To think that children aren't as good at playing together anymore?

[Hoverflies]

When I am at the park with my dc (6 and 3) I mostly just see children playing with their parents and not really mingling with each other unless they already know each other. My dd has tried a few times to talk to other children at the park and they just stare at her or run off. She is also shy about talking to new children and both DC want us to play with them all the time at the park, just like I see the other parents doing.

I'm not a confident person but I used to love making friends with other children at parks (well usually pub beer gardens in my childhood!) And especially on holiday, my brother and I would just go up to people and become friends for the rest of the holiday! We are going away soon and I would love that for her but it just never seems to happen and if she ever does interact with other children it feels like I or the other parents always have to intervene in some way which my parents never did. If we argued as kids we just had to work it out and not come crying to them every five minutes!

This isn't to say that I don't want to spend time with my kids, but I just want them to be able to play more with other children and for parents to actually sit and talk to each other and finish a sentence!

How do you make new friends?

Some of my closest friends are those random people I got talking to in a club.

That's really sad to hear 😔

My eldest is shy but determined. She set out to make friends on holiday and did. She used her bits of French and Arabic to at least ask kids basic stuff like names, ages and if they wanted to play. She does have sen though that affects her physically so I had to strike a balance by giving her enough space to be independent but near enough that she knew where I was and could get back to either of us. Ds made friends too and played football with other kids and when he went up to the pitch I got lumbered with goalkeeping duties. Dd2 is a toddler so one of us was with her at all times.

We have 3 and they play well together, sometimes, more often than not they will happily include other children. Both dh and I played table tennis with our kids and if other kids wanted to join in we let them.

Sometimes it's not so much that other kids don't want to play with yours but the parents don't want the added responsibility of keeping an eye on yours too. As a family of 3 and with fact that we actually play with ours we do attract other kids. I don't mind on the whole but dh as a man is wary of this.

Work, hobbies school, friends of friends like most people. Not from talking to random drunk people.

The OP's premise is something which is neither here nor there and indicative of nothing. Neither DDs nor I lack for social interaction or friendship. Some people are more extrovert than others and the world could do with a few more quiet and reflective people and fewer noisy gobshites who think everyone wants to be their pal.

Interesting. My twins will make random friends all the time at the park.

I think 6 and 3 is a bit on the young side to expect this though. I think my two were 5/6 when they started ganging up with random children, but they probably socially bolster each other.

My daughter is almost 5. I sort of recognise what you’re saying, though not completely.

DD is very sociable and outgoing - far more than her dad or I to be honest! She’s an only, which would not have been our choice, and I think because I’m aware of that I’ve been very hot on encouraging lots of time with cousins as well as other friendships.

We’re lucky to have quite a lot of young children in our quiet little street, all girls within a year or two of DD’s age. They do play out together although still very much with parental supervision as they’re very young still. I would say that DD is definitely the most easy/ friendly natured of them all though - we’ve been here these kids whole lives and this playing out has been a thing the last 3 years or more, yet most of the others still struggle to get play going without a lot of parental prodding and support. They’re more naturally reserved I guess, though they all have a whale of a time once they get going. We probably do hover a bit much actually.

She’s managed to find friends on a few holidays - in May we were in a caravan and somehow struck up a friendship with the kids in the next door one. Theyd get up at the crack of dawn and start shouting ‘hello?? Hello??’ out of the window till the other one appeared. It’s hard though navigating how much freedom to allow - I was happy for them to play on the stretch of grass between the two caravans, or just at the back, where we could see them - DH was adamant he didn’t want her going into the other family’s caravan and he preferred to be out there with them but settled for sitting at the window keeping an eye.

Parks are hit and miss - to be fair I find them so boring I don’t often take her unless we’re meeting other people we know there!

DD’s biggest issue has generally been a complete inability to play independently - if there’s other children in the mix it’s fine but otherwise it’s very much needing me or DH. That said, we’re making some progress there it’s something I know we’ve probably created and I’m trying to encourage it more now. If we’re out I have started saying ‘no, it’s for children to play - not mummies’ and we’re getting somewhere with that, and at home she’s definitely getting better and being bored and finding stuff to do.

Wow. You do realise there's a middle ground between those two extremes.

But you still would've had to get to know them in the first place.

A middle ground would be children playing with their friends and parents in the park as the OP describes. It sounds delightful, but apparently it's awful. The OP thinks society is coming to an end because a few kids in a single playground are shy or just weren't interested in her kids. I'd say that's something of a ridiculously flight of fancy, and rather extreme.

This seems to have hit a nerve for you and I don't know why. I agree with OP that now many children seem to lack social skills and that is a new phenomenon, a teacher upthread has also commented on this.

My DC will often be with a friend they know and then they will make friends with another child or children. It's actually lovely to see, I don't know why you'd find this so terrible and offensive tbh.

