How to stay interesting?

[Anonymous]

I'd start with not giving a shit what other people think or say about you and your level of interesting.

After that, find a hobby that's not your child.

I personally do not care one bit that I am every cliche about a suburban mom. Because, well, I am a suburban mom. Shrug.

[Anonymous]

I think being boring is behavior, not so much your hobbies. A person who just went backpacking in the Andes can be boring if that's all they talk about and they're always directing the conversation back to themselves.

[Anonymous]

I found the first years of being a mom so difficult. I was trying to fight being “just mom” and desperately wanted things outside of motherhood. Somehow I finally embraced that the majority of my life involves my kids (heck, even international travel became about where to find the best playgrounds). It is the phase of life you are in.

[Anonymous]

Do things where people don’t talk about kids, and you won’t wind up talking about the kids. I am in a genre-specific book club that meets virtually— no kid chat everyone is there to discuss a book.

But...consider whether you think travel and living abroad is a stand in for really being interesting and fulfilled. This area is overwhelmingly populated with people who travel and live abroad and the echo chamber is more boring than the parent echo chamber. No one cares about you’re dengue, Susan.

— parent who lived and worked abroad

[Anonymous]

For better or worse, I’ve noticed that I tend not to speak about my children at all or very much when chatting or hanging out with either single friends or friends without kids. Not that solves anything, but you don’t have to make work or politics or international travel or human rights interests the main topic of conversation every time. You can have different types of conversations with different friends and family members. So maybe you need to spend more time reaching out to different friends to have different types of conversations? And obviously not a substitute, but if you want to talk about any interesting topics not related to kids, there are plenty of threads on DCUM you can comment on!

[Anonymous]

I have three kids under the age of 6 and I do feel like all i can talk about is mom stuff. I actually like talking kids and mostly hang out with other SAHMs but I do struggle with other adults. One thing I do try and do is stay up to date with basic current affairs. I hope that as my kids get older I expand a bit b/c I did use to be interesting...or at least knowledgeable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd start with not giving a shit what other people think or say about you and your level of interesting.

After that, find a hobby that's not your child.

I personally do not care one bit that I am every cliche about a suburban mom. Because, well, I am a suburban mom. Shrug.

pretty much this. Live authentically, embrace what you are, don't seek to seem something that you're not. Also, don't have kids in your 20s if you're still all about being the popular girl in your sorority type clique.

In terms of practical advice: Read books off NYTimes best seller list. Subscribe to New Yorker and Economist if books are not your forte. Volunteer for something meaningful for you, can be kid related or not.

But most of all don't be afraid to be what you are, flaws and all. Some people will fade away, but they not the ones with whom you had a strong connection anyhow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have tips on how to stay an interesting person to know, rather than slipping into becoming a mom who only talks about the kid(s)?

I have 1 daughter, toddler age. Sometimes it's hard for me to find stuff to talk about with people that isn't kid-related. I think it's mostly covid - travel and overseas living was a huge part of my life and identity before and i often talked about that. I also had a bigger group of friends before and had larger gatherings, which make it easier to let others lead the conversation.

Once I'm sucked into parenting conversations with other parents about kid minutiae, it feels rude to change the subject. There's always work, but I work in a field people don't find intriguing and I don't want to fall into the workaholic DC stereotype. I am a younger mom (late 20s) and most of my same age friends don't have kids. So I'm very eager to keep an identity separate from motherhood. I have many hobbies, but I don't want to bore people with those, either.

I guess I'm sensitive to this because I'd like to fancy myself a modern, dynamic woman who's still sexy and interesting, and my own mom was very absorbed in motherhood in a way that turned me off the idea at first.

Tips?

My mom sees herself as a modern dynamic woman who never had to let becoming a mother define her and subsequently had very littler interest in being a mom. I am now a SAHM whose primary focus is my kids happiness and don't really care if that defines me.

Yikes, hope you’ll cut them loose from the apron strings eventually

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have tips on how to stay an interesting person to know, rather than slipping into becoming a mom who only talks about the kid(s)?

I have 1 daughter, toddler age. Sometimes it's hard for me to find stuff to talk about with people that isn't kid-related. I think it's mostly covid - travel and overseas living was a huge part of my life and identity before and i often talked about that. I also had a bigger group of friends before and had larger gatherings, which make it easier to let others lead the conversation.

Once I'm sucked into parenting conversations with other parents about kid minutiae, it feels rude to change the subject. There's always work, but I work in a field people don't find intriguing and I don't want to fall into the workaholic DC stereotype. I am a younger mom (late 20s) and most of my same age friends don't have kids. So I'm very eager to keep an identity separate from motherhood. I have many hobbies, but I don't want to bore people with those, either.

I guess I'm sensitive to this because I'd like to fancy myself a modern, dynamic woman who's still sexy and interesting, and my own mom was very absorbed in motherhood in a way that turned me off the idea at first.

Tips?

My mom sees herself as a modern dynamic woman who never had to let becoming a mother define her and subsequently had very littler interest in being a mom. I am now a SAHM whose primary focus is my kids happiness and don't really care if that defines me.

Yikes, hope you’ll cut them loose from the apron strings eventually

The fact that you think my toddler and baby being my primary focus is a bad thing tells me everything I need to know about you as a mother.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have tips on how to stay an interesting person to know, rather than slipping into becoming a mom who only talks about the kid(s)?

I have 1 daughter, toddler age. Sometimes it's hard for me to find stuff to talk about with people that isn't kid-related. I think it's mostly covid - travel and overseas living was a huge part of my life and identity before and i often talked about that. I also had a bigger group of friends before and had larger gatherings, which make it easier to let others lead the conversation.

