Mommy Date Saddness

My 6 year old daughter E has been asking for a date with Mommy for a while. My wife planned it out where she would take our 4 year old son C on a date this weekend and then on the next day, take E. I would have baby L for most of the weekend and the other kid while she was on her dates with E and C.

Everything went according to plan for a date with C. The next day, my wife called an audible with E since her cousin wanted to go swimming. They all went (without me and L) and had a lot of fun. Then, they all went to the bookstore afterwards to buy some books. I didn’t think anything about the audible and E went to sleep over at her cousin’s house that night.

The next day after I picked her up, E wanted to go on her Mommy date. It was already late in the day and I told her we couldn’t do it. We would need to find another day to do it. Apparently, we did not signpost enough for E that swimming + bookstore + sleepover took up the time for a Mommy date. She was really sad about it and some big feelings came out. It was probably also much worse because she didn’t sleep well during the sleepover. E didn’t realize that was going to be an outcome and ended up being sad all night about it.

My wife ended up talking to her and setting a day to make up the date in the middle of the week. It’ll happen and it’ll be fine. I did learn though that we need to explicitly outline the things that were going to happen as a result of doing something else, especially if they were looking forward to doing something (and that changes somehow). Maybe that wouldn’t have fixed everything, but one thing that I’ll pay more attention to in the future - especially if it’s a Mommy date that is changing.