Serve on the board of your kids school, or volunteer group— especially if you have a “low stress job”

This is DC/ Get with the program

You are going to be multi tasking when you socialize

P.S. Is your job a turn off? I only mention it because you do.

I think it’s luck. Just keep doing what you’re doing and it’ll happen
.

Anonymous wrote:OP here,

I completely understand when both parents work FT. We are one FT parent, one PT parent, and we rarely socialize M-F after work hours during the school year.

But even on the weekends, our neighbors seem to not be shuttling kids to activities, working, or their kids are having playdates with their mostly private school friends.

Maybe the solution is wait til our oldest child is in K (in 9 months) and join the PTA?

Also open to picking up a group activity but I’m not athletic, so it’d have to be something else!

My three kids all have various sports and activities. I’m not athletic. DH is athletic. Parents are not playing sports.

Some people get lucky with neighbors. I’m not friends with my immediate neighbors. It’s kind of a blessing in disguise. I’ve heard of all kinds of drama over the years of neighbors getting too close.

Im not sure that I have ever made a friend that is a parent of my kids friends. I am friendly with lots of them. We chat on the sidelines and at pick up, and sometimes we do stuff together with our kids that we enjoy. But there is not a single person I would call independently of our children. I had lots of friends pre kids, many of whom had kids around the same time. We are friends regardless of our kids but in some instances the kids became friends. I have friends from work and from the sport I play.

My point here is don't use kids to make friends. You need to find another way to connect with adults. Neighborhood stuff is a good start, but dont focus it on the kids. Invite other grown ups over for a meal or ask if anyone wants to start walking with you in the evenings or something like that.

We moved to DC with a baby and toddler. I didn’t know anyone. It was a lonely few years. I joined a few moms groups. There used to be an app meetup and I joined a few groups on there that were by year your kid was born. There were also groups by location. Moms would organize play dates and I met a few friends there. I’m assuming Facebook has similar type groups now.

Then I made a lot of friends during the preschool years. I had two kids in preschool and almost every kid had a birthday party and invited the whole class. The first year or so I would just meet these people during parties. A few parents became my personal friends.

Next big open time is kindergarten and early sports. I joined the pta. My kids did soccer and swim team.

Now I have kids ages 8-16. We have a packed social and activity calendar. I have 1-2 friends that I stayed close with from each time of life.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hmm, I’m surprised you haven’t made daycare friends. But maybe when your kids switch schools, there will be a new wave.

Ime new adults friendships come from two places:

One, you meet someone who has also moved and is looking for new friends. A lot of people just feel “full” and they don’t have room/time for new people, so things like coffee dates aren’t going to happen with them. But the people looking for friends are out there so if they happen to connect, it can grow.

Two, shared enterprise. PTO, a neighborhood group, a sports team/club, art class, a common enemy like a proposed public statue of taylor swift, work colleagues, whatever -shared enterprise forges friendships. Often having little kids is shared enterprise and that’s why it works for making friends. It can still work for you.

I don’t think daycare pick up and drop off is conducive to making friends. And those kiddie young years are super stressful. By the time kids are old enough to interact with each other (age 4/5) with more limited adult supervision and parents can standby and observe is a better time to make connections.

+1 I never talked to anyone at daycare drop off or pick up. I was just in a rush to get to work or get home.

I didn't really make friends with other parents until my kids were in activities and even then, not until they were at least 4, and only with people who we then had other connections with. For example, my oldest was on a soccer team with two girls who we found out lived in our neighborhood and then we started seeing them at the pool. And after a few of those "in the wild" touchpoints and chatting during soccer practices and games, I invited them over for a moms night, and then eventually I got added to an existing neighborhood moms chat, and then we hosted a Labor Day party at our house for the families, and then someone created a neighborhood family chat (with both partners), and now we're all family friends. We text about going to neighborhood events or meeting at a playground, or sometimes the dads go out to a bar to watch football, or the moms get together for wine. It took at least a year, realistically, to really become friends.

There are other people who I've tried to reach out to multiple times and sometimes they come over, but then never reciprocate, or just go dark for a long time. At a certain point, you have to choose whether to spend your time continuing to try to build a relationship, or else just move on.

Mostly, you have to be patient.

