To think some people on here can be a bit naive with regard to ‘the village’?

[Buildyourvillage]

I see it quite a lot on here, that if you need sudden childcare either because of an emergency or last minute change of plans, you should have a village to call on.

I found out I was expecting my (planned!) baby a couple of weeks after the first lockdown was announced, but I was still determined to be as sociable as possible. My own parents died before I turned 30, so I didn’t have them as support, but we had DHs parents although they live about an hour and a half away.

We did the NCT course and we were really lucky as everyone in our group hit it off and I know not everyone does. However, we’re a little widespread geographically and most significantly, out of six of us, four went back to work FT: two straightaway, two initially went back PT but then got different FT jobs.

Toddler classes here are hit and miss at best. We do the activity with the toddlers and I am always friendly and sociable but somehow it’s hard to strike up meaningful conversations beyond ‘how old is she …’

I have seen on another thread that you should be apparently organising childcare swaps with other mums to cover for school holidays and the like and I’m not against that in theory but in practice I do wonder if one persons village is another persons CF. AIBU?

It's the kind of shit spouted by privileged people who refuse to accept how lucky they are.

I also have no family and no friends near by AND Im a firm believer that my friends are MINE (the odd time we do meet up because they live hours away its nothing to do with children) and my kids friends are THEIRS (I avoid getting overly friendly, I have seen parental friendship fall outs turn nasty way too many times).

DH friends are childless by choice, they obviously do not want to be watching our brood when they actively have choose to avoid that life.

I however know we are lucky that DH parents help out with childcare. For instance when giving birth we literally dropped the kids of in the middle of the night then went straight to hospital. It must be so stressful for people in that situation with no options.

In 15 years I have NEVER done childcare swapping or anything like that with another parent. I don't know anyone that actually does do anything like that, people tend to rely on family (many are lucky enough to have family) not other parents.

Hats off to you for managing! That sounds v hard.

It seems that you would like some of those things. Do you know why it never happened for you?
Do you mean you have no family nearby or literally no family (i.e. all dead)?
It's quite unusual to have no friends at all.

Do you have any idea why your DD never got invited to Birthday parties? Did you host parties for her?

As a teacher, I fell out with this whole 'village' thing when it transpired that the parents of children at my daughter's primary school interpreted it as, 'You can look after our kids in the school holidays because you're not working, even though we don't intend to reciprocate in any way and are perfectly happy for our kids to be hateful to your DD. Oh, and we don't like you, either. '

CFs to a man/woman.

If I have to look after badly behaved, destructive, rude children I expect to be paid for it, and I also deserve a decent break from it.

That is so bloody spot on. You are a wise woman!!

@orangeleavesinautumn I agree but I think most people can count there lose friends on 1 hand as in under 5!

How can you be a CF if the arrangement is mutually beneficial?

Thats the crux of it. It has to be mutually beneficial - either in payment by kind or actual payment. Don’t suggest anything unless you can offer something equal in return and you make sure that they know that it is fine if they say no.

If people offer to do it for free without being asked, just because they are a nice person, then you should show your appreciation by small gifts or help in other ways, and they should be offered frequent opportunities to stop the arrangement.

I’ve always lived by these rules and it’s worked for me.

I think straight childcare swaps are v difficult if you are working full time.

I have a couple of close friends who work p/t who help out occasionally with me working full time and my partner often away. If its childcare for any length of time, I insist on paying/ getting the bill when we go out. I also help out in ways aside from childcare - eg, with their older children and work experience & school work. I'm also good with advice on HMRC, on reading friends' job applications etc.

One of these friends in turn gets help from a close friend of hers who has no children but likes spending time with them, and my friend supports her in other ways.

What am trying to say is in a group of friends, people support each other in different ways. It's not always a straight quid pro quo with childcare.

The mind boggles, because this is where you get to have a moment or just enjoy some adult company / relief. Life is hard enough without depriving yourself of support.

And children are often social beings who enjoy being loved/cared for by many.

Yes my parents are dead, no other family. DH has been NC with his family for over 20 years, a sad but necessary thing.

We hosted one birthday party for DD but only one child turned up, DD was so upset so we didn't try again (her choice but I can totally see why). She never made any friends at school and was bullied.

We moved to a new city when she was little and everyone here already had friendship groups - I tried taking her to parent & toddler groups but people didn't really talk to us. At the time me and DH were goths and we wondered if that's why people avoided us and gossiped about us (DD used to come home from school telling us things other kids' parents had said about us). Where we live is very traditional and we must have stood out like sore thumbs! But I did try. DH doesn't have any friends, but he doesn't feel the need for them it get lonely the way that I still sometimes do.

It is unusual to have no friends but when I've posted about this before here, it's surprising how many others are in a similar position.

