The playdate conundrum

I base much of what I do on rules of etiquette that I've learned, either literally from reading them or from watching people who seem to know what they're doing. It is my understanding that among these rules, there's something about returning invitations when you've had someone over for entertaining. I'd always thought that these rules probably also applied to playdates, but my experiences over the years lead me to think that practice belies theory.

We have to have playdates because of where our house is. Not one of those neighborhoods where kids can just run to a friend's house and while away an afternoon. We do have a child just our children's age living right next door...but he actively shuns their company. I know this because for weeks, they'd ask him over, and he'd just decline. It got to where my children looked like stalkers or fools or both, so I had them stop. Oy, the pain of it all.

The whole playdate thing is a big black hole of a social mystery to me. Another parent might casually mention having one as you volunteer together in class. I've always taken this as sincere--and I think that's my first mistake--and then sat there, like the dateless girl on prom night, waiting for the phone call or email confirming a plan. They never come.

In fact, playdates never happen around our house unless we host them, with a couple of rare exceptions. My middle son has had several friends over to play, yet has not been invited to someone else's home (again, with one specific exception) in almost a year. In just the last month, I've sent out two emails asking if someone he thinks of as a friend could come over and...after an initial potentially positive response involving, "let me check my calendar,"...nothing.

What's the algorithm here? Is "let me check my calendar" some kind of in-speak for "um, no, not really interested"? And regardless, what is it about us...about our family...that makes us such personae non grata in other people's homes? It makes me want to pound melodramatically on a wall and just yell out "Why???!? Why??!" when one of my sons comes to me, yet again, and asks why we haven't heard yet from this friend or that friend's mother about an invitation issued weeks ago. I am honest with them. I say that it may be that the other person's interest in him isn't as strong as his interest in them, or maybe they're just that busy. What else can I say? I try, these days, to do more reading of what people do than of what they say. I find the results are far more accurate.

And then there's the cause of it all. Is it my children? Are they just too weird? Is it me? Am I just too weird? Is it them, the other people? Are they just too busy or rolling their eyes inwardly at the very idea or simply reluctant but too kind to let on? I don't know. This social shit can muddle me up until I don't know whether I'm showing my ass or my elbows, stepping on toes, being pushy, not reading signs. I'm always navigating without instruments, and Emily Post doesn't seem to address the etiquette of playdates.

I've never been much good at these casual exchanges that seem to augur a planned social interaction, always taking them too seriously, at their face value. When I was younger and someone said, "Let's do lunch," well...I thought they meant we were going to go to lunch. What they really mean, of course, is..."well, see ya later, don't really care when we might meet again."

It's baffling to me that people say these things that they simply don't mean. I've even had one parent go so far as to input our contact information into her phone--never really meaning to do anything about it. When did, "Let's get these kids together" turn into "Nope, not really interested, just trying to be nice"? I missed the etiquette memo, and I desperately need some guidelines.

Meanwhile, my children keep asking. And that little knot in my stomach--you special needs parents know that knot, right?--tightens up like it's trying to wring something out in there. Since my children are watching, I try not to let it wring out any tears.