Once I'm sucked into parenting conversations with other parents about kid minutiae, it feels rude to change the subject. There's always work, but I work in a field people don't find intriguing and I don't want to fall into the workaholic DC stereotype. I am a younger mom (late 20s) and most of my same age friends don't have kids. So I'm very eager to keep an identity separate from motherhood. I have many hobbies, but I don't want to bore people with those, either.

I guess I'm sensitive to this because I'd like to fancy myself a modern, dynamic woman who's still sexy and interesting, and my own mom was very absorbed in motherhood in a way that turned me off the idea at first.

Tips?

My mom sees herself as a modern dynamic woman who never had to let becoming a mother define her and subsequently had very littler interest in being a mom. I am now a SAHM whose primary focus is my kids happiness and don't really care if that defines me.

Yikes, hope you’ll cut them loose from the apron strings eventually

The fact that you think my toddler and baby being my primary focus is a bad thing tells me everything I need to know about you as a mother.

Ugh, you embody the stereotype of the dumb SAHM.

[Anonymous]

Honestly I'd see a parent losing interest in everything other than their kids as a sign of depression. I've suffered bouts of depression and feeling like I'm just boiled down to my essential functions (work, my kid) is how I get when I'm depressed. The feeling like there's nothing of me as an individual left is a big part of it. Part of working through it is regaining my interests even if it's just reading a book just for me.

[Anonymous]

Have a standing babysitter that you budget into your life. Our comes every Sunday for a few hours. And in those few hours, I take a run/walk with single friends; a twice-monthly zoom music lesson; volunteer; take dogs to park with a coffee; listen to podcasts; deep-organize closets; run errands; work, if I need to catch-up; read a novel in the park. Whatever I want. Having a standing sitter lets me finish early on Friday and be unplugged with the kids on Saturdays. Some week-day strategies to keep "interesting." Zoom language classes or meetups; monthly virtual book club with childhood friends; if you played an instrument as a chid/teen, buy a cheap instrument and relearn; exercise bundled with a podcast you like. Virtual religious services.

[Anonymous]

Unrelated to the original post (which I actually find very interesting as a topic - can we as parents maintain and cultivate other interests (have no answer to that yet).

But, what strikes me as interesting is the travel as a competitive sport comment below specific to DC. One of the things I LOVED about DC is that people have had passports and have been curious enough to use them. (Spoken as someone who never had the opportunity to travel abroad as a kid or college student).

Anonymous wrote:

I have 1 daughter, toddler age. Sometimes it's hard for me to find stuff to talk about with people that isn't kid-related. I think it's mostly covid - travel and overseas living was a huge part of my life and identity before and i often talked about that. I also had a bigger group of friends before and had larger gatherings, which make it easier to let others lead the conversation.

OP, I wanted to focus on this part of your post. I think the first thing to consider is: were people interested when you talked about your travel and life overseas before? I know those seem like obviously interesting topics, but as someone who is very well-traveled, I have realized in the last few years before Covid that the way most people talk about that stuff isn't interesting. In DC, in particular, travel is kind of a competitive sport and I realized that talking about travel sometimes takes the joy out of it for me because so many people here are just interested in proving how "worldly" they are, and in doing so come off as status-obsessed and dull.

Which gets to my point. What you talk about is not nearly as important as how you talk about it.

The reason I find talk of kids tedious at times is because many parents talk about their children and parenting in the same miserable way. Either it's "my kids are a pain, I'm so tired, I just need a break" or, just as bad, "my kid is a genius, he's thriving at school, we're thrilled all the time." In both cases, the subject isn't really children or parenting. It's the speaker -- they are communicating that they are miserable or they are proud and that's the end of conversation. They could just as easily be complaining about an office job (and likely did, before the kids came along) or bragging about their most recent trip to New Zealand (and likely did before they were toting their kids along with them). They are choosing the dullest possible approach to the subject and demonstrating that they have little curiosity, open-mindedness, or expansiveness. There are probably astronauts who bore people when they talk about their experiences in this way.

Here's the child/parenting stuff I looove hearing about and I think can be interesting to anyone:

- Child development, like how kids acquire complex knowledge like spatial awareness and language. It's fascinating! How do they go from learning sounds to words to meanings to speaking? And from there you can talk about stuff like how deaf children acquire language or how children of bilingual families acquire language. It's interesting. And you have a front row seat.
- How children experience adult activities and shift our experiences of those activities. My kid experiences music, being outdoors, going to the grocery store very differently than I do. It produces hilarity (their observations are gold) but also challenges my own thinking. My kid asked me the other day why we always like to go to different places to hike all the time instead of revisiting our friends (by which she means the trees and animals and bugs) at the places we've been before. It was sweet and endearing and also kind of an indictment of that human impulse for novelty. Interesting!
- On a personal level, parenting identity and experience. Your post was interesting to me on multiple levels and sparked a conversation about Kierkegaard! People's lived experience is fascinating, especially when they bring some level of thoughtfulness to it. I would love to talk to an acquaintance about how becoming a mom shifted our perceptions of self. I would also love to discuss how societal ideas about the value of women and specifically mothers play into those feelings -- is motherhood dull or do we just live in a culture that treats it that way?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do things where people don’t talk about kids, and you won’t wind up talking about the kids. I am in a genre-specific book club that meets virtually— no kid chat everyone is there to discuss a book.

But...consider whether you think travel and living abroad is a stand in for really being interesting and fulfilled. This area is overwhelmingly populated with people who travel and live abroad and the echo chamber is more boring than the parent echo chamber. No one cares about you’re dengue, Susan.

— parent who lived and worked abroad

Ha ha ha PP, as another parent who lived and worked abroad, thank you for this. OP the PP's book club advice is good, but I'd open it up to you as: just read more. The older your child(ren) get, the easier this will be.