To wonder if your NCT group are still friends?

[whereilived]

Ours was pretty tight but now the year before school I can feel is drifting. It’s sad but a bit inevitable I suppose! Has anyone managed to maintain friendships?

24 years on... yes.

DD is 12 now, and I’m still really good friends with one mum from my NCT group - we meet up every few weeks for coffee/lunch, exchange Christmas gifts etc. The rest of the group had a few meet-ups until the babies were about 2, but not much after that though a couple are still on my Facebook friends list.

As in any group, there were a couple that I liked a lot and got along well with, a few who were casual acquaintances but nothing more, and a couple who I didn’t like particularly. A few of them were very engaged in competitive parenting which I wasn’t massively keen on, so I didn’t really want to engage with it (you know the kind of stuff - trying to make other mums feel bad if they haven’t been up at 6am making scones from scratch and playing educational games they hand-knitted themselves from biodegradable recycled twine).

Not really. Annual ‘happy birthday’ messages on FB. They are all very lovely people but two moved abroad, one moved three hours away, one drifted (and then split up with her partner…after which I suspect we were a not nice reminder of him), leaving me and two others who were friends before NCT.

It was lovely the year I was off and it was still handy when I had DS2. But after that we totally drifted.

13 years later about half of my NCT group are "best Mummy friends".
We meet up about monthly ish. The other half have drifted apart, but then 2 of them have moved hundreds of miles away. (we still chat / follow each other on social media)
We meet altogether with kids a couple of times a year, and meet "seperately" (ie just 2 familys) several times a year too.

45 years later 2 of my Mums very best friends are her NCT friends.... they are all mid 60's / about to have their 70th birthdays.

(would be 3 but sadly one passed away a few years ago)

Four of the five are still in touch and meet up. That's the women - the men don't stay in touch but are happy to socialise if the women arrange it (but we mostly just do women's meet ups). I really like them all although am closer with two than the others.

Thats after nearly 4 years.

Yes, 16 years on. Despite the fact we’re very different we’ve bonded over the difficult early days. And the difficult teenage years too…

There were 5 of us in ours and I'm still close with 2 of them after 19 years.

Yes 16.5 years on 3 of us are good friends.

We were incredibly close for the first 10 months or so, then it became clear that some people weren't "making the cut" with some of the more bitchy particular mums in the group.

I outed the behaviour and told them to fuck themselves removed myself from the group.

Not NCT but a group of us daycare mums all meet up 2-3 times a year. Kids are in 3rd year of Uni or in jobs now

Yes- the kids aren't friends still, but we are - I'm very glad of their friendship

No.

They were mean girls and one called me fat when I was 9 months pregnant.

No. The group just didn't really click I don't think, although I could be totally wrong and maybe a few of them did with each other. I had more success with local baby/toddler groups - still very good friends with some of those mums. We all live close to each other and the kids all go to the same school, which helps.

Yes. A bunch of us went out for dinner on Friday actually. One family has moved abroad and one we’ve not seen since our kids turned one (they’re all turning four in February/March) but we’re all in pretty much daily contact on WhatsApp. The dad’s not so much, my husband sees one of the dads fairly regularly for a trip to the pub but none of the others have ever joined them despite being invited.

I feel incredibly lucky that we ended up with such a good group of friends from NCT.

No , the main meet ups fizzled out when the kids started school.
I met up with a couple of them until the dc were 6 but not since then . The dcs are in their 20s now.

Like many, there was one woman I didn't like (v competitive, full of herself etc). The others were ok but not really my kind of ppl.

I’ve always totally failed at making more than friendly acquaintances at baby / toddler groups. Probably because so many go with friends from NCT!

I would have loved to stay in touch, but I went back to work after a year so couldn't make meetups during the week. Weekends were sacrosant. The other mums drifted back in to work more slowly. But I think the big factor was how well the dads got on. My then husband (now ex) didnt really gel with the other dads and so that never worked out. We also only had one whereas the other families had further children, therefore being off work and available to meet up. So the big birthday of one of them who lives right opposite us and we werent invited was a wake up call that we were no longer included at all. The 18th birthday call last year just fell on deaf ears. No-one could be bothered.

My in-laws are still really really good friends with a couple from their NCT class and it was 30+ yrs ago.

I was in the NCT ( daily meet ups in peoples houses!) from 1982 when my eldest was born. I meet one of my best friends who I met then, about once a fortnight for catch up chat and one of the others every month or so. Still see others around my town to stop and chat to.
Joining was the best thing I ever did! And although it promoted breast feeding I was never made to feel bad because I wasn’t able to.

Still close to one girl but we’ve had other things in common post babies.

Yes the majority of the group are still very close. DC just turned 9 and in Y4, 7 families still very close, speak daily, meet as often as we can, dads meet regularly, go on holidays together - just mums, just dads and whole families. All have 2,3 or 4 children now so the group is very big!

We got very lucky - although having babies at the same time is what resulted in us meeting, we have a lot in common and are the type of people we would have formed friendships with.

I think we’re just Facebook friends now. I moved away when the babies were still small which didn’t help. I have more contact with the group from the Mumsnet thread for my due month funnily enough although that’s always just been an online thing.

Ten years on I am still really good friends with my NCT group. We don't see each other regularly, but when we do see each other we still get on like a house on fire. The kids only see each other a couple of times a year now, but the Mums meet up every couple of months and are in contact weekly via WhatsApp. Covid actually really cemented our relationship as we were all in contact almost daily working out how on earth to keep a bunch of 5 year olds occupied without losing our sanity!

Still friends with mine, our sons are now 26

Yes 16 years on and half of us still see each other regularly