My 'village' is the people who know my children. Cub leaders, Sunday school teachers, neighbours, parents from school. None of these people are close friends of mine, they are friendly acquaintances who know a little of my children and know where we live. I don't ask any thing of them, except one neighbours daughter occasionally babysits for us and we pay her. I would never dream of asking for some free childcare but I do know that these are people I could rely on in an emergency and that is very reassuring as none of my family are close by.

You will probably find it easier as your child gets older and school and clubs brings people together who are likely to live near each other. Nurseries sometimes have a big catchment with parents picking up at different times making it harder to get too know people and toddler groups can be hardwork.

Hiya, I think you are jumping the gun a bit and worrying about your village a bit early. If my maths is right, you have a three year old. They are still quite dependent at that point so it's hard to childcare swap at the moment, unless you are fairly close. When your child is older, you may find a friend of two in the school mums where you find your village.

Mine are 9 and 10, if I have someone's children, the kids all entertain each other and I provide snacks. It works for me because while I may be the responsible adult, there isn't a lot of parenting happening. This is pretty much how it has been since they are 6. For the easy kids, they will just slot in with our lives and I have no problem having them with us if I have appointments because I trust that they will behave. In return, we will do more fun adventurous stuff (camping, campfires, beach trips, day festivals) and my record for a child staying is three days. For the harder work kids, we tend to just stay at home and they are gone by 4pm because I don't trust them not to run off and I can't have them at the drop of a hat because I may already have something booked that I can't cancel.

I am a fortunate stay at home mum and I'm happy to have children whenever but I do keep a mental list of the hard work kids and the mums who expect it. There are some children who are always welcome and others that I need to mentally prepare for!

When my girls were younger, I helped a "friend" with her child about once a week because she was going through a divorce (I was too) and she apparently had no time and needed time during the day to do her divorce admin because she was too busy in the evening (she never said why). Her child broke my daughters' things and was vile but I put up with it because I thought my friend was struggling. I stopped once she announced that she had a boyfriend and they were going out three times a week (suddenly realised why she was too tired to manage her own divorce!). Another lady in our school whatsapp group always mentions that her daughter is lonely and would like a playdate ("but by the way could you have her next Thursday because I'll be at work and I forgot to book childcare in the school holidays"). I don't help her either.

For the easy kids, I am the village and as a very fortunate single stay at home parent parent. I divorced someone awful but wealthy and it is not in my interest to return to work, theatre being said, I have no siblings, my mum has Alzheimer's and doesn't know who I am and my dad's idea of childcare is a TV so it isn't all roses. I'm happy to be the drop off house for SOME families. My friends are mainly full time high level workers with busy jobs but with an ability to run their lives like grown ups and who have healthy boundaries.

If we boiled it down to time, I probably have their children more than they have mine because I can, but if the children are easy and the parents are happy to reciprocate, I really don't care. I absolutely respect how hard they work and until this country wakes up and reduces the cost of childcare, we haven't got a hope.

I know they will also help me by taking either the children or the dog if I need them to. Their needs are "my husband is out of the country and I have a meeting in London, can you have her overnight in two weeks' time" and my needs tend to be "someone may have broken something, can you take the other child right now while I pop to A&E" and because their kids and my kids are easy, the answer is rarely no.

I think you will find your village where you can all help each other. In the meantime, my advice would be to raise a low maintenance, independent, polite child who at least knows that when they are guests in people's houses and they wake up early, that they need to read a book! They get invited more places and more people are willing to babysit (also cakes and flowers help too!!) 😄

A lot of what fishingoutofthewater says has merit.

I also think there's a lot of 'the more you put in, the more you get out' to it. If you seek out groups and proactivity volunteer you are more likely to find others with that same mentality. And they are the people who will help you in an emergency because they know how much you contribute so it's worth their investment in return. It's not necessarily a one for one thing but a general point.

Find people who 'do' rather than people who are hot air and just have common interests.

And be prepared to get burnt by takers. It's inevitable. But those people burn through good will at speed. People who don't are worth the effort ultimately.

Make yourself useful - don't just expect to make friends who you get on with socially.

It’s all different now 😔 most mums in my area have the idea that no one can ever tell off a child except the child’s own parents. It’s led to children having some awful behaviours validated by adults watching but not speaking up.

I lost a friend because I told off her child while she wasn’t around and she felt it “was her place to do so, not mine.” Her child was punching mine in the face, apparently I shouldn’t have said anything 🤔

I've never had a village and I've always been a lone parent too.

I had DS when I was 18. Obviously, none of my peers were having children at that age so I had no friends in the same situation. The other mums at school were of course pretty much all older than me and at different life stages. I didn't fit in, not many people wanted to be my friend, I was a very young single mum living in a housing association flat and it wasn't a particularly nice building, quite honestly I was seen as a stereotype.

