Parents Now Using Playdate Business Cards For Kid Friendships
Remember when making friends as a kid was as simple as walking up to another child and saying, “Hey! Let’s be friends!”? Well, times have changed. Now, playdates are serious business. So serious that kids are handing out formal business cards to schedule hangouts with their new buddies. That’s exactly what mom influencer Vanity Rodriguez discovered when her child came home with a playdate business card.
“If you’re an extroverted parent with an extroverted child, I think this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Rodriguez, known as @_msvanity online.
In her now-viral video, she revealed that her son received a fancy card featuring the classmate’s name, photo, Roblox username, and the parent’s contact info, all inviting him to hang out after school. It’s part of a growing trend among parents eager for more in-person playdates and creative ways to swap contact details.
Brianna Mullally, a mom and former teacher who owns Missouri-based Partyof4STL, jumped on the playdate card trend to help her eldest son make new friends. “As the mom of an extremely outgoing kid who wants to invite everyone over, I love the playdate cards,” Mullally, 34, told The New York Post. “It’s so much easier to hand out a card than stand there awkwardly waiting for a phone number.”
Mullally originally made the cards when they moved to a new town, but it quickly turned into a business. “His speech teacher saw them and thought they were so great,” Mullally said. “That’s when I started selling them as printed cards in local craft groups, and they became a huge hit.”
Not everyone’s just now catching on to the trend, though. A Reddit post from three years ago mentioned a similar experience when a son received a playdate card from a classmate. A teacher chimed in, “As a teacher, this is great. I get emails all the time from parents wanting contact info for other parents because their kid wants a playdate. It sucks to say I can’t give it out,” they shared. “I’ll ask if I can pass their contact info along, but it adds to my already full plate,” they added.
Of course, there are a few skeptics. “Great idea until he loses a card and his mom’s cell number ends up on the wall of a truck stop bathroom,” one person quipped. Another joked, “I can imagine an American Psycho scene in Kindergarten where this card is mercilessly critiqued.” Someone else added, “Have your people call my people.” One person even wondered, “How do we even know this is a legitimate kid?”
