Reply to People who don’t reciprocate

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "People who don’t reciprocate "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't consider "reciprocating" because when I give, I don't keep a tally or mental note of who we have "given" to and what they "owe" us. I invite the friends I want to invite. I give the gifts I want to give. I plan the playdates I want to plan. I assume others do the same.

If a relationship falls off because the dynamic doesn't work for one or the other party, that's natural consequences. But I wouldn't walk around holding resentment against anyone. I am probably a non-reciprocator in some relationship, and an over-giver in others. Everyone's different. [/quote]

Op here. I feel we are always the ones who are not given to by everyone. I guess I have to accept our situation.

All three of my kids have a lot of friends. It just feels like we do the inviting and hosting 90%+ of the time.[/quote]

I wonder to what degree being a 3-kid family with 3 very social kids is skewing your perspective on this.

I have an only and we are friends with a lot of other families with onlies and I think hosting has a totally different vibe for us because we are genuinely grateful to get together with another family with kids so that our kid has playmates. I really do feel like when another famiily comes to our house to hang out they are doing us a favor on some level because my kid loves it so much. She's also shy and makes friends very slowly. A lot of her friends wind up being similar and there's just generally a very supportive and reciprocal vibe because all us parents are just happy to see our kids making friends and having a chance to socialize however we can.

I wonder if some of the families you feel resentment towards might just be in a very different place -- different number of kids or different kid personalities or different parent personalities. And you have this idea in your head of how it's supposed to be but it's driven a lot by the size of your family and clearly having very social kids and parents in your family. I bet if we asked some of these other families who you feel are "takers" to describe the dynamic they'd have a very different perspective on it that could be eye opening. Not that it would necessarily prove you wrong -- your perspective is as valid as theirs. I just think you are coming at this from a very specific perspective with the expectation that everyone has the same goals as you do and I think probably they don't and that's where the mismatch is coming in.

Just something to think about.[/quote]

There might be something about being a busy social 3 kid family. Between the 3 kids, we have at least one thing going on everyday. Often we have 3 things (1 per kid) in an afternoon. I have had people be shocked by getting a glimpse of our calendar on my phone.

If I am picking up my kid from school or sports, kids often leave with us to come over or we may take kid with us to eat. No one ever does this for us. We do carpool so others drive my kid sometimes but they get dropped off at home, often with the carpooler’s kid.

We do probably have the nicest house. I don’t know how much this matters.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics