to not want to make 'mummy friends'?

[LightTheGooTouchpaper]

The thought of hanging around with other women talking about our DC bores me to death.

I went to baby groups. People talk about babies all the time [yawn].

I realise that after you establish a friendship, you are allowed to stop comparing your children and get on with talking about other stuff. However I feel like the friends I have made have been people who can't stand the playgroup chit chat, and I have bonded with them as kindred spirits.

I like MN because 90% of the threads I read are nothing to do with being a mum.

I think that the reason so many women 'lose themselves' after DC is because we are expected to congregate in groups based around little children. Can't we drag the children along to groups dedicated to something aimed at the grown up?

I want the starting point to be me, not my baby. The baby hasn't got a clue whats going on anyway.

I have mummy friends but they're called that because I became friends with them through being a mum, same as I have uni friends, work friends and friends from home.

We don't talk only about our children, we socialise without them sometimes and I'm glad I have them because I would be lonely and isolated without them, being a SAHM.

I don't know why you need to be such a snob about it.

mayisout

Op you dont have to be friends with anyone you dont want to
or discuss things you find dull
other people might want to discuss these things with each other though

I cant quite see what your point is?

op, you're in for a shock when you realise you want to ask someone advise when your baby isnt doing something you think it should and all your childfree pals cant be arsed discussing it

thats when you realise you need mummy friends cos they feel the same as you

YANBU

I used to think I would need Mummy friends. I thought having a baby would put distance between me and childless friends. I also thought I would need the mutual support of people who had babies at around the same time.

Wrong on all counts.

I went to the NCT classes to meet "mummy friends" and kept in touch with them afterwards. I gained an odd little circle of highly strung baby obsessives who wanted to spend afternoons doing bounce and bloody rhyme or going to the baby cinema. Besides having DC at the same time we have nothing in common.

In the meantime, oddly enough, all my actual friends stayed friends with me. DS has comes along to visit at their houses, to cafes, parks, the pub and even a day long conference. People have been remarkably tolerant of his presence in our social circle and some have been downright enthusiastic, showing an interest in how to care for him and offering to babysit.

I actually think the support you get from people who have kids the exact same age is overrated. Much too high a risk of getting competitive with each other.

What you really need is people with kids a year or two older. Wherever you are at- they have already come out of the other side and can give you reassurance and a sense of perspective. Also, hand-me-downs

I do accept that DS will want to socialise with kids his own age at some point. And when that happens, we will go to the playgroup and if I meet a mum I get on with, we can be friends. As for seeking out "mummy friends" for my own benefit. No, don't see the point.

....unless your superior attitude puts them off

I found it trial and error when my Dc were young. If I chatted to 20 other mums I found i clicked with 1 or 2. I'm glad I made some friends then though as it was one of the easiest times in my adult life to make friends. Now my children are teens and grown up it's nice to have some really good friends. We still have some stuff in common and also many new and different experiences and situations have occurred over the years.

Okay, but remember, the monkey that doesn't do grooming can be a very lonely monkey who has no monkey pals to help with food collecting, baby monkey sitting etc. (wink)

Winky face fail!

All this is exactly the same as the guff about 'school gate mums'.

People turning up in any social situation usually reach for points of commonality and bland issues in order to chat without offending. That starting point is just gentle ice breaking. It shoud allow you to find out who you like and then extend that relationship into more relaxed and personal things.

So yes, some mothers will continue with the conversational equivalent of cocktail party chat - bland and a bit mindless.
Most will get a feeling for who they like and those chats will develop into more relaxed stuff.

If you are endlessly stuck with a whole roomful of mothers who continue to only talk to you about baby/child related stuff maybe you are not encouraging greater connection with people?

I have met loads of mothers as I have had three children in a total of 10 different nurseries and schools. I have always found mates and can only think of a handful of mothers who remain firmly determined to chat about reading levels and shocking house prices.

Sometimes the common denominator is you.

One thing to remember about making mummy friends. Lightthegootouchpaper, is that there is a good chance that you will end up with some good friends whose kids your kids enjoy playing with - and this is a pearl beyond price, believe me.

I went to the sort of groups and had the sort of conversations you despise - and I made friends with whom I could sit and drink coffee/tea/wine and talk about all sorts of stuff, whilst the children entertained eachother - instead of me having to entertain my own children, with no-one to discuss anything with, be it the latest political news or the latest goings on in Celeb-land, or anything inbetween.

