DD1 is five, in kindergarten, and reaching the age where she's making her own friends at school without me necessarily knowing their moms, and naturally, she wants to socialize with them outside of school.

Prior to this, play dates were usually planned out by me, with moms I liked, who had either children of similar ages to both my daughters. Now we are reaching a point where DD requests her own play dates with kids I don't know, and often, because of family size (3-4 kids each), or age/gender mismatches, or siblings' other activities, it might not always make sense or even be possible for everyone to get together, and we will be doing drop off play dates. My concern is - when my eldest has a friend over, what do I do with my middle daughter? Do I tell the big girls they need to leave her play, too, or try to keep her out for of their way?

I think to keep her out of their way, I'd need to plan special things to do with her (play a game, allow iPad time, etc.), or else maybe encourage DD1 and her friend to take some toys and go upstairs if they want to be away from DD2?

Maybe I'm way overthinking this, but I kind of want to go into it with a "policy" in mind to avoid sibling squabbling in front of new friends!