How do friendships look for your children outside school? Aibu to worry a little?

[ArchesOfWisteria]

My older two, now adults, seemed to have more opportunities to just hang out. Park etc, as they got a little older some trips out. Some restrictions as we are in a city but essentially between play dates, parks, general meets it worked out.

My teen is on the cusp of being ok with friends but I worry about my primary aged children. Their friends only seems to leave the house for paid activities, eg a dance class, then go home. Parents aren’t keen on facilitating park meets or having play dates. Not nasty, but little value is placed. They may talk about it but don’t act, or cancel and not rearrange.

They have friends, kids who they get in with, but they struggle to see them. Looking around it seems the norm here. My scout pack has noticeabley changed, with few parents signing up to anything outside regular meeting times, let along informal meets of friends like my older ones had. I’ve heard people express they feel online meets are sufficient.

This isn’t a go- just asking if others are feeling a change in socialising for children? Some people obviously have work pressures but it’s more than that.

i’m not in the UK and there are people from all over here so people do try hard to give their kids a chance to socialise. I think maybe people are tired? My DH was begging me to not schedule more than one thing per weekend because he finds it exhausting dealing with other people after a week of work. Also kids do have a lot of activities/school work etc so weekdays can be quite intense. It may just be they need weekends to recharge. Also talking to parents who are not actually friends may take more mental effort.

I think maybe if you put a time limit on it you may be more successful. Say meet up in the park for one hour and bring siblings, I think you’d get more takers. I prefer not to go past 2 hours tbh, I really like a lot of the parents at my DD’s school but I still get tired and have chores etc to do on the weekends etc.

“Their friends only seems to leave the house for paid activities, eg a dance class, then go home.”

Theres nothing wrong with that. Parents work hard all week, I know after a day at work I don’t want to go and sit around the park for a play date. People’s live are busy and sometimes exhausting. Kids get to see friends all day at school so they are not missing out on socialising

My primary aged kids have a lot of play dates. We also meet my friends with similarly aged kids at the park etc. Now they’re at the top end of primary they are allowed to play out on a green just up the road from our house with their nearby friends and while the weather has been decent they’ve done this most evenings after school.
I work from home though so it’s easy to facilitate this. If I was out of the house until 6pm for example it would be much more difficult.

I think it depends on individuals and their views.

Some parents value scheduled, structured activities. Others value free play and independence more.

There is an interesting thread running about freedoms for an 11 year old, at the moment. Quite a few parents of teens saying their children are not allowed out after school unless to a planned activity.

A good point is made on there that this comes from a real position of privilege. Playing in the park or going to a local friend's house after school is cheap and easy. Going to a scheduled club requires parents to have both money and the ability and time to transport them.

I should say mine also do paid activities, both are county level at their respective sports and also have another hobby each, but outside of that they play out with friends/have play dates.

Where are you getting this from? My DD has just started primary school, the neighbours' kids are here as often as they are at home and she regularly has playdates or meets friends at the park.

My nearly 5 year old has a reasonable amount of park and play dates, but mostly with kids of my own friends - we don’t have any play dates that are led by the children’s friendships yet. Lots of all-class birthday party invitations though but I don’t expect the big ones will last much beyond reception, once the kids start making their own groups and inviting smaller numbers. I think it’s really important to socialise them in lots of different contexts so I do force myself to make and accept invitations regularly even though I work full time, take both kids to lots of extracurriculars and would love to flop on the sofa most weekends.

I think people got used to "socialising" on screens and being at home more during covid. Local brownies never reopened after lockdowns and local beavers has just folded due to lack of children (rather than lack of volunteers). It feels cheaper and easier to stay at home. People around here seem more stressed by working than before - probably partly because work is more stressful now (the general public are definitely more painful these days and employers want/need to wring every last sweatdrop of value out of staff), and partly because we didn't exercise those social muscles much during lockdowns.

Lots of possible reasons, but yes, I think the social landscape has changed - for children and adults.

Well, if you go by things people say on here, many adults seem to have an active dislike of talking to anyone they don’t know well.
My kids are older now but when they were little we had no money really for lots of activities but I’d have their friends for tea at least once a week and hang out at the park a lot ( thereby bumping into other school parents and the kids would be able to play together). So I ended up with a wide network of parents, which was handy for childcare swaps too.
Bit I didn’t have an overly scheduled life ( as I say- skint!) and I don’t mind chatting to anyone. I definitely think people in general have become a) more insular and b) more uptight about people doing anything even slightly different to them ( wrt food, rules etc)

This is exactly what I was asking if the view now is.