I just made do on my own. It's one of those things. I managed it and I've kept DS alive for 15 years and haven't gone mad myself! 😂

There’s a thread at the moment where the OP is freaking out that someone touched her newborn, and an army of people saying she should have told the person to fuck off.

I think this mentality is such a shame and we’ve put the concept that our children are our possessions to be controlled by us over the idea of the village concept. What a horrible world to live I .

That's not a friend. That's an idiot.

I'll tell off other people's kids in appropriate circumstances. If they don't like it, they need to learn to parent better so I don't have to say anything to their child.

I am not super strict by any means - anti-social behaviour is anti-social though. If I want to live in a community where that's not ok, I need to just step up and say it's not ok.

It's asserting boundaries to other kids AND parents.

They're not random. One gets to know them over time. At my children's nursery we had lots of events, parties, etc. so parents got to know each other and helped each other out. Same at primary school. The neighbours on the estate will look out for children playing outside, same in my ex's village green in Cornwall.

While I don’t doubt some people are mad keep themselves to themselves and don’t let anyone touch their child, it’s a bit of a shame that the thread has turned into discussing this, as I actually don’t think most people are like this.

Go to a baby/toddler group and there are plenty of people there. A lot of them aren’t cheap and that suggests to me that people do want to meet others and do want a network of friends. I’ve tried to make it clear that I don’t think in the majority of cases people do this for childcare, it’s more that one of the first questions you get asked if you’re in a childcare pickle is what about friends who can help. And often they just can’t, although they’d like to!

I think there is a difference between can't and don't want to though. Can't often is don't want to put themselves out.

If you go out of your way for someone, you either will get taken advantage of or you will find people do start to change can't to ok let's see if we can find a way even if it's a bit inconvenient because it's worth my while in the long run.

It's finding the people who don't take the piss versus those who realise the mutual value.

I don't think people are willing to instigate that though - often because of the risk involved.

People want an easy life but ironically finding that easier life involves effort and risk taking that doesn't always pay off.

I don’t think that is my personal experience to be honest @RedToothBrush .

For instance if I get a phone call to say my child is ill and I’m struggling to get out of work myself, it’s reasonable to assume other working mothers would have the same problems. Even if they weren’t working it’s probably a bit much to expect them to stop whatever they are doing there and then to get your child. Yet the assumption is often that you have a network of friends and family to do just that!

I know there are some people who prefer to keep themselves to themselves but I don’t know any, mostly because they probably wouldn’t come to the sort of activities I would enjoy.

Lots of reasons the village is harder to find.

One I think is the growth of 2 car households. If you drive everywhere you are much less likely to get to know your neighbours. I knew loads of people on our previous street from walking to school with the kids and talking to other parents and non parents in the street.

Driving kids to activities across town, rather than playing with the local children on the street after school.

Working almost full time since dc2 was 3 also meant the school holidays were planned well in advance and I was rarely at the school gate. I paid for after school care 4 days / week even though I only needed 3 days so I had flexibility. So I tried to do play dates on the 5th day but never in the expectation of a favour.

Tbh I think collecting a child when I'll is a bit of a red herring. In 10 years of reciprocal childcare stuff I don't think I've ever asked or been asked to look after an ill child. That's tricky: they might pass on the illness and they probably just want to be home with a parent. It's a pita and you stretch the goodwill of your employer but I don't know what the solution is.

Loads of other examples of reciprocal childcare though - ndn nipping to shops and asking if her dd could play in the garden for a bit, babysitting circles, playdate swaps, sleepovers when a parent was going away, taking kids places etc etc. It's a risk because you might find a situation where you've dropped your boundaries and someone's taken advantage or you end up spending time with people who are boring or whatever but equally you're opening yourself up to the potential for lasting friendships simply by virtue of the opportunities that arise. I've just entered the world of mutual cat sitting too and have made a new friend in our street though that.

There are lots of things that make reciprocity harder.

Harder when people choose to not go to the local/nearest primary school so can’t occasionally help each other out with a pick-up when someone running late.

Harder when both parents work full time - I am happy to have DC’s friend round for an afternoon in the hols. Less happy to have a chum round 8am- 6pm, particularly when it will likely never be reciprocated as both parents are always working.

Harder when parental values and standards differ so much. If I think kids can go to the park alone, but you think they should be inside playing xbox where they are safe, it will be hard to look after each other’s kids. If you think constant time out for small infractions and I just let the sugar flow and kids will be kids, neither of us will be happy.

Society is less homogeneous and it takes time and effort to find a tribe. Some people don’t have the time and find it easier to throw money at the problem or suffer.

Agree with pp, noone collects others ill kids but they do help if you are caught in traffic, share lifts to bday parties etc. If you ask people say yes unless you are a known or likely cf. Agree as well with the asker or guesser idea.