dates at parks and field trips. They also have kids over at each others homes for unstructured play.

Sounds like Guaca has taken the bull by the horns and organized her own style of mommies group that fits her and her children's needs. Good for her. I think it's wonderful.

This woman has four daughters - cut her some slack and give her a break.

My children are now mid-40's. They had play dates and they played up and down the street. We had a ton of children on our short block, but both also liked to invite a friend home from nursery school for lunch an an hour's play before nap time. And then there were sleepover play dates. All were good. I guess with 4 children, one would have to be pretty darned organized with play dates! How on earth could one possibly remember?

Yes, I, too, lament the lack of neighborhood freeplay these days. My DD was thrilled when she discovered that there were two boys up the street the same age as her two. I think they were probably 2 and 4 at the time. Now, they're 15 and 17 and they still play together - camping trip this weekend with younger boy up the street, my elder grandson and a school friend of his. Yes, ALONE! I was pretty loose with my children but I'm not sure I would have allowed a highway drive of 2 hours to a state wildlife area with two nights camping. DD said there IS cell phone coverage there and she could use the GPS on their smart phones to know exactly where he was at all times. He is going to college in a year and is a very responsible young man. I just think of snakes, bears, broken bones...but then I'm not the outdoor type!

It's a different world today than it was when we were growing up. It was no big deal then for kids to roam the neighborhood and surrounding areas, rousting up their chums or hanging out in someone's back yard. I even rode my bike several miles each way to a more distant friend's house and then we would trek even further to hang out at a local park. I would be gone from early morning to just before dinner and no one would be concerned. We were all pretty safe in our little cocoons :-)

Now, who knows who the neighbors are!! They could be meth dealers or worse. Or what other undesirables may be hanging around the neighborhood, looking to prey on unattended or unsupervised children. There's a whole lot more bad people out there.....hadn't you noticed?? And letting kid roam freely without supervision all day long is grounds for getting CPS involved!! Parents want and need to know where their kids are and who they are with......it's called good parenting :-) Play dates are just one facet of this. I applaud a mom who is concerned enough about her kids' welfare and safety that she plans activities and outings with their friends but with advance knowledge of who will be doing what where and with whom.

My boys are 8&9 they are still supervised, by that I mean either me or another adult is outside with them at all times.

It is different. I was a child in the 90's and even then I was allowed to roam the neighborhood. But now, as an adult, I can honestly say I've never seen an unaccompanied child or group of children in any neighborhood I've ever lived in. Probably 15/16 is the youngest I've seen.

People are really scheduled now. Both parents working long hours is the norm now with the cost of living so high in many parts of the country. Where I live, starter homes or condos are at least half a million dollars, and that's tough on people who are raising kids, who have student loan debt, and who don't have equity in a previous house to use. I have many kids in my preschool who are there from 7 am to 6 pm because of their parents work demands.

School-aged children are also really scheduled now with after school activities. A lot of it is for college admission, where good grades and test scores are no longer enough to go to a great school. There is intense pressure in some communities for children to excel and it's a lot for them.

I remember thinking it was strange when I first heard a child ask for a play date, but now it seems normal. It's cute to see the kids get excited about it. They will run up and say, "Jacob is coming to my house tomorrow for a play date!" It's also a good time for the parents. They can either relax at the host house or use the time to do some child-free errands.

Sadly, play dates are the only way children can get together outside of school any more. In my area, there is a father who has worked very hard to change the character of his neighborhood into what he dubbed a Playborhood. Here is a link to the NYT piece about his efforts: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/magazine/the-anti-helicopter-parents-plea-let-kids-play.html?_r=0 . I admire this father's work tremendously. I live one town over from him, so this is not my neighborhood. I hope this catches on, because the one thing I find bad about playdates is the lack of unsupervised time. I was the only child of wildly overprotective parents and even I had more freedom in the late 70's early 80s than my four children enjoy. I think unstructured time with friends outside builds independence and creativity and all sorts of great things.

Play dates on the other hand, teach children scheduling and appointment making- which are skills in and of themselves ;-)

PS Anyone who thinks you can keep track of four children's schedules - plus yours and the house's without keeping it in writing is clearly someone who has not done that job.

I've watched Guaca with her black book, organizing dates almost a month out.

Times have really changed. My two are
very involved in sports and other activities, some require traveling.
On the days we are home, a friend or two are usually here playing
ball, bean bag toss, badminton or hide and seek. I can't recall
parents, when I was a child, that spent so much time driving kids
here and there. I work full time and although friends are always
welcome to come and play on short notice, if it's convenient, there
is no way I would be able to commit to “yes Johnny can come over in
a month at such and such a time for a swim in the pool and supper”.
I much prefer to do that a day or two in advance. There is just too
much scheduling already going on.

