I have found this with precisely one other person so far, my bestie from college, and sadly she usually lives around the globe from me BUT the community she provides via text is amazing.
It’s super frustrating though when you don’t line up. We’re trying to navigate this with our neighbors right now. Just today, there was some language around
[details=“TW disordered food language”]
donuts being “bad foods” and needing to “earn them” with biking, that sort of thing.
[/details] not to mention we have pretty different approaches to discipline. And as all the kids get older, this is becoming more apparent. And it’s hard to navigate the level of access and community there versus those differences. It’s wonderful having people with similarly aged kids that we can ask at a moments notice if they want to meet up at the playground and that sort of thing, we would be way more isolated without them, but it’s hard to balance the implications of isolation versus exposure to parenting ideas that we’re not big fans of.
Yeah it’s been hard for me to reckon with not having that in my IRL parent friends since I have such a godo group of friends in person who I’m in sync with.
Like I basically lost the religious community aspect because we are so much more progressive.
And I feel the family community has a lot to be desired even if they love us and are a great support in other ways.
Yeah, I got lucky with 2 friends trying for kids at the same time we did, but they live slightly too far for regular catch ups. Physically nearby people with same parenting styles are so damn valuable. I’m still searching.
I just want to acknowledge what a big part this is of making any kind of friend.
But also thanks for letting us know about the 1000 hours thing! I don’t know that we’ll make friends through it but it is helping us get out for a bit most days and has some helpful ideas.
I think I made a parent friend! She posted on our neighborhood moms facebook group a month or so ago and asked for playdates for her son. I connected with her and we’ve texted a few times since then and discovered she only lives 2 blocks away! Yesterday afternoon she brought her son over after work and the kids had a play date and we chatted. She has already invited us over for brunch soon!
There’s another family down the street with a boy around Kiddo’s age and twin girls a couple years younger. Pre-pandemic we met up at the local kids museum once and they invited us over for a small kids birthday party at their house (there was one other family with kids there). Oh and we went trick or treating together. That sounds like a lot but it didn’t feel like a lot since it happened over such a long time frame.
After one Halloween off for Covid, we trick or treated together again this past October. Then a month ago Mr. Meer had a medical thing and I had to be his driver, which meant we’d miss school pick up. I texted the other mom and asked if she was okay with doing pick up and some amount of babysitting since we didn’t know when exactly we’d be getting back. That went fine, then a couple weeks later we had them over for a play date, then last night the other mom texted me to ask if we could take her son to school this morning.
I’d say friendship is officially achieved! Would I be friends with the other mom and dad otherwise? Not really, no. But that’s fine. The nice thing was when they came over for the play date (the mom came over initially and the dad came over later) the adults all got to sit around chatting for a while even though we were interrupted with occasional having to parent things.
There’s two or three other families with kids in the right age range, we’ll see if I can ever form a friendship with either of them over the next twelve years before Kiddo graduates high school. Anyway, I wrote this all up to give hopes to those who feel like this is taking forever and that your initial efforts haven’t yielded anything yet. Give it time! A LOT of time.
I’m doing a big thing! I collected contact info for enough families and the weather is good enough today that I’m kicking off the Tot Tangle, just an informal playgroup that I’m hoping we can do each weekend. Invited 6 families, 8 kids including ours, so we’ll see who can make it! Everyone I floated the idea to seemed really excited so here’s to hoping this is a great community builder for everyone.
BUT the community she provides via text is amazing.
Anyway, I wrote this all up to give hopes to those who feel like this is taking forever and that your initial efforts haven’t yielded anything yet. Give it time! A LOT of time.