With my older ones I felt there was a culture of winding down. Say an hour in the park and a chat hear and there. Tbh sometimes when possible a glass of wine whilst kids ran around. The odd weekend pop by. We’d use things like the cub group as a semi social group for siblings too, say a yearly camp. Every now and then something bigger like an informal party excuse, cheap mass catering at a house and a sensible amount of drinks. The kids mixed. I suppose on reflection it was a mix of more adult and child socialising? The kids had a knock on social circle

I think having children over a wide age gap I’ve felt the change in attitude over the generation.

Socialising maybe seen as more ‘work’, on top of work, as opposed to letting off steam a bit I find.

Mines in a high school with an intake of a 15 miles or so radius so doesn't live near his school friends, they meet up now and again at a sports centre and play online, he doesn't go to the local park etc but he's happy, goes to footy training and matches and out with us lots. When he does see his friends out of school they get on brilliant so no suffering from not doing it more

Mine don’t have phones/tablets/devices so maybe that makes them more motivated to arrange to see friends outside of school than perhaps others are.

I have tried to organise a few playdates recently and parents have said they can't or it will have to be in a few weeks as the children do activities after school every night. We fortunately have a park next to school so go there a couple of nights after school for a quick play and usually there are some friends.

Mine are older now but through the primary years there were very very few play dates. Most parents were working so kids in wraparound care, activities at the weekend and there wasn't really much time for it.

Yes, we still are in the few paid activities camp

Yes, that’s what I remember. Maybe not diary plans, but if you popped to the park on a whim for an hour you’d find people easy enough. Loose friendships. Lots of childcare swaps! One a week it went one way or the other. One close friend we had a weekly dinner where we gave each other a break on alternating weeks just to break the grind up a bit.

That’s good to hear.
london.
where are you?

“Their friends only seems to leave the house for paid activities, eg a dance class, then go home.”

This was an issue for my DC - first place rarely saw friends out and about - second location we were not in same immediate area as most.

They got to secondary started going out with their friends in local area and into town- so it happened just a bit later.

Gosh that's so interesting, I didn't realise there were kids who didn't play with other kids outside of school or paid activities. It seems rather sad. Just another thing that's changing I guess.

My DD (now 12) and friends didn't socialize much outside of school during primary unless it was the odd birthday party or specific invitation to a friends house for an hour or so after school.

Since she started secondary last year they are always out and about and organising things together; walking to each others houses, going to parks, cinema, shopping in town etc.

I was surprised kids just weren't around they were with family, childcare or at big expensive events often not in local area.

I was very glad I'd had kids close together so they had each other and could so some paid stuff so they saw other kids. However it did all change in teen years.

Mine didn't really have "playdates". Two children, one adult, even just a couple of activities each took up a lot of evenings! However as they got older, they played out with friends.

People talk put about the "privilege" of paid activities but there is also the privilege of a safe space for children and young teens to just hang out unsupervised. Its easy to criticise for not allowing children to just play out but there can be literally no where for them to do so! Until 3 years ago we lived on an Army base just a mile out of a town... but there were no other children of a similar age. They had each other fortunately.

It’s a problem. Mine do paid activities but there’s very little in the way of play dates. I have arranged a few with kids for school but there’s not much in the way of return invites. Kids around my way only seem to socialise with other kids if the parents are really close friends and socialising as families together. Nobody plays out around here. You only see secondary school age children out alone playing/ hanging out. Not primary.

DS is a young adult and from 11 would nip to the local park which is about 5 min away and one quiet road to cross and play football. There was one lad who lived a few houses down and they were there all the time, joined by others sometimes, On a memorable occasion they came back with police tape round their heads having watched a stand off between the police and the areas well known family.

There was also lots of going round for tea to each other’s houses and because of that I became very good friends with another Mum, the kids are 23 now and we still meet up when we can. I made three very good friends through the school gate I have known two since first day of primary school, so 18 years.

I think lockdown probably changed it though I don’t have a young child to compare. Also the rise of knife crime in some cities probably worries some parents. I also think some worry about their kids being bored or not polished enough so book many activities.

North West. I think London is just a bit weird like that.

London has more people than in Scotland so saying the whole of London is like that is just weird.

My DD does have play dates in the park but her friends are two camps. Those that have lots of schedule activities and those who have very few. The ones she sees more very live nearby and her play dates have just been random.