September 01, 2010

Maintaining friendships when you are a mama can be a tricky business. Often already juggling a hectic home life, work and children, while also trying to carve out a bit of time with Daddy-o, can leave little room for your girlfriends.

The way I see it, there are a few friendship fizzling high risk situations:

1) You become a mama: Many report that their friendships with single/childless girlfriends suffer. Mama feels they don’t understand why she doesn’t want to ditch the kid to go dancing every weekend. This has not actually been my experience. My single friends have shown extreme interest and understanding when it comes to my kids. And I am equally keen to hear their Sex in the City lifestyle stories.

2) You have a child with a disability: Hate to say it, but mamas of kids with disabilities get ditched. I’ll explain why it happens in the autism world: you have a friend who brings her 3-year-old over for weekly playdates. Her kid can’t talk, has meltdowns for “no reason”, maybe he’s a bit aggressive, doesn’t relate to the other kids there and his behaviour is disruptive. The mama host thinks “Hmmm…this playdate would go much more smoothly if that kid with the problems doesn’t come”. The playdate invitations stop.

3) You constantly bail on plans: When you regularly drop out of social plans at the last minute, eventually your friends will stop inviting you. I generally don’t accept invitations in the first place because of my bailing stats. But, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate receiving a low pressure “turn up if you can swing it” invitation. It makes me feel that I have not been forgotten, and also that there is some understanding about my situation.

4) You become a Mama of Many: Right around the birth of your fourth child, families you normally socialize with suddenly stop inviting you over. Who can blame them – your family takes up their whole house.

How have your friendships survived? What are the biggest friendship hurdles you’ve encountered in your mama life? Are you still close with the friends you had pre-kids, or did you shake it up socially when you hit the mama scene?

Labels/Tags: Julie Cole, The Baby Machine, Mama of Many, Mabel's Labels, working mothers

Posted by JulieC at 09:27:18 View Comments | Click Here to Comment

August 18, 2010

People are always asking me how I manage to spend enough individual time with each of my children. Quite frankly, I don’t. It’s not something that causes me stress since I firmly believe that what they may miss in one-on-one time with me, they make up for with the amazing interactions and relationships they have with each other. Besides, on the odd occasion where I have found myself alone with a child, I’ve noted they’ve spent most of our time together obsessing about what the others might be doing.

However, Daddy-o and I thought it would be fun to have some special time with each child so cooked up a new family tradition: Date Night. The idea is that each week, one child picks a parent and goes out for an adventure or activity. Alone. Just the two of them.

There was great excitement and chatter when we presented the idea to our kiddo panel. Immediately ideas about Date Night locations were being considered – movies, dinner, mini-golf, bowling. The list went on and on.

When the excitement died down, I asked if anyone had any questions about our new tradition. There were two:

1) Little Lady # 3 asked: “Can I bring a brother or sister along on my Date Night?”

2) Her 3-year-old brother came next: “Can I bring the whole family along on my Date Night?”

I would be lying if I said the questions shocked me, but I was a little unsure about how to answer - it is their night, shouldn’t they call the shots? I suggested we stick with the original plan and see how that works out. Now I only hope that I’m the parent of choice for the kiddos – going out with one kid sounds like a heck of a lot more fun than staying home with five.

So watch this space and tune in for occasional installments of “Adventures in Date Night!” In the meantime, what does one-on-one time mean to you? Do you have some children that crave it and others that don’t seem to want it?

Taken the day before having baby #6.
It marks baby’s last few hours of “alone time” with me.

Labels/Tags: Julie Cole, The Baby Machine, Mama of Many, Mabel's Labels, A New Kind of Date Night

Posted by JulieC at 11:20:08 View Comments | Click Here to Comment

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