Without that, I would have climbed the walls. And even though I didn't want to talk milestones/school reading schemes/childhood illnesses or whatever a lot of the time, it did help to have friends who had some experience if I did have a problem or issue I wanted to discuss.

Shared experiences do help people to get to know eachother and bond, imo - and raising a child/children is a bloody big, sometimes overwhelming experience, so it can create very strong bonds between people - and surely that is a good thing, even if the bonding starts over discussion of nappies and teething?

"I'm sure you are just vastly much more intelligent than the "mummy friends" you keep meeting and that is your problem."

:o

Not to mention way more interesting.

And really, really cool!

:o

Baby groups are like Freshers Week at uni, except instead of having the same old convo about A-Level grades, you talk about how much your baby sleeps/eat/shits.

Hopefully you get through the small talk and meet some people you really like. I have one friend who I met through baby groups who I now have a reciprocal child care arrangement so that we can both work when we need to (our youngest are preschool).

I have another friend through baby groups who I met when her first was newborn and I was about to pop with DC2. She is now one of my closest friends and we do many things together both with and without the children. I mainly got talking to her due to her shaved head and pink quiff, not something you tend to see at baby groups round here...

I wonder if the people who don't think they need 'mummy friends' have very small children who are not yet able to nag them endlessly to play with them.

Advantages of having friends who have kids the same age as yours:

-The kids go away and play with each other while you discuss how stinky the Olympic Village housing must've been what with all that Lycra and sex (for example).

-They don't get offended when you have to break off mid-sentence to go and stop somebody pulling someone else's hair or falling into a duck pond.

-They sympathise when you discuss how much poo you have had to clean up that day, when nobody else will listen.

-If the kids are really, really getting on your tits you can ring them and ask if they will TAKE THEM AWAY for an hour.

You don't HAVE to call them mummy friends and sit having coffee and cake and discussing purees with them. In fact, the opportunity for doing that is very short and should be used as the way of getting the boring chit chat out of they way before you become proper friends.

I have mummy friends and I think unless you have a lot of friends who don't work, then once you go on materntiy leave you are going to be very lonely in the day unless you get out and make 'mummy friends'. As in, friends who have DCs of a similar age who are around in the day and will be happy to do stuff that's age appropriate for your DCs.

I had a huge group of friends prior to having DS, none were about in the day, if I didn't go make "mummy friends" I'd have had noone to talk to from DH leaving the house for work until he came home, 11 hours of me and a baby. Unless you have a large extended family nearby and lots of friends working shifts or unemployed, who do you talk to in the day if not other mothers?

Feel a little that my thread has already caused 2 threads about 'mummy friends' and not really in a nice way. Feel kind of stupid. I described them as mummy friends because they are mums, if I wrote I was worried I wouldn't make 'friends' it wouldn't be very specific. Didn't know it was such a hated term tbh

mmmnoodlesoup - don't be embarrassed, most people understood what you meant, you wanted friends in the day who would have DCs a similar age - if you had just said you wanted to make friends people would have suggested ways to make firends that involved evening activities etc, which would be great for finding new people, but that doesn't mean they would be about in the day when you need company and doesn't mean they would want to meet up for an intelliegent conversation when you've got a toddler in tow...

Thanks Dontmind

Plantsitter - how very dare you come on this thread and say exactly what I was trying to say, but much more eloquently and humorously???

mmmnoodle, don't feel about it. Someone's got their judgey pants on and wedged them up their bum. It's made them happier belittling someone else and started a new thread about it - its their issue not yours.

I wasn't really in a position to make "mummy friends" as 20+ years ago I still got the odd look when turning up at toddler group etc.

What always puzzled me was I'd say "Hi, I'm OneMore, DS's dad".

Loads of women seemed to say "Hi, I'm Sophies Mum etc..." [Believe me the look was far worse if you said next week. "Hi there! How's Sophie..." ]

Ooh thanks SDTG! I think my post was inspired by yours, in fact!

Great minds, plantsitter - we has 'em!

The dc and I have joined a dance school in September, I go to adult class and two of the girls go to a class each. It's great, made loads of friends some I even know from school but as its not centred around our dc and dancing is the focus then the conversations we have know no bounds and there is little small talk about the dc.

I find school gate friendships hard anyway. Too damn competitive.

arf