What do you do when your toddler is friends with another toddler who’s parents are annoying?
Are you obliged to grin and pretend that everything is wonderful and that you are so happy that your kids are friends as it has brought both families together or do you just smile at each other politely across the play ground and let your kids get on with playing while you by and large ignore each other?
And what happens if this benign neglect is not something they are interested in and you get the feeling that they are extremely keen to actually be as good a friends as your kids?
Do you have to spend the next 15 years going to concerts, sporting events, the park, etc. as a dual (or multi) family unit always seen and acting as one?
Will you one day end up on the most dreaded of things and go on a combined holiday sharing some crappy caravan down the coast for a fortnight so all the kids can be together?
I must admit that the whole concept of letting my kids dictate who my future friends will be sends a chill down my spine, so I have come up with a simple solution. I just let Wife be in charge of all things social while I sit in the background being surly and watching sports. Sure she thinks it is a horrible situation, but it sure works for me…
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Haha! This is funny!
I can give you our own real-life examples: My parents and their inlaws!
My dad’s not very sociable; the man of few words type. He leaves all these social & extended family events to my mum to handle… But since going into their 60’s I guess both have been just as active in their social lives, but they do share their friends.
But anyway, my parents & inlaws don’t mix. Not that there were any pot-throwing or squabbles prior, just that this is my parents’ style. The kids want to get together, get married? Okay, go for it, but beyond the grandchild’s birthday parties & such, they hardly see each other. The same when us kids were going to school. My brother has befriended more people & contacts from his dog training / obedience school than my parents through their kids!
So I guess it’s fine!
Since I am a full time mom, I have to be friend all other parents, mostly moms whom my boys play with. But I’m ok with that coz, if I may say so, I am the “sociable type”.
So on certain occasions my husband (friendly but always so busy) gets dragged into the kids’ activities, and that would mostly be on my request. That also because it’s due to circumstances such as my not being familiar with a certain neighborhood or it’s a Sunday (grandma’s day off). In a way it’s good coz then he gets to meet who we have been seeing and when I later relate stories to him he knows who I am referring to.
I do note one trend in the comments here and it is generally the male of the species that is the anti-social one and it is left to their partner to keep things ticking over.
I wonder if that is common across the animal kingdom or just specific to the human species.
Either way my wife is convinced that if it wasn’t for her I would be a hermit - and she is right. Which makes it all the more strange that my entire adult life has been spent in fields involving social welfare, when I am so anti-social by nature.
We are a weird group us humans
Well, social welfare and being social are 2 totally different things. Your being involved in social welfare is because you have a concern for wellbeing and justice for all people. It is different from having to be cozy and fuzzy with others. *grin*
Moomykin - I like that explanation and have written it up on one of the whiteboards in my office!