Socialising never picked up after covid

[Kaiti45]

Just that really, we’d recently moved to our village when I had my 10 year old and used to socialise and visit/ have friends round most days when she was a baby, stay with family for weekends etc. Have had 2 more children and now with my current one year old we rarely visit or have anyone around

So have I. My oldest two kids had a lot of friends with SAHM my youngst has none.

On the one hand I don’t think Covid is really an excuse anymore - you’ve had at least 3 years to recover your social life from covid. On the other hand, on a population scale everything seems to have gone to shit since Covid and everyone seems busier than ever. So people are out doing stuff, it’s not that nobody does anything, it’s that everyone is doing stuff, just not with you! Get yourself involved. You’ve got to plan stuff, and plan a long way in advance to make sure people are free. Plan lots of things and assume only some of them will happen. Eg I’m currently planning a big summer open house BBQ, and a mass hill walking event for around may time. In the shorter term, I’ve got 3 kids and between them they have 7 play dates/sleepovers/outings planned before 5th Jan.

We do have social events planned and people will come to parties etc we organise and there are things we do within the village plus clubs and meet ups I do on my own. I just miss the low key spontaneous popping to one and others houses for a cuppa or going to stay with someone for a weekend (if they lived further away) that used to happen

We used to do this weekends, evenings and in school holidays too

Yes we do all that and he seems happy enough, just the social side seems less rich than it once did, now you have to put in a lot of time effort and money for people to feel it’s worth spending their precious time together, whereas before we enjoyed time together even though we were all exhausted from parenthood, work etc and the cost was no more than a couple of tea bags and a packet of biscuits. I think there can alsp be a bit of a vicious circle in that I’ll book up all the school holidays with activities as can’t rely on the fact friends will be free and then will have a friend message to ask if we’re free the week before! I do have the odd very organised friend who will message me a month before to save the date and will try and do this a bit more

I agree OP. When my kids were babies and little we were in and out of each others houses. I’d often do daytime babysitting swapsies as I worked part time and get the favour back when I needed.
I think people are more precious about their houses now. Plus I knew more women who worked part time back then (early naughts)
I also think WFH has turned homes into workplaces now where kids have to be quiet.
It’s a shame because that casual network kept me sane!

Oh, also I reckon nearly everyone I know has a car each now, whereas most people I knew back then had 1 family car, so not as much going off to do “activities” and more mooching locally.

I don’t think it would do a 6 year old harm necessarily to only spend time with their own family but actually it’s really good for children to experience other people families- slightly different set ups, different foods etc. It breeds adaptability.

Mainly though, being able to sit in someone’s kitchen and drink tea while the kids tear up and down the garden is good for parents!