To miss spending time with my Dd

[Itsallflyingby]

She’s just turned 7

I’ve been lucky that I’ve always been off with her over the holidays
I adored it when she was little, we’d have days out, beach trips, do baking and crafts, watch films, meet friends and so on.
She now mainly plays with friends in the neighbourhood, they’re in and out of our house and she is in theirs.
it’s what makes her happy and what she wants to do, but I really miss just having some time together. If we go out together we can have this, but I miss just relaxed days just us at home without them wanting to go to their houses or them coming here.
Of course I could say no, but that feels like forcing her and she’d be upset as just wants to see her friends, but I rarely see her it feels like!

How do you keep the connection, or is this just an inevitable part of life?

It's an inevitable part of life.

So from as early as 7, you just don’t spend much time with them and the bond isn’t the same/as strong? I expected it later on, not this young

Your connection is still there, it's just different.

A kid who is social and happy is something to be celebrated imo

I think it’s amazing you have that community in your neighborhood! This may be more of a summer thing and she will spend more time with you in the winter holidays? It sounds like you’ve done a brilliant job with her though, your job is to make her independent and to stand on her own two feet- and it sounds like that is what she is doing. It’s the price you sometimes pay for raising confident and socially thriving children!

I will say my DF struggled with this much more than my DM, and it meant Im closer with DM as an adult, as I felt so stifled when I was younger.

Try to not see it as being about the bond. She’s off exploring and having fun because of the security of your bond - you are her secure base. I book days out as “our time”. Its hard though, them growing up, especially when you have such lovely memories of earlier stages.

Can’t you still do baking and crafts but let her friends join you? I’m sure she would love that.

Yes we sometimes do that, just isn’t the same though

Your child is developing independence and her social network. Why wouldn't you think that was a good thing?

We get repeated threads on here from mums whose children haven't made friends at school and thereby have no friends to play with. Yours has a great local network - that's really healthy!

Different families are different and I find it too much if my children are playing with friends every free moment. Family time is really important as they spend every day at school with friends so we sometimes decline invitations or requests for playing as we have planned something for us, even if it’s just chilling together. You can choose we don’t all have to be the same. My older children now self regulate and build in their own downtime as well as seeing their friends plenty.

That would be really easy if they weren’t all right on our doorstep 🙈I feel the same as you as she has school and other friendship groups. Every day and most of the day, all the children want to play together

I do think it’s a good thing, very proud of how confident and outgoing she is and have always encouraged it as I was a very shy child, it’s just a lof

Days out doing something once a week.

We do do that, but then she’s obviously off playing with other kids etc, which is great-playgrounds, play places. I suppose I miss that time we had together just in the house and garden

It's not unreasonable to miss what you had before, of course not.

But you need to reframe it to yourself that this is just one of many steps of letting go, letting her gain her independence and build a life outside of you that you will have to accept as part of being a very lucky family, where life is as you would hope it to be.

It's so bittersweet seeing your kids grow up. Mine is 15 and I'm so proud of how independent she is, off out with friends most days or a member of loads of loads of different clubs but I miss her being little and all the fun we had when she used to see the awe and wonder in everything.

I miss all the other versions of her so much

DD2 was so like that, and we had lovely friends on the doorstep too, which I know was very lucky.
I did find out she also missed the 'home' time, and didn't know how to say 'no thank you.' One day she asked, 'can I say that you say 'no'' and after that, not often, maybe once in every dozen play requests she would fall back on that formula, and it helped us both. I guess she was between 6 to 11 at the time.

My only child was ostracised and bullied by the local kids. I was his only "playmate" and it broke my heart every single day. Please count your blessings.

I was the same from age 7. I hated being at home with family, as my friends were more fun! Fortunately, mine didn’t have local friends so didn’t do this, as it would have drove me mad having other kids round all the time.

I found it goes in cycles, sometimes wanting the time and the connection and sometim3w being distant. At 7 it's certainly isn't gone for good. Ds is 17 and I think we've had more time together in last few months than we have in ages, yeah it's different again, driving practise, lifts to sixth form but it's just the connection and relationship morphing and changing and you'll see that so much in the coming years