Moving mid-primary how hard to make local friends

[guey4909]

Need to move house and area. DH wants to move just when DTs will be in Year 1 or 2 i.e. they will start Reception in one school area and we'd then move. I would rather move for Reception but its less convenient. Am concerned that it'll be hard building a local network and getting to know local parents if we're not there from the beginning. For some reason we're just can't agree. How hard is it to rebuilding local network if you moved the kids mid-primary?

I think kids will generally make friends without too much difficulty at this age, particularly early to mid primary years.

My DD moved in year one (at the start of the year admittedly) and it was fine. Now I’m year six you would never know she hadn’t been with them all the way through.

I think to be honest it’s problematic anyway if parents treat the school as a source of their social life. You should not rely on that: if it happens it’s an added bonus but shouldn’t be primary consideration.

You see so many threads where people agonise over some perceived slight from another school parent. In the vast majority of cases it’s all in their heads but it originates from people thinking school should be a ready made social life for the parents. It is not and thinking of it in these terms won’t help. You need to get your own social lives.

When your kids are tiny, it's super hard to imagine them being at a party or playing at someone's house without you.

But from year 1 or second term of reception depending on school culture, that's totally normal.

And as they get older, it's more than they say "can Jamie come round?" or "Oliver wants me to go round to play" than you organise and facilitate their playdates/social lives with parents you want to be friends with

Oliver's mum may not be someone you would choose to be friends with but as long as you don't feel like your child is likely to come to serious harm, off they go to play at his house.

I'd honestly not worry that much about your kids moving schools and making friends at infant school age.

You could join the PTA but you could also do other non-school related things to make friends yourself, join a sports club, etc. Maybe the kids will get into a sport or hobby club like Cubs/Brownies and you can volunteer to help out there and build up some network of people

It's not all about school parents for your own network.

yes, i would also like to meet more locally people hence wanting to move and then staying put for a little bit. we had a wide circle of friends where we lived for twenty years but having now moved across the country to London, it can be a bit lonely at times.

But I was also conscious that I would like to be able to have playdates and a few more local things for DTs like me used to. But as everyone said, it probably totally changes when they get to school as at the moment everything is done with parents which has made this year quite hard.