To be disappointed by my community of parent friends and peers

[FlyBirdieFly]

Hi everyone,

I just wondered what people's perspectives are on this.

We have a 6 year old girl and during our time as parents, we have struggled to build a community in the way I expected we would. I thought parenthood would bring new supportive friendships where mutual help / support would come naturally. However I've just not found that. Our DD rarely gets invited to friends' houses, yet we have her friends over a lot - one of them in particular we have over every week but dd has only been invited there a couple of times. This has always been the pattern - we invite and host folk to ours but so rarely get invited to others' for similar - we do a mixture of having DC and a parent / parents round or just have DC round on their own. I think we're pretty nice people and DD is generally very kind and well behaved, (with the odd normal off day on occasion). We get asked fairly regularly to help out with friends' children etc which we do almost every time were asked.
We've had a really challenging year as a family - we lost dp's dad last year and a baby at late gestation earlier this year and I've been really shocked at the almost total lack of support from our community of pals.
We live in London and I wonder if people are just so busy and consumed by the franticness of their pace of life they don't have space to form proper mutually supportive communities. Or, am I just naive and that's just the way it is everywhere?
I'd be interested to know other people's experiences on building communities with other families and if anyone has any tips for me. Or if I should just get on with it and that's just the way life is.

Thanks for reading x

I think you are confusing "nice people I know" with " good friends".

Good friends happen, but unpredictably, and not when you choose it.

You are meeting lots of people, you like them, and they like you, you will end up with good friends, I am sure.

I can empathise a little. DS is an only so it's actually a 'break' for me if I host play dates as it gives me a chance to talk to his friends mums while the kids play. However these mums are people whom I have cultivated friendships with outside of our DCs since they started school. I would say I host the most play dates but I don't mind that. It would be nice to be asked back occasionally though, if only for someone else to have the mess to tidy up!

You sound like you have a really nice balance and plenty of interaction compared to many. If support is needed - emotional, childcare etc that’s more for a partner/family/counsellor/church perhaps?

my very long term friends and I do support each other but that takes years and we have more time now as out of the hectic early years

We have this.

Play dates just aren't a thing anymore which is sad

I'm in SW London and have been very lucky in that I've built a network through my son's nursery friends and their parents. We have a WhatsApp group and are there for last minute trips to the park, to GAIL's etc together but also for emotional support and drinks / dinner for mums. I'm in the process of buying a house solo and one friend knew I was struggling to fill in the forms with a baby and toddler in tow so she invited me over, played with the baby while toddler played with friend's toddler, she made us lunch and poured me a large G&T while I completed everything I needed to do. I'm very very lucky and also have my own long term friends who now have kids too.

You've been through an awful lot and I'm sorry your network has been crap. There are better people out there! Where in London are you?

I recently listed my 20 best friends, and drew a time line of when I met them. Some from school/uni, some from moving to a new area while childfree, and spending all my spare time at hobbies, church, voluntary work, and meeting literally hundreds of nice people, and becoming close friends over many years with less than 1% of them

Generally I have made a good friend once every 3-4 years through my life, although it doesn't become apparent that it is a close and lasting friendship for some years.

Not everyone has time to host play dates, not everyone knows what to say when you loose a baby partly because everyone is different (sone people want you to mention it others would prefer others don't). I found most people didn't do making friends with other parents, they had existing friendship groups - we moved several times for work and you don't just slot in

I’m so sorry for your losses and I don’t think you’re being unreasonable in hoping for a few offers of play dates to give you and your daughter some support. I lost my own dad fairly recently, but the people who did make such offers weren’t the friends I thought were closest. They were the people who had experienced bereavement themselves. So I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, it might just be that a lot of people don’t know how to support you in your grief. I think baby loss can be particularly difficult in that respect. Unmumsnetty hugs, x

I find support like this usually comes from your friends not the parents of dc friends.

We don't have any support network despite play dates and getting coffee-friendly with school gate mums but I know my few close friends would help me out if I really needed it - I could even ask the childless ones and I'm sure they would.

However I would say that the school gate mums would help if I asked them, it just feels rude to ask.

Not everyone enjoys being social all the time as much as you clearly do. If you are always inviting then they don't need to as probably don't want to up the frequency of the meet ups. They may have family and other friends to see and also want space for themselves. Some people enjoy always having something on and others don't.

Agree with this and I can see your point of view OP. I’d be disappointed too and would stop being so accommodating for others.

I have never met anyone who had expectations on being a parents had those expectations met, having a child/ren does not automatically mean anything.

Sure, some people will think 'I was invited around so I will invite them' but nothing in life is like it is in tv land which is where I think a lot of expectations come from

Not saying it is right or wrong but people do not act the way people want

@sobeyondthehills

Can't you take a friend or 2 for a picnic and kick around in the park, very minimal cost

Quite possibly, the other families you know also have a lot going on.
Perhaps they have multiple kids who bicker continuously, small homes, high stress jobs, marital woes, elderly parents, mental health issues.

Their failure to invite you over may not be about you.

The kid who comes over regularly - perhaps the parent thinks you like having them over as it entertains your daughter? Sometimes parents of only kids are quite keen to have others round. They aren't mind readers - they may have no idea you expect reciprocity of invitations. They probably have no idea you are struggling much unless you have explicitly told them.

