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.

Also, most baby groups are run by volunteers who put in a hell of a lot of effort. Of course that doesn't obligate you to go to them, but it is rather spoilt and unpleasant to dismiss them in a sneery and insidious manner.

I know I'm unusual but I much prefer playing with kids (mine or other people's) than talking to adults I don't really know.

I'm a loner so don't need a lot of friends and am not looking to make new ones. I do have one mum friend who lives with me. Our DCs play together and we sometimes go to the park together. It's nice to get a break whilst the DCs play together, the conversation is a bonus but it's not essential.

I do have work colleagues that I can chat to but I don't see them outside of work.

When I do meet people with children, casually (at soft play etc) I'm glad I can small talk children because generally I hate small talk

should read "lives near me"

I get confused at why people post that they want 'mum friends' specifically.

Why didn't you post and ask this on my original thread, Light seeing as you're referring to me? Weird.

It is very useful to make friends with people who have children the same age- a large network makes it much easier to cope with emergencies.

Mmmmnoodlesoup - I think I want a noodle soup friend now!

I have non-mum friends who I can go to the pub or go shopping with (with or without DS tagging along - without is better).

But actually I want 'mummy friends' to hang out with 9am-5pm Monday to Friday - yes, to talk about our children but also so we can go to child friendly places together. Funnily enough my non-mum friends don't want to spend the day snatching bits of conversation in between following a 2 year old round softplay.

I would be bored senseless if I spent my days waiting for my non-mum friends to finish work so I can see them after DS is in bed. I want to do something in the day - I want friends in the same situation as me to chat to while we do mum stuff.

Why anyone can't understand why a new mum wants to meet other mums is beyond me !

It's a fucking mahooooooosive change to your life it's scary and it can be isolating.

I'll be your friend too noodle!

My mum friends are now my good friends!

We met in reception and the children were a common bond. Now our children are in secondary school and have found their own friends but we are still friends who never talk about the children (well we sometimes discuss school stuff lol)

I still have friends that I made when mine were little - if you get beyond the superficial you find things in common.

:)

I think it really helps to get out and meet with women going through similar. Especially if suffering with pnd, I'm sure being alone with baby all the time would make it worse.

When I said mummy friends originally I meant like minded women who had women around the same age. I'm not interested in the competitive mum thing at all

It's the best way to meet new people when you move to a new area, whether it's a few miles from the old or the other side of the world. I would be utterly isolated, and probably suicidally depressed with homesickness by now if I hadn't had DS to make me go out and find some playgroups to socialise with.

Naturally all we talk about is our children because after all, becoming a mother makes you terribly one-dimensional, doesn't it, OP? Or perhaps you're somehow different to the rest of us? In which case, probably best you stick to other activities.

Mintyy - your post did make me (along with several others but yours stuck out)

I made friends with an nct group.. More of them have PhDs than not. We get in brilliantly and so do the dc. They have supported me more than anyone else through a god awful separation and divorce. They are amazing and hilarious.

You never know who you might meet

Don't classify people- meet them with an open mind.

I love my mummy friends, we met at playgroup, we help each other out, hold each others hands, support each other through challenging children.

We are all SAHM and we have a good social network which gives us enough time for the children to play and us to chat. No not all chat is child related, often we moan about our husbands :-) I look forward to years of school holiday trips and days out.

The more friends the merrier for me. These ladies keep me sane.

LightTheGooTouchpaper - are you going to come back and consider any of the points that we have raised?

I bet she doesn't come back.

I suspect that faced with an avalanche of people telling her that she is being unreasonable, she'll complain that she is misunderstood/we're mad/we don't know what we are talking about and it isn't fair how we are all disagreeing with her (mostly).

Isn't that the way it goes on these things when people forget what AIBU is all about?

She probably can't stand the fact that people are looking at her in exactly the same way!

Or the fact that she might have to admit that we have made some good points.

I loathe the term 'mummy friends'. Also find it cringeworthy that previously normal women start referring to themselves as 'mummies' once they've popped one out. And don't get me started on fucking cupcakes.

I've never made mummy friends or joined baby groups. Folk told me 'oh, wait til your baby is 3 months old, 6 months old, crawling, walking...' All these stages have come and gone and no, I STILL can't see the point of mummy groups. We do just fine.

I have plenty of friends I have met through my three kids but we rarely discuss the actual kids except this time of year (what to get for Xmas etc) which can be helpful.

You are just meeting the wrong people I think.

Though I acknowledge that I'm in the minority and I'm very very pleased that my local area has so many free support groups for isolated parents. Though this is probably the sticking point with me, that the term is 'mummy friends' and not 'parent friends'. There must be a lot of single fathers out there.

I love cupcakes.

Who invented the phrase Mummy Friends anyway? It isn't something I have ever heard in real life.

Mind you, I don't recognise the child obsessed conversations that you are supposed to have with these mummy friends either. And that is after going to and indeed running a couple of the groups for a while - there is no agenda. You don't sign up to talk about nothing but babies at the door, you know.

It is very simple, if you want some company and you want to go somewhere where children are encouraged and not seen as a problem, go to a group and if you don't like talking about anything be it children, the weather, or whatever it is that annoys you, change the bloody subject!!

I felt it was a great advantage to dc that they already knew so many of the local mums and children when they started school: it made the whole thing seem less scary and overwhelming.