By MELISSA WELLHAM
When I was a kid, play dates with my friends were fairly simple affairs. I would skip merrily on over to their house after school, and we would proceed to (a) climb trees and imagine we were pirates, (b) act out complicated storylines where our Barbies were participating in torrid love affairs, while juggling fulfilling careers as vets (it was always vets), or (c) pretend we were witches and try to make things levitate with our minds. As you do.
But my parents never had to sign to a contract before one of these play dates.
Well, the times they are a-changing.
Last week, a user on the internet forum Reddit posted this photo:
It’s a contract. A contract given to the poster’s six-year-old child, that outlines the rules that must be obeyed when visiting their neighbours’ house and playing on their water slide.
If the rules aren’t followed? Well, then the children will be sent home, and they won’t be allowed to play on the slide anymore. Presumably ever again.
Now, a lot of these rules are just common sense. Like, not doing somersaults off the water slide. Good call, friendly neighbours. But is a contract really necessary? I can’t help but feel it’s a little cray-cray. Then again, if I had a water slide, maybe I’d be overprotective too…
Well, what do you think? Is writing a contract before kids come over to play a good idea?
Top Comments
I'm pretty sure all I need to say is I HIGHLY DISLIKE the people already
In fairness, this is about much more than a "play date". Usually, play dates are reciprocal - your child has a friend over, then next time your child goes to their friends house. At those sorts of play dates it is perfectly reasonable to expect that the hosting parents will provide snacks and appropriate supervision. Also, normally play dates result from an invitation. However, this seems to ve a very different situation, so it is a but misleading to dismiss this as a "contract for a play date". These poor parents obviously have a large number of neighbourhood children arriving uninvited, expecting to spend large amounts of time regularly playing on this family's water slide. I doubt that the "contact" has anything to do with a desire to avoid litigation, but is rather an attempt to set some ground rules for very inconsiderate neighbours and visitors.
Although not on the same scale, we have a couple of neighbourhood children who regularly knock on our door in the school holidays asking in the morning if our children would "like to play". If I say yes, they will try to stay all day and when I say that it might be time to go home, or suggest that my children might like to play at their house for a change, I'll often be given answers such as "my Mum said I should stay here for the day because Daddy went out last night and is sleeping today", "Mum doesn't like it when I have friends over because she says they make a mess", or just "Mummy wants a break today". While I'm happy for neighbourhood kids to visit, all day every day is too much, so after a few days I'll tell them - next time you want to play with my kids, why don't you invite them over to your house? Usually means we don't see them or hear from themfor at least a week!