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who said this is a competition? this makes no sense. respect is not a one way street. if the parent can't pay attention to the person they wanted to meet with, that's not quite respectful. your initial comment indicates clearly that OP does not deserve attention and respect in your opinion, and that it is only OP (who was given the offer) who must pay attention to their partner
OP made it a competition. They haven't even arrived, they don't even know the kids in question, but they're already calculating whether they will siphon off attention away from them. That screams immaturity to me.
My comment says nothing of the sort, and i am sorry if it can be interpreted that way.
Let me rephrase it : OP sounds super high-maintenance. If i am meeting with another adult, it's not to baby-sit them. It's not to always be wondering whether i am giving them enough affirmation, or whether they are getting agitated because they feel i'm not focused 100% on them. That's what kids are for.
That is not to say you should meet with someone and completely ignore them. But when adults meet, there's this tacit understanding that everybody's got their own shit going on, and there may be the odd interruption or the occasional shift of focus. Your work phone may ring. A kid may get hurt and need a hug. Hell, maybe someone from your Minecraft group hits you up on Discord for some urgent topic. I don't give a shit, i'm not the center of the universe, and i can look at my phone for 10 minutes while you get your stuff out of the way. Apparently OP is wildly unprepared for this kind of completely normal and benign situation.
I don't think OP's problem is the lack of affirmation. I think their concern is somewhat similar to the meeting partner starting to browse social media on their phone, but here not because of bordedom or addiction but because the children needs attention, which is just how children work naturally, with varying frequency. and so, I think it's not about whether the partner actively participates, but whether they are listening or if they are distracted so you are basically talking to a wall.
but you know what, I realized that I don't have enough information to know what OP thinks, and maybe I'm just trying to put into words how I see it.
hmm I see. I think these are fine, shit happens, and these don't have a very high probability of happening either anyway. but (without much experience) I feel that with 2 very young kids as in OP's situation, the distractions could easily be frequent, and that is why I think he is right to decline the offer