Talk to me talk to me

Anonymous wrote:Hmm, I’m surprised you haven’t made daycare friends. But maybe when your kids switch schools, there will be a new wave.

Ime new adults friendships come from two places:

One, you meet someone who has also moved and is looking for new friends. A lot of people just feel “full” and they don’t have room/time for new people, so things like coffee dates aren’t going to happen with them. But the people looking for friends are out there so if they happen to connect, it can grow.

Two, shared enterprise. PTO, a neighborhood group, a sports team/club, art class, a common enemy like a proposed public statue of taylor swift, work colleagues, whatever -shared enterprise forges friendships. Often having little kids is shared enterprise and that’s why it works for making friends. It can still work for you.

I don’t think daycare pick up and drop off is conducive to making friends. And those kiddie young years are super stressful. By the time kids are old enough to interact with each other (age 4/5) with more limited adult supervision and parents can standby and observe is a better time to make connections.

My Gym/Little Gym/rec center toddler classes
Swim lessons
Toddler soccer (it’s herding cats and the parents stand around drinking coffee chatting) there are “coaches” like high schoolers or college students leading the activities
Go to the same playground every weekend

You just have to put yourself out there

OP here,

I completely understand when both parents work FT. We are one FT parent, one PT parent, and we rarely socialize M-F after work hours during the school year.

But even on the weekends, our neighbors seem to not be shuttling kids to activities, working, or their kids are having playdates with their mostly private school friends.

Maybe the solution is wait til our oldest child is in K (in 9 months) and join the PTA?

Also open to picking up a group activity but I’m not athletic, so it’d have to be something else!

Anonymous wrote:OP here: These are good ideas.

My observation is that parents are either:

1. Exhausted from overwork & don’t plan social things with preschool families aside from birthday parties (many nannies do drop-off / pick up at our school) as they are kind of just being pulled along by the tow of life rn

2. In the case of my neighbors who also have young kids they are largely two FT parents and are also seemingly too tired to socialize on weeknights, and on weekends we mostly see them pulling their cars in & out of their driveways

3. May want to make friends but are shy (the case with most dads I’ve met)

The pool is a good idea. Our kids are too young for swim team. Maybe in a couple years

We’re relatively new to our city, and we’re totally open to/looking for new friendships with other families. But even given all that, we likely fall into bucket #2. One caveat - we’re not necessarily “too tired” for weeknight socializing, we just simply don’t have the time. Every weekday evening is a rush from the office to daycare pickup to home to getting dinner on the table to bathtime to bedtime to cleaning up and prepping for the next day. It’s a slog.

We then have to try to cram everything else in on the weekends - kid activities (and we don’t do much - just a quick rec soccer practice for the oldest and a swim lesson for the youngest), family outings, (frequent) birthday parties and (rare) play dates, errands, chores, plus making time to see local family and occasionally meet up with the couple of friends we already had here. I can see how a neighbor would only see us pulling into and out of our driveway. We aren’t spending a lot of time hanging out in the yard or going for walks around the neighborhood - even though I’d love to have neighborhood friends!

I’m hoping to reduce my hours at work next year so we can get a little breathing room in our schedule. I can totally see how other families with two parents working full time, especially outside the home, could be in a similar situation.

I am an introvert who belongs to a culture where hospitality and invitations are extended to all, and then you have to reciprocate. Doing just that level of socializing means that you have a whirlwind of activities around you. It also means that you are making friends with people from different age-groups, different life-stages, different SESs and you learn to be perfectly comfortable with them.

But, I am thinking that you mean how to cultivate friendships with people your age-group, similar parental status (young kids), similar SES etc? I think you have to make things easy not difficult for parents. You have to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of finding events and activities, inviting people, keeping food simple (lets all pay for pizza and icecream). Be ok with a slightly dumpy house etc. Being flexible. Be the parent meetups coordinator.

If friendships stick - great. If not - your kids have learned from you how to be social coordinators etc.

We didn't really start making parent friends until our kids were in kindergarten. At that age I was willing to invite any kid over to our house for a playdate. We now have a core group of parents who we have met through activities, but it took time to build up that group. If we are free I am also always willing to offer up my house for playdates.

It honestly takes a while, for us, probably a year and a half, but now we have amazing preschool friends. If you found nice people, keep at it with the invitations to hang out.