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?

A couple of months ago I was scrolling through our village FB page only to see a Ring doorbell video of my son and his friend. Just walking along the pavement.
The resident thought it looked suspicious.

It was all fine, I know the resident, told her it was my son and asked her to remove the video.

I then prayed they wouldn't start playing knock down ginger or something.

So, the village (if you want to call it that) was keeping an eye on my son that evening.