Anonymous wrote:If you have no family or friend support system while raising kids, what coping strategies do you use? DH and I have no local family or close friends and we are barely making it. Oh how I wish for some local grandparents who could let us have a weekend together without our kids.

We joined a faith community (for us it was UU), there are plenty around for every faith belief even non-belief. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped create the illusion that we had a community and backup. We also cultivated our neighborhood. We hosted neighborhood block parties and December open houses. Theat helped too.

I’m still working on the village part of it, but my favorite survival hacks are: befriending daycare teachers for babysitting, a backup nanny service for emergencies where kid can’t go to school and I need to work, and flying in a grandparent for weekends away. There are a lot of us in this boat - hang in there.

What saved us was on-call back-up care - we always had some kind of paid, screened assistance when we needed it. Obviously we did not use that for overnight care.

Which means we haven't had a night, much less a weekend, without our kids since they were born. It's not optimal, sure, but I don't think it's as uncommon as you might think.

1. We pay for childcare.
2. We give each other breaks on the weekends.
3. We decided to only have one child.

Anonymous wrote:* make friends
* never expect someone to take care of your kids for a weekend or even overnight.

This. Get paid help.

Anonymous wrote:We do day dates instead of going out at night
We do Parents Nights Out when possible
Looking forward to the time when we can do sleep away camp

We suck it up and deal because there's really no other choice

+1 Those Parents Nights out at the gymnastics and bounce places are pretty cool.

* make friends
* never expect someone to take care of your kids for a weekend or even overnight.

I found a lot of ppl are in this situation. When grandparents visit we run out at night after bedtime, otherwise we do day dates. Maybe when the kids are older we will do a weekend but it feels unlikely now. I can’t imagine leaving my kids for a weekend with even a best friend. Dunno why — I guess I know my friends are all pretty stretched themselves. Maybe an overnight or a day.

Anonymous wrote:Why don’t you have friends?

Not OP, but we moved cross-country, bought our first house, brand new jobs but most people commuted a fair distance, pregnant with first kid, and no family at all nearby (and not much far away either.) You can be so busy just trying to manage all that change that it can take years to build up a support network and make friends.

OP - As was previously said, you have to be active about building a network. For us that was joining a church, getting to know neighbors and finding local teenagers to babysit, & preschool. Once your kids start to be involved in preschool/elementary school and different activities, you have an opportunity to meet other parents with kids of similar ages. Create your network of support by being active in the PTA, run a sports team, join/run a girl scout or boy scout troop, etc. Help your kids make friends, and make friends with the parents of their friends. That's where you will start to be able to trade off sleepovers and get some kid free evenings.

I used to be bummed on major holidays when everyone always seemed to go visit family (Mem day, 4th, Labor day, Tgiving). Then we realized there were a lot of other families in our situation, and we started hosting family game days or inviting people over on those major holidays. It made it nice to have special time with friends, and there are plenty of other people looking for connections too.

Why don’t you have friends?

Is this about the weekend away, Op? Or about generally needing support? The answers are different.

And do you WOHM or SAHM? Different challenges with each.

We cut back a lot on visiting family. We need vacations to recharge instead. They can come to us instead.

We have a weekly babysitter that we get no matter what. We go when the kids are asleep so it doesn’t take away time with them.

Isn’t your husband your support system?

We do day dates instead of going out at night
We do Parents Nights Out when possible
Looking forward to the time when we can do sleep away camp

We suck it up and deal because there's really no other choice

We don't have family at all and we were the first of our friends to have kids. Here is what we did --- and it is working!

Hired a nanny (instead of day care) - this provides some person how knows our kids in emergencies. Now that our kids are much older, we have used her for an occasional overnight with the kids while we are driving distance away.

Made new friends with kids friends parents- so we can have people who love us and our kids and we use them for emergency contacts, etc.

Kids involved in the neighborhood sports and activities so we know people in our neighborhood and we can stop by various neighbors if we run out of sugar. During a blizzard, we had several neighbors come to our house when we were the only ones with power.

Public school for the kids so we bond with close neighbors.

That's it - it's hard and I'm jealous of those with close parents, but we also keep in good touch with our relatives and visit and they visit us.