It has come to my attention that my four year old has never had a real play-date.

A friend chosen by her, hosted in our home to play with her doll house, watch snippets from the movie Tangled, pretend they have hair as long as Rapunzel, ask me to fashion some braided wigs together, eat a snack, make a craft, make a mess, run around in circles chasing each other while squealing before being picked up to go home. A real play-date.

This hasn’t happened for a few reasons.

The first is, we don’t have a lot of extra hours on evenings and weekends, nor do we have the brain capacity to take care of our own three kids in addition to an extra four year old.

Secondly, our 10 and 8 year olds seem to want it and/or need it more when it comes to play dates and even they go weeks, sometimes months without seeing anyone outside of school or their activities.

As a general point of discussion, I would like to propose the following types of kids apply for the role of play date, thus making my life easier and maybe we can make this dream a reality.

1. Someone with impeccable manners. Please, thank-you, addresses me as “Mrs. Bradley Cooper,” you get the idea.

2. Someone who can care for themselves in all bathroom situations.

3. Someone whose Mom/Dad understand that 3 hours is the perfect amount of time for a play date. They really get it. At their core. Three hours.

4. Someone whose parents understand serving one meal during a play date is required. Serving two is a total imposition/deal breaker.

5. Someone who will reciprocate the favour. I know you’re thinking favour? My kid is amaze-balls! Granted, but your ball of amazement can sometimes do unthinkable things like ask to play with Play-Doh. I would like to know my seventeen hours peeling dry barber shop hair cuts from the family room carpet will be acknowledged by you taking on my darling amaze-ball for an equal amount of time. That amount of time being, 3 hours. Let’s say it together.

My kids have a very different list.

1. Someone who walks around eating food from room-to-room and when my Mom announces, “All food stays at the table” they just laugh and say, “Not at my house. Not in my three hours.”

2. Someone who laughs in the face of danger and talks back to parents because watching my Mom’s reaction is priceless.

3. Someone whose parents do not pick them up on time so they can stay and play with Play-Doh forever and when they do finally get picked up, they ask in front of both sets of parents, “Can I sleep over?”

4. Someone who asks to play with Play-Doh.

5. Someone who says, “I don’t eat homemade macaroni & cheese. I only eat the orange kind. I’ll eat it for lunch but for dinner, I want the good stuff.” (You’ll notice this one incorporates two of my don’ts; 1) bad manners, 2) two meals.