Sorry, from your description, I wouldn't call her well balanced. I'll stick with the words I used to describe my first impressions.

Our elementary school age grandsons have friends over, and we call them play dates. The moms make the arrangements for after school play times or weekend times. All their lives, they have lived in neighborhoods with no other little kids their ages. They moved 18 months ago to a neighborhood with houses whose owners are either empty nesters or their kids are high school and college ages. Their street backs up to a little pond/lake, and there are no other side streets in the neighborhood. I grew up in the '40s and '50s, and I played with one family of children our age. The other kids on our block were all older, but I did join them for baseball, kick the can and fox and hound. Times have changed and many folks decide not to have children, or just one or two. So play dates have become a necessity.

Eh...I don't do "playdates" like that and I'm not personally aware of anyone in my social circle that does either.

I live in a neighborhood of 60 homes. Out of those 60, I believe 10 have children. Five of them I know for a fact because the kids are in my kids grades.

One mom and I are very friendly with each other and it is not at all uncommon for us or them to be out on a walk, see each other and end up playing together.

I won't allow my kids to go knock on her door and she doesn't let her kids come knock on mine because we are both really busy and sometimes it just isn't convenient. We will text each other though, "you and the kids want to come over?" Or "out for a walk, mind if we stop by?". I guess the modern day equivalent of knocking on the door and asking to play.

Our kids aren't old enough to run free yet but I see plenty of 10-15 year olds riding bikes or driving golf carts. Some of them I don't really approve of but, cest la vie.

The rest of my kids friends live too far away to ride bikes to so yes, we once again have to contact parents and then one of us has to drive to the others place. But that is never scheduled more than a few hours to a day or two in advance.

I don't like things being overly scheduled so I try to plan for no more than one event per weekend. It's leave plenty of free time for living!! Doing things like playing in the backyard with the kids when our friends ride by on their bikes and they end up playing while mom and I visit. ;)

As far as weekends go, mine are already booked up until the end of July. We have friends visiting this weekend, a family event the next, my girls weekend after that, followed by our family vacation. So right now I have been joking with my friends that we aren't available until the end of July but that only applies to weekends.

Some of them are busy households with 2 working parents so they aren't available during the week but my teacher friends and other stay at home mom's are and we will see each other and catch up this summer.

I am not seeing the age of these children. Seems to me with three siblings each these girls has plenty of built in playmates. Seems like a lot of work IMHO. Are these play dates at other people's houses so this mom is trying to get herself a few hours 'off'? My experience says forcing friendships doesn't work. Most kids/people either click with another or not and we all gravitate to those we click with. To do this at the initial introduction into a new town/neighborhood would be pro-active of a mom but beyond that I don't see kids loving this. On the other hand neighborhoods have changed. To assume your kid could go out the door and find another kid home, not in day care and or not scheduled to the MAX with sports/arts events is probably not realistic. I would go the route of finding an event my kids are interested in and watching them find friends there and encourage those relationships. It has long been a thing for social climbers to orchestrate kids being with THE RIGHT kids...maybe she is just hunting for THE RIGHT contacts? Bottom line mom is going to a lot of work that would not be my style.

Arcy, it is a lot of work. I'm outdoors a lot and I see her SUV coming and going. I don't know the girls exact ages but guessing 7, 8, 12 and 17. I don't think the 17 YO drives or at least I've never noticed. A lot of the activities are thru the church. Back during Mardi Gras the church organized a pageant, so it's not a play date per se but a scheduled event notheless. 17 YO was the queen or princess or whatever--a big event for the family. Pictures were lovely.

From what I read here, these factors influence the play date thing:

1) more transient lifestyle

2) busy 2 income families

3) safety

if behaviors skip a generation, It will be interesting to see if these "social" kids will be social on their own and carry on these social duties when they have kids. I hope I live long enough to observe. I am truly fascinated as so different from how I grew up and how we raised SS

I didn't have play dates when my son was little. He was socialized enough with daycare and being outside in the neighborhood. I think we learned a long time ago, knocking on doors might not be the safest thing, so play dates evolved. You at least have an idea of what the person is like and can have it on your own turf sometimes. Takes some of the worry out. I don't think it's wrong or preferred, just different.

My son is social enough so I guess it worked well not to do play dates. He's also an only child, so needs the quiet time. He found that to be true a lot once he started middle school. There is just so much yelling outside of the classroom and he'd be worn down at the end of the day after the bus ride home. Balance is a good thing.

Our DS grew up much the same as my DH and I -- in a stable neighborhood where there was a SAH parent or Senior at home most of the time. (The elders were invested in the well-being of the kids, and the kids were respectful of them.)

I reject the notion that there is any more 'stranger danger' today than at any earlier time, but I recognize the absence of 'caring eyes'. It makes me sad that parents either prefer to work or must work instead of *being present* at home to raise their children. "Nobody home" isn't a positive for kids or for anyone. You don't have a neighborhood without real *neighbors*.

