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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am not in your situation exactly because although we don't live near any family, we've created a robust village, but I do have three suggestions for you if I may.

[b]For whatever reason, you have not connected with people despite living there ten years. In some way, your personality or your lifestyle or SOMETHING makes people not feel close to you. [/b]So what I suggest, is hire a part time after school nanny who will facilitate friendships. Nannies are friends with each other and they get "their" kids together.

My other suggestion is, check your communication. Make sure you're asking for what you need. If you're just like "Yeah Phil is sick and I have a huge presentation tomorrow and my kids are bouncing off the walls" you're not saying you need help. If you said that to me I'd just be like "yeah being a busy working mom is hard and chaotic." But if you posted on Facebook "So, Phil has been sick in bed over a week and I've been working until past midnight each night and don't even have time to go food shopping - can anyone help by dropping off some things tomorrow?," then someone could say "Hey I'm going food shopping tomorrow - text me the top ten things you need and I'll send my husband to drop them off tomorrow night."

Lastly, throw money at the problem. Hire someone to watch the kids for two hours a day, hire a cleaning person twice a month, etc. [/quote]

I’m sorry but I do have to agree with this.  For whatever reason, the connections that you have made in your community appear to be only skin deep, and this is something to evaluate.  Have you been the kind of friend you are looking to have?  And are they really the type of friends you are hoping to have?  Expand your network.  Host a neighborhood block party, join a local charitable organization.  It’s going to take an investment if you want to get that sort of quality connection back.

And yes, you’re going to have to hire help if you don’t have that network.[/quote]

We are working parents with a couple kids and we have no friends. It’s too hard finding another family where we get along with both spouses and kids.  So kids do play dates, but we are too boring for the families we do know (we have invited several over a couples, invited along to activities like museums or skiing), but never reciprocated.

I think family relationships are driven by the mom, and I’m an introvert with a demanding exhausting meeting heavy job so I don’t have time to just do girls lunch or whatever so we aren’t making friends. OP I would not do a block party; friendships are built in small group settings with unstructured time, like meeting for lunch or after yoga. Make that a priority and find your mom friends.

[/quote]

Block parties are great for getting to know your neighbors and those are exactly the people who will do things like check in when you are on vacation to see if you left your garage door open, help you track down the dog that got lose, participate in a local meal train.  When you are building a network of helpers, a village, you don’t have to restrict yourself to the type of mom friends you practice yoga with.[/quote]

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