I'd also suggests separating out your bad times and need for support after your loss and your daughter's playdates. She is 6 - no need for parents to attend playdates at that age so don't mix up in your head children's playdates and adult friendship building.

Often people need to be told you need help and told what help you need and are then willing to do it- people aren't mind readers and spend a lot less time thinking about everyone else than you may expect. People don't want to intrude or overstep or offer the wrong thing

Sorry????

I think in terms in playdates you just have to work to your own schedule and not feel offended when people don't reciprocate as often.
I say this as someone who doesn't do them very often, life is busy, after school clubs, work, shopping, house is a tip etc. I just don't want to do weekly (or more) playdates for my 2 DC it's too much - it's nothing to do with the children or parents.

You probably need to lower your expectations a bit. In an ideal world play dates would be reciprocated but it's best not to rely on this.

Child-free, single people don't have the monopoly on feeling sad and lonely.

Your empathy must be severely lacking to post this on a thread where the OP has lost a close family member and a baby in the past year. Give your head a wobble.

I think there are a couple of things going on here.;
If you have more than one child and someone invites one of them round, then reciprocation doesn't really occur to you as you still have the others and it'd actually a bit of a PITA as you have to drop them off and pick them up.

We had great reciprocal relationships for school runs and maybe an hour's childcare afterwards, anymore than that- not so much. My children are now adults and I can recall probably 3 such arrangements throughout my DCs' childhood. Start small eg: "could you pick X up from Y for me?" Mmake it easy for them.

Also lost a baby at late gestation many years ago, sorry this happened to you too, it’s horrible

I think Covid has changed things, people are more insular, and London has always been even more insular than elsewhere in my experience, in general

Your expectation is entirely normal

I think a late babyloss is something that can push people away, because of awkwardness, or because we have a natural need for a level of comforting that sadly in the modern day world isn’t available from society, the lack of it is often palpable

I must admit I did have some very nice support from friends and neighbours when I was battling an awful illness, a chronic one that is now under control. A neighbour collected DS after school, he was only 6, her kids were in the years above. Another Mum, our children were friends had him round every Friday afternoon in the summer holidays, I was bed bound at this point.

I had a bit of an open house so had a trail of children visiting. I do love hosting though and always have. I also did babysitting swaps with two Mums, I met one at ante natal classes. We are still in touch though just over 20 years have passed. The other Mum I met because her DH asked me the time on the bus, we still laugh about that and we became friends.

I may get lambasted for this and it is a stereotype but I am from the South. I left many years ago in my twenties to escape a very violent and awful first marriage and moved up North. People in my experience really are more community minded up here. Kind of place where most people say good morning, I know all my neighbours and we chat in the street and a couple have become really good friends.

People may avoid you because you have had bereavements, sad but true. Sorry for your losses.

I don't think you're being naive. Despite both me, DH, DD1 and DS being quite shy and reserved, we were able to build the sort of community you describe and friends/ acquaintances have provided support during bereavements and other struggles as have we to them. Having said that, I only worked part time when my DC were little as did virtually all the other mums. I suspect it would have been different if we'd all been trying to hold down a full time job as many parents do.
DD2 is now 13 and I work full time. She's always being invited out for sleepovers and we rarely reciprocate because our house is a mess! I do feel bad about that but life races on and there are other priorities.

And covid did unfortunately make people more insular although I do think things are largely back to normal on that front now.

this is my experience too. If you read threads on mumsnet you see how common it is for people to avoid play dates, many people don’t have the space / mental capacity for it or siblings make things complicated or a busy after school routine.

I think by school people often have their friendship groups sorted and it’s hard to break into them. My advice would be to keep trying, but if friendship isn’t quickly reciprocated then try elsewhere. Try a mixture of play dates and arranging dinners or nights out with a group of parents. Also work on investing in your already existing networks even if they’re not nearby eg travelling to see friends for the weekend, arranging times to chat with people who you won’t see soon. The people already in your life will be better able to support you that new friendships can.

If you need people to have DD at theirs to help you out then you need to ask.
I was always proactive in having friends over because he's an only, whereas his friends who had siblings weren't inviting him back so much because the parents didn't need to and their homes were busy. As a totally single parent I needed help sometimes and when I asked, I got it. But nobody ever offered randomly off their own bat, people don't do that! Even me inviting other kids over to play was for my own benefit to keep DS entertained!

OP, what I've noticed that has devastated the previously easy flow of back and forth between everyone has been covid. Not just the lockdowns, but the whole warp and weft of community interactions. Many clubs and groups stopped over covid and haven't started back up, lots of children seemed to become more anxious and withdrawn and insular. On the whole people just seem a bit more hesitant or less inclined to organise things.

Things are slowly returning to a semblance of normal.

Of course it isn't always easy, we can always find ourselves in situations where we have less support than we needed, but I do think that the past few years have been exceptionally damaging to social networks.

So, I think we just have to keep showing up, keep trying, keep asking, keep setting things up. That counts for your DD but also for yourself.

I'm really sorry to hear about your bereavement and miscarriage. That's hard going. Sending you my best.