Play dates are better than nothing. Better, in my opinion, is loose supervision of free play for a loosely affiliated group of kids over much longer spans of time -- hours, weeks, months, years. No, you don't want to encourage an extreme like "Lord of the Flies", but play dates are much too short and restrictive to 'socialize' any but very young children. Kids need to 'knock together' -- outside of school and other activities where an adult rules. Given time, kids usually learn to sort themselves out very well in a more authentic way than when adults organize everything.

My grandsons have alway played all over the neighborhood. There is a very shallow creek (think a few inches deep, not feet) and they used to go there all the time. They still ride their bikes everywhere - downtown, to the malls, to parks. They have their cell phones with them and check in regularly. No, they do NOT Iive in a small town - out city has a population of over 1 million. People vastly overestimate the dangers today. I suppose if one lives in a neighborhood with meth houses and drug dealers, it would be different, but a typical middle class neighborhood is pretty safe.

I liked the door knocking and so does my daughter. If it's not convenient, one CAN always say "NO"!

My kids have what they call play dates but not scheduled out like that. Similar to Texas Gem it is usually more like moms texting so they can coordinate driving or confirm where their kids are. There are a lot of sports and afternoon activities, after school care and non-parent caregivers. For example once I picked up middle kid from school at carpool and his friend climbed in the van too: "we are having a play date!" Well, we'd better make sure your mom knows and says ok ;-)

Bossyvossy- you said you wondered if behaviors skip a generation how these current "social" kids might end up and I can offer at least one possible perspective.

When I was a kid there were no kids that lived around us that were my age. I had a few extracurricular activities but a lot of them were tied to church activities with people who I never interacted with socially outside of church.

My brother was in a little league and in boy scouts and he never saw any of those kids outside of those activities. There weren't any real friends for either of us to play with or socialize with outside of organized activities under parents watchful eyes.

My mom always wished we had friends close by to play with and she tried to arrange things but, organized and scheduled play time just isn't conducive to actually building true relationships and friendships between two people, especially young children with emerging social skills. As someone said earlier, you can't really have a neighborhood without neighbors.

I suppose it is part of why I hate having my free time too scheduled and I don't like to do that to my kids either.

I won't enroll them in a bunch of extracurricular activities simply to fill their, and my, schedule up with planned opportunities to work on social skills and make friends.

I did it and look where it got me. I would rather they be able to enjoy being a carefree kid with plenty of free time during the only chance they will ever get. If we find people to hang out with on the fly, that's great!! Yay, more fun!! If we don't, we didn't waste our time making sure we were at Timmy's house by 2 for the scheduled swim. We enjoyed ourselves outside riding our bikes and playing.

Of course if you ask me in 2 years everything will be different as my oldest will be approaching teenage years!!

Anglophilia- I'll be honest and maybe TMI but if I'm at home and I don't expect anyone to be coming by or knocking on my door, I'm in comfy clothes with no bra on!! If I had an unexpected knock at the door I would have to hurry to make myself somewhat presentable in order to simply answer the door!

If I get a text a few minutes beforehand that they are close and wanted to stop by, it gives me enough time to at least put a bra back on and pull my hair into a ponytail. Maybe toss those last few dishes in the sink and wipe the counter before they arrive. ;). Or to simply say "No, now's not a good time but thanks!"

I've got 4 kids and I'm worn out. I'm sorry but I can't maintain a perpetual state of being ready to receive visitors.

I sure don't want to look like a slob either.

Thankfully my other mom friends all get it and we all give each other the courtesy call/text instead of just showing up and knocking on the door whilst you are in the middle of cleaning up pet A's mess while trying to figure out why child B is crying and you have mysterious splatter C on your shirt from who knows what!! ;)

Kids used to do the calling, not the parents. We'd stand outside a house and YELL, "Oh-oh, MARILYN," and she'd either materialize or stick her head out and say she couldn't play. I'm sure no kid ever even noticed what anyone's mother was wearing. (Geez, a *grownup*, who cares?)

This reminds me of a story I've told here before. It illustrates the invisibility of moms. It also dates to a time when neighbors only locked their doors overnight.

Joey and Mary were four-year-old next door neighbors who played together all the time. They lived in two of three houses in a row that were all the same builder's model.

One summer day Mary had gone to the store with her dad. Mrs. A. was taking the opportunity of having the house to herself to take a nice shower in the upstairs bathroom.

Whoosh! The shower curtain was swept back and there stood Joey. "Hello, Mrs. A.," he said, looking her in the eye. "Where's Mary?"

Mrs. A. told him Mary would be back in a few minutes. "OK, I'll come back later," said Joey, turning to tromp back down the stairs and go home.