@neverwakeasleepingbaby I was raised in the 1970s in what I can only describe as being totally free, we were feral basically. Roamed out and about from around 6 if we had an older sibling or friend and then we became the older more responsible child. I was 9 when I was allowed to go to a park that was 2 miles away taking my sister who was 6 and my niece who was 7 with me. On the way home we decided to go for a swim in the sea in our undies. That was too much for even my lax Mother so I got a good hiding for endangering the little ones, it was also winter.

Absolute shenanigans with myself and other local kids in our road, the worse was being chased by rats disturbed by one lad who baited them out with bacon from the abandoned building up the road. Climbing trees, unsupervised swimming, jumping off the sea wall in to the sea, cow pat fights. We used to collect other random kids including some from the local children’s home who used to climb out of the windows to join us, a fine time was had by all. It was a miracle we all survived,

DH family were wealthy so he had lots of structured activities, horse riding, piano and sailing lessons. I’m a far more confident person than he is with strangers,

Mine were allowed to the local park when they hit 10, it is at the end of our road so not far. They also played out along the road. But no wandering for miles.

Sad thread.

My DS is 4 and he definitely plays independently, with or without other children.

We live in an apartment complex with a small playground in the grounds, so he quite often plays there with the neighbours' children. He also went to crèche full time until he started school and he goes to after school care four days a week until about 6pm. It's mostly unstructured play so when I pick him up he is always doing an activity of his choice with three or four other kids.

We live abroad and the last couple of times we've been back to the UK he's struck up a conversation with a random kid. I thought it was brilliant that he had the confidence to do that in English, which is his weaker language. The idea that it's not a normal thing to do regardless of language literally didn't occur to me.

He also does structured activities (swimming, gymnastics, music) and has very little screen time (a small amount of TV at weekends, no other screens).

Your childhood sounds like an Enid Blyton book!

I was born in the 80s and I was allowed to play outside and cycle my bike round the cul de sac with the other kids on the street. I think my parents let me walk to the shop with a friend at about 10. But I certainly wasn’t swimming in rivers or getting chased by rats lol

I think my overthinking comes from a place of not wanting to be emotionally absent, but then I also want to build resilience in them. My parents are very anxious people and it’s taken a lot of my adult life to break free from their cautious thinking. But that’s more to do with going for academic stuff and job opportunities rather than swimming in rivers.

In terms of the point of the thread, I’m pretty introverted and always preferred spending my time on craft activities by myself. I don’t think it would have been my vibe to approach other kids to play, just not my personality type!

It's the general negativity that hits a nerve. A single experience is extrapolated to be apparently a sign that the world is coming to an end.

I have only noticed this sometimes from siblings who seem scared to play with anyone except each other. My DD usually finds a little friend in the park but they tend to be other only children or there without their siblings.

This is my experience too. And it makes sense - my DD is far better at making friends than I ever was because I was lumped in with my siblings all the time and so never really learned.

Teacher here too and totally agree. I know it’s an unpopular opinion but get them off the iPad. Or better still don’t get one in the first place.

Well that's an exaggeration I think, I don't think OP said the world was going to end. Although now that you mention it, if people lose all social skills I guess that will be the natural outcome (human reproduction at least) 🫠

Is it the rise in only child families? Maybe they haven’t practiced at home with sibling and only play with mum and dad.

It's not a "single experience" nor has anyone suggested it is the end of the world. Don't be so dramatic.

This feels so sad! Hasn't been my experience at all, but then I'm in a hippy area where lots of families with children the same age as mine are screen free/all about 'free range kids' so my experience is likely extremely skewed!

Saying that we also go away camping a lot and have only experienced a gaggle of kids who only just met one another, running around together having a blast. Maybe that's the culture of campsites?

Interesting how many people have used overprotective parents as a reason. I'm quite encouraging of my kids to go out, make friends, climb trees (we've taught them about how to get back down, three points of contact etc) and the number of times an older (not even much older, from late 40's up I'd say) person has come up to me and suggested I'm putting my kids in danger by letting them be more than 10m away from me or more than a metre off the ground is quite astonishing. Feels like the world wants you to be scared to let your children out of your sight or do anything remotely risky. Genuinely happened to me just yesterday, a woman came over and berated me for letting the children climb as 'they'll crack their heads open if they fall'. I mean yes a fall would absolutely hurt, but they're sensible kids who have yet to fall (obviously this doesn't mean it'll never happen), they were climbing carefully and looking after themselves and one another, are they meant to stay on the ground constantly in case of an accident? What a sad existence that would be!!

My kids weren’t that keen to play with random kids but were generally sociable and friendly. They had lots of friends and probably didn’t feel a need to play with just anyone. They wouldn’t have been unfriendly if someone had approached them but they generally wouldn’t have gone up to other kids. My four kids are close in age and they loved playing with each other or with friends they knew. I had other parents try to palm their kids off onto my kids more than a few times and I would intervene if the kid was annoying my kids. It was a balance of being kind but also not being used as free babysitting by lazy parents.

Yep same - DS makes friends all over the place (including overseas - had a great time playing in a park in Munich with local kids despite barely speaking German). Because the alternative is playing alone, whereas I always just played with DBro.