Friendship

I’m writing this post because of situations I’ve had recently both with coworkers and old friends. One reason I have created this blog is to talk about some of the difficult issues that come up surrounding motherhood. For me, isolation is one of those issues. To be honest, I’ve never really fit in anywhere. I’ve always had trouble meeting people and making friends. Maybe it’s my shy and introverted personality. Maybe it’s my visual impairment that puts people off. Maybe it’s another flaw in my personality or maybe it’s the world we live in today. Whatever the reason, I’ve never really found my tribe.

This past week, I reached out to an old friend. We exchanged a couple of messages, but the conversation fizzled out pretty quickly. It ended with me asking about his kids and how his work was going. Whenever I hear from this person, there are always excuses about how busy he is, but it’s clear he’s just too busy for me. It’s like that with most interactions I have with people. I make all the effort to keep in touch, but get very little in return.

The Isolation

I hear this from a lot of adults. They feel isolated. It’s hard to make friends and it’s hard to see the ones we have regularly. Another friend and I were talking the other day about how isolating parenting can be. She told me that many of her friends had kids young, so now they are in a completely different stage of parenting. They don’t want to deal with the birthday parties, the baby showers etc. It’s harder to find things in common. I miss the ease of childhood friendships. Kids bond over playing the same sports, liking the same music or it could just be as simple as deciding they will be friends and then sticking to it. Then we all grow up. Now that we have smart phones and the internet, we seemed to have forgotten how to interact with the people around us.

Are we passing our isolation on to our children?

Awkwardness

Rosebud is social by nature. She still has trouble with sharing her toys, but she generally loves to be around other kids. The thing is, she doesn’t have much of an opportunity for that since she is not in childcare. I want her summers to be fun and memorable, so I took her on a few field trips last year. For starters, I took her to the library where they have a play room. Presumably, children can play together there. We spent some time looking at books and playing and hoped another kid would show up. Well, a father and his two kids eventually did, but he sat with his kids outside the room and was clearly waiting for us to leave. It was awkward, so we left.

Hovering

Our next trip was to a small children’s museum. Honestly, it was just a larger preschool classroom that advertises itself as a museum to get funding for their program. Rosebud had a good time playing with the different toys there, but I hoped she’d get to play with other kids. There were a couple other kids her age, but instead of encouraging the kids to play together, the parents hovered and followed the kids from place to place. When I was a kid, the kids played together and the parents would talk. This was true even in new places with new kids. Especially if the place was relatively small and you could see the kids from where ever you were.

Aggression

Our third trip was to a larger museum for children where Rosebud’s favorite thing was a room full of blocks and balls. There was a boy around her age who was there with his brother. They were building a tower with the blocks and then filling it with balls. Rosebud noticed this and started gathering balls for them, but whenever she brought balls over to them, the smaller boy would tell her to go away and that they weren’t playing with her. She was too young at the time to feel the rejection and kept filling buckets of balls for them.

After a while, we went to another room that had different kinds of tunnels with balls. They also had an exhibit where you could keep balls floating in the air. It was basically a cone with air being forced out of it. Anyway, there was another boy around her age and she noticed his dad bouncing balls over the cone. He could keep several going at once which made her laugh. When she noticed the boy, she went over to stand next to him. There was plenty of room for them both to play with the ball machines, but the boy kept hitting her and pushing her away no matter what she did. I kept having her move away from him, but she really want to play with him. After a little while, we decided to leave because I didn’t want the boy to keep being mean to her. Maybe he was the one who should’ve left, but I didn’t want to cause a scene or try to have an awkward conversation with his dad. However I told Rosebud to tell the boy that she didn’t like it when he hit or pushed her. I also told her to stay away from him and that she didn’t have to be around people who were mean to her. While hitting and pushing is developmentally appropriate to a point, as a childcare provider, I’m seeing an over abundance of aggressiveness. That seems to be the first response to everything. Many kids seem to get physical without remorse and I’m convinced that there’s more involved than kids just being kids.

Insecurity

Then one day at our neighborhood playground, Rosebud was enjoying the slide when a father and his four-year-old daughter showed up. While Rosebud was excited to see another kid, I couldn’t wait to leave. I had a quick conversation with the father and we left. While this is what I complain about, I couldn’t help but feel like I needed to get away. First, I wasn’t sure if they wanted the playground to themselves. Then all these things ran through my mind. What would I talk to this guy about while our kids played? What if Rosebud did something to the other child that I didn’t see? What if his daughter did something to Rosebud? What if I had to chase her if she ran off the playground? Sometimes she’d run off and I had to run after her. I didn’t want to do that in front this man who I didn’t know. I didn’t want him to notice my visual impairment and think that I was less of a parent. I didn’t want this stranger to see me make a mistake, so it felt safer for me to leave. Then I wonder if I denied Rosebud an opportunity to make a friend. Will I have to keep doing that?

Final Thoughts and

Questions

This brings me back to the struggle I have with making friends. Am I unintentionally passing it on to her? Before she was born, I thought it’d be easier to make friends as a mom. I thought there’d be play groups and more ways to connect. Of course we’d have something huge in common, being a mother. Then real life happens, insecurities pop up and then motherhood becomes more isolating than ever. Most of the play groups or children’s activities in my area are during the day. Childrens activities and play groups are great places for making mom friends if you are a sahm or have a flexible work schedule. Unfortunately, I’m a working mom with a standard work schedule, so it’s not possible to attend. There are also the logistics of transportation which makes things even more complicated and I usually decide it’s not worth climbing the mountain.

