There are so many times lately I find myself pining for the good old days. When it came to
making childhood friends for me and arranging playdates, my mom had it
so easy.
I grew up on Army posts and in public schools. I spent my afternoons and weekends outside at the nearest playground, biking the neighborhood, or taking turns visiting a friend's house or having her visit mine. Sometimes, with advance notice, I'd skip my bus ride home in favor of going to another kid's place after school.
We didn't have cellphones to let our parents know where we were at any moment, and my mother didn't sit outside to watch us play. When we played indoors, we were
equally unsupervised.
And
somehow we survived. Hm.
My kids and I live in a city, with surprisingly few children living immediately near us. We live within easy walking distance of two playgrounds and
a beach, and yet
I wouldn't dare let my children go to either alone yet, at seven and three. I know I was going out to playgrounds by myself and with my brother or buddies at five, but times, they are a-changin'.
We live in a different world, one of paranoia about dangers (
they could fall off the slide at the playground and break an arm! they could be abducted by a stranger!) that are mostly exaggerated — possible, but not at all common. Even if
I disagree with the consensus about what's too dangerous for my kids, I can't fly in the face of popular opinion without taking on a more likely risk of having my parenting called neglectful, with potentially devastating consequences.
And, so,
I have to play with my kids, whatever's going on, and I have to shuttle them to the playspaces. We don't have a backyard, so I can't keep an eye on them through a window while I get stuff done in the house. If they want to connect with nature, out we all go as a group. And if they want to connect with other kids, it's up to me to facilitate it. They have a higher tolerance for crummy weather than I do, so we have to come up with some compromise for how long to be in nature that satisfies neither group.
It just seems sort of unfair,
this necessity of the parent to arrange play when it used to happen so organically. I know partly it's where we live — in the suburbs or just a different city neighborhood, we might have more luck with neighbor kids being out and about in the afternoons. But definitely part of it is a change in environment and culture. Kids' lives are scheduled more now, anyway, including their socialization. To make it work, I have to conform to the expectations.
But it's hard. For one thing, I'm a shy, awkward introvert. It's a
winning combination, let me tell you. I'd be fine with doing something social once, at most twice, per week. I get the feeling Mikko desires more. Maybe not even a lot more, but more than I'm currently giving him, so I struggle with how to make it happen. If we lived in that neighborhood where he could just head outside on his own and fill his own social cup, he could figure out how to meet his own needs rather than have me guess at them.
We currently are friends with a whopping two families. They're
great families, and we all get along well (mamas who are amazeballs and kids who are compatible with my two), but I can't put all our socialization eggs in one basket. For one thing, they don't live near enough for our kids to hang out on a daily or even weekly basis, or to do anything casual and last-minute.
I've been trying other avenues. We've stalked encouraged families at the churches we used to go to to be our friends. We invited them to meals and activities and chatted them up every time we saw them … but there was no reciprocation, so at some point you have to let it go before you get a restraining order thrown your way. We haven't been going to church for some time now, so I started a Meetup group in hopes of
finding some like-minded folks who could become close. I found a few with potential, but everyone comes so sporadically to the meet-ups that I've never gotten anything going on a personal level. I've been attending various homeschool and unschool group activities, but people in such groups can be a bit flaky (I am one of them, I admit), so, again, it can be hard to connect.
And so I keep on envying my mom. She didn't have to be good friends with my friends' moms. She just kind of had to know their names and have a passing acquaintance. When I hung out with my friends at their house, my mom wasn't there. If we were hanging out outside, no parent was. But when I arrange playdates,
I'd better like the moms because we're all going to be hanging out together. As I mentioned (shy, awkward, introverted), I find this challenging, particularly when I don't know the people well. And since I'm having trouble connecting with people on a deeper level, I continually am attending get-togethers with virtual strangers (same old small talk each time), which is stressful for me.
Poor Mikko. He chats up everyone he meets and knows how to make instant friends of all ages. If only some of that will rub off on me!
We'll keep on keeping on. I have
a few ideas for the fall and winter (in between
having a baby): joining some classes at a homeschool cooperative, continuing some extracurricular classes we enjoyed in the spring (gymnastics, soccer, maybe try swimming), and prioritizing getting to know more people in the unschooler groups.
But sometimes I just wish it didn't take
so much effort, that
my kids could just run out the door and find their friends and not come home till dinner, tired and dirty and happy.
How do you make friends for yourself and your kids? Has it happened organically, or do you work hard at it?