Date Night Kid Swap

It’s Friday! You know what that means…well, maybe you don’t, so I’m going to tell you. It’s Date Night Kid Swap! This is the best thing that has happened to our dating life since we’ve had kids.

You should do it, too. If you don’t have kids yet, seriously log this away for future reference. It will change your life.

I first got the idea here.

This is how we do it (enter Montell Jordan with my favorite song in 7th grade):

• Get together 3-4 couple-friends with kids who all know / trust each other. This is the hardest of the how-tos. Think: family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, mommy-groups, church-groups, school-groups, etc. If you don’t have them, grow them by making it a point to introduce and build relationships among 4 couples with whom you’d like to kid swap.
• Pick a night that works for all families – weekends are usually best. We do Fridays 4:30-7pm.
• Each couple takes 1 Friday per month and “hosts” – watching all of the kids together, thereby earning the rest of the Fridays of the month as date nights!
• At drop-off, kids must be freshly diapered and already fed dinner. We also usually put our kids in pajamas. The hosts don’t put them to bed; we pick them up just in time to whisk them away to dreamland back in their own beds. It’s so much easier when they’re already “jammied.”
• Many of our seven kids in the swap are too young to watch videos. But, in the future I think we’ll develop an all-families approved video list to make it as easy as possible on the hosts.
• Whether or not you leave your babies (0-6mo) with the hosts is up to you and the hosts!

Bonus* One thing we’ve discovered by chance is that the time frame during our swap is happy hour at many local restaurants, coffeeshops, and pubs!

Probably the biggest benefit of all (and that’s a big one if it trumps free childcare) is that it makes us have a date. It’s not that we don’t want to have a date, it just costs money and energy to plan to do so if it’s not already built into our week. One night of chaos per month is well worth our 2-3 nights of sheer freedom.

So..well..what do you think? Revolutionary, right?! Maybe you’ve already been kid swapping…