Since I haven’t figured this out yet, I’m posting some questions to you. How do you make friends as a mom? Do you feel isolated or have you found your tribe? How do you facilitate your children making friends? Let me know in the comments.

I’m a child of the 80’s and 90’s. It’s amazing how much the atmosphere has changed since then. Kids spend far less time outside, there have been huge advances in technology, an even larger push to be politically correct and an increase in public displays of hatred and the endless worrying for our children’s safety, even in schools where they are supposed to be safe. When I was growing up, I could play outside freely and no one ever dreamed of a school shooting. Most kids I knew ate what they wanted because we all got plenty of exercise. There wasn’t as much of a concern for eating healthy or putting children on diets.

Toys

Remember when kids played with toys that allowed children to use their imagination? Battery operated toys were the exception. A large box could be turned into a grocery store or an ice cream shop at a moments notice. These were the days of My Little Pony, Cabbage Patch and Strawberry Shortcake. I loved the strawberry shortcake scented dolls. My favorite stuffed animal was a Hallmark Rainbow Bright Cat. I lost mine and am still looking for one at a reasonable price to this day!

I had to have an Etch a Sketch. My secret was that I couldn’t see any of the lines it made, but I had to have one anyway. Now, the Light Bright I could see and make designs with. How about those jelly bracelets? The ones with the glitter in them? I wore those for a year straight after a friend and I traded bracelets in class. Trading jewelry was a favorite pass time in second grade.

Entertainment

In the 90’s our entertainment on the television consisted of talk shows, game shows and sit-coms. These were the days when Maury Povich used to feature other topics besides paternity. How about when MTV played actual music? If they weren’t playing music videos, the shows were related to music. What about the movies? The first movie I saw with a group of friends was, “Dumb and Dumber”. We laughed at the bulldog mixed with Shih Tzu joke. For my 13th birthday, a few of us saw the movie, “Scream.” My mom asked me what the movie was about and my response was, “I don’t know. A girl.” I wanted to avoid the awkwardness of it. I rarely ever saw horror movies in our home so it was a treat. I saw Titanic three times in the theater. Yes, I cried and yes, it’s embarrassing! To defend myself, I went with different people each time. Music was another big part of our entertainment. Most of the stuff I listened to would be cringe worthy today, but it was popular at the time. Back then, when you were looking for uncensored music or if you wanted to hear rap and r&B in general, you had to find the nearest college radio stations. then you had to figure out when they played the types of music you liked. In the small town where I lived, they never played that stuff on mainstream radio. The other option was to watch MTV Jams first thing in the morning before school.

Technology

Technology moves fast, doesn’t it? I remember cassettes with their ribbons breaking constantly. I’d buy blank tapes and record from the radio. The most annoying thing was when the DJ talked over the intro or ending of a song. If you got a sudden burst of static, that ruined your recording too. After cassettes came cd’s. Those were a step up, but they still got scratched and skipped. Who knew at the time that they’d be basically obsolete within a decade. Let’s not forget the phones. When you had to pull that phone chord as far as it would go to get into a comfortable position because you talked on the phone for hours. then there were those situations where you needed to get to the other end of the house. “Hold on, I have to put the phone down.” Then you’d run to pick up another phone. Enter the cordless phone and problem solved. Almost every bit of technology changed since then as we moved into the digital age.

Snacks

Who remembers the Oreo Big Stuf? I almost thought I had dreamed this up until I saw them on Wikipedia. They were a real invention because I remember taking them apart, eating them piece by piece at my grandfather’s kitchen table. They were discontinued in 1991, so I hadn’t given any thought to how many calories in every bight. That would come a few years later when I started to worry about my weight and struggled with body image like most girls do. I remember large Hostess cupcakes, squeezable juices, fruity numbers and girl scout cookies that were reasonably priced. Well, at least compared to today’s prices. This was back when your happy meal came in an actual plastic lunch box and a lot of fast food places gave you reusable cups or bottles. There were so many different snacks and candy and I can’t even remember what most of them were called.

Friendships
What I miss most of all is the friendships. My best friend and I would talk about our aspirations. We thought we should open up a beauty salon when we grew up. I’d do the shampooing and she’d do the cutting. We talked about the names of our future children, our dream houses and places we wanted to see. We took trips to the beach, shopped at the mall, went to the movies and skated at the roller rink. We ate mozzarella sticks and drank slushies. We’d make stupid jokes and laughed until it hurt. We’d get up at 3 AM to play Super Mario Brothers. We had used nail polish and did a terrible job. By the time we realized there was no nail polish remover, it was way too late. We thought we’d try Soft Scrub instead. Needless to say, that didn’t work, but it was a hell of a shock to her mom. We were like family and I spent almost as much time at her house as I did my own.

It was one of those friendships where you knew there’d be someone to call at the end of the day. You knew your weekend plans were set before they were even officially made. You knew you’d never be alone. We experimented with makeup and talked about boys. Unfortunately, we talked about other girls too and that was a huge downfall. Eventually, that friendship fell apart. After the cliques were formed and our interest in boys grew, it was never the same. There were more disagreements, our common interests faded and our differences became more apparent. Things that never mattered before suddenly did because when people get older, their perceptions change. If there was one thing I could put in a time capsule to save from my childhood, it wouldn’t be treasured well-loved toys, those jelly bracelets or the candy that brings back memories. It would be friendship. It would be the happy memories, the laughs and that feeling of belonging and never being alone.

A Flourishing Rose

Looking For My Tribe