Examining friendships among girls with the help of Glennon Doyle's "We Can Do Hard Things" Podcast episode on "left-outed-ness" (feat. Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle, as well.)
Oh, this is a tough one, especially as I have a very different view. I love how the mother reacted and would have done somethibg similar. Having an autistic kid like mine means talking through a lot of things, explaining especially social things. We did that from a very early age without even knowing he is autistic. But being autistic and therefore strange in the eyes if others meant that my kid was often left out. And most of the times he was fine with it as even three kids together would have been difficult. Now as a teenager he has a selected group of friends and this works really well. I learned to trust the process and to trust my kid to tell me, when something doesn’t feel right.
Julia, I love what you said here about how you "learned to trust the process and to trust your kid to tell (you) when something doesn't feel right." I think that trust element is so important; you're trusting him not "controlling" him. I'm curious (as a doctoral student this website is really my platform for exploratory research on how friendship in motherhood (or lack thereof) affects mothers' mental health)...did you struggle to make friends as a mom when your son was growing up/in grade school? Were some seasons of life easier than others to make friends, and if so, did you tend to have a few friends or a whole group? Did you ever experience loneliness? (no worries if you don't want to answer). :)
Julia, I love what you said here about how you "learned to trust the process and to trust your kid to tell (you) when something doesn't feel right." I think that trust element is so important; you're trusting him not "controlling" him. I'm curious (as a doctoral student this website is really my platform for exploratory research on how friendship in motherhood (or lack thereof) affects mothers' mental health)...did you struggle to make friends as a mom when your son was growing up/in grade school? Were some seasons of life easier than others to make friends, and if so, did you tend to have a few friends or a whole group? Did you ever experience loneliness? (no worries if you don't want to answer). :)
My daughter is 4. I haven’t noticed a time she was left out, and she hasn’t mentioned feeling left out to me yet. I was in her classroom (I work as an infant teacher but have worked in all classrooms over the years so they sometimes have me cover for a bit in the 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s) toward the end of the day for a couple weeks back in October, so I would be there during outside time. She always seemed to be playing with one or two friends, and they were mostly running around or rolling around in the leaves.
I of course have had times in the past where I felt left out, but it really hasn’t happened all that often since becoming a mom yet. I am curious about the dynamic change once she starts kindergarten in August of 2025 when it will be a whole new group of moms and kids.
Hi Laura, thanks SO SO much for sharing this little anecdote. I am just picturing your 4 yo daughter rolling in the leaves with her besties, lol. ;) ...yes, it will be interesting to see what happens for YOU when she starts Kindergarten in Aug. 2025 and there's a whole new group of moms and kids. I'm so curious if mom friendships or "cliques" form differently in different cultures, even sub-cultures like geographically. I am here in New Jersey where I'm working on my doctoral degree in clinical psych and raising our 5 & 6 yo....would love to learn more about what your friendships look like right now? I know we've discussed them a little bit in other threads, like that you have a few close friends and your sister.
I work full-time as an infant teacher so I don’t have a ton of time to hang out with anyone really during the week. So I have a couple coworkers who I consider my good friends (one was my coteacher for about a year, but it looks like they are about to move her out of the infant classrooms for a bit early in 2024, so we will see if she gets to be in that role again). Since we worked together every day we talked about everything and we get along very well (we both have ADHD, her son is a year younger than my daughter so we are both moms to young kids). I have another coworker that I have known since 2019 and we became good friends probably toward the end of 2021. Armando is my only close friend that’s a man. He is currently our assistant director but was also my daughter’s teacher for a while (and he prefers being the 4s teacher to the admin role, but we had a director that quit in October so he felt obligated to take over). We have hung out a couple times outside of work, but mostly I just enjoy having someone in management be my close friend (I wish he could be Hannah’s teacher again, but that currently seems unlikely). I think we got closer once he got married to his husband Kyle in 2021 because it seemed like that was when we all started talking about married life more, and he and my coteacher and I got closer. My friend Angie was my coworker for years but recently left the school so I still consider us close as well- we hung out at Armando’s earlier this month, and we text weekly/every other week. Angie worked with me in the infant room as well for a while before she moved to the 2s for a while before she left.
My sister is my best friend- we talk on the phone daily (usually we talk multiple times a day, on my way to work, on my lunch break, on my way home- I drive 30 minutes so in the mornings we do a conference call with my parents usually). We do DM on Instagram and send each other things to read, but while I am at work, my phone is in the closet of my classroom so we don’t communicate all day every day. I usually see her weekly, my mom likes to have Saturday gatherings where we all have dinner, so Hannah also comes with me on Saturday afternoons and we have family dinner (my husband only goes for birthdays usually, and my sister’s husband usually doesn’t come to these dinners weekly either, so it’s mostly me, my sister, my two nephews, my daughter, and my parents). My sister and I also do solo outings sometimes like brunch or pedicures and our parents or husbands watch the kids.
I have one close friend from college that we just spent time with on a girls’ trip this past weekend. Her kids are 4 and 2, so we have all been navigating parenting together. She was my sister’s college roommate, so initially she and my sister were closer, but by 2014 or so, the three of us became close friends (we called our trip a sissy mountain trip because she feels like another sister to us since we have been friends 17 years). We text weekly or every other week, and we get together multiple times a year (we usually attend birthday parties for each other’s kids, we had a sleepover with the kids in September, we usually plan some kind of outing in the spring or summer).
I also have friends that I have known for years that I keep up with mostly through texting but no longer really see in person. My friend Shorace became my friend when we worked together at summer camp starting in 2008, so we worked together/hung out a lot the summers of 2008-2011. Her parents lived up the street from mine so during the summer we could literally walk to come hang out. We walked together often the summer of 2010, we liked walking before work/after work and chatting. We always talked a lot- very in-depth conversations. Even now it is hard to schedule a phone catch up because it is always going to be an hour long call minimum. We still text pretty frequently and she has met my daughter. She was one of the first people I told when I knew I wanted to marry my husband because we had had so many conversations when I was in college about me worrying about not finding a husband (she is still single, but she really likes her life and her house, she is an assistant principal at a middle school that she has worked at since she was originally a teacher there back in 2010). I have a couple other coworkers that I still consider friends that I text monthly or so but don’t really see.
That’s pretty much it- I would still mostly just say my friendships are primarily my sister as my best friend and my coworkers/few close friends.
There is also the element of my sisters-in-law are both my friends, but we don’t talk quite as frequently although we see each other at family events. My husband’s sister and I get along well in person but don’t text that often, and my husband’s younger brother’s wife and I used to hang out more, but she doesn’t have kids so our relationship has been less close the last few years because she still does things like go out with friends during the week and go to concerts frequently (which I don’t really do).
This is amazing. Thanks so much for sharing about your experiences with friendship in motherhood, Laura. Would you want to publish this as a post on your site, and I can cross post it on mine? Or could I publish your words on my site, linking back to you? I can also take your story, edit it for clarity, send it back to you for approval, and then publish it? My goal is to start collecting stories from moms and sharing them each week.
Oh, this is a tough one, especially as I have a very different view. I love how the mother reacted and would have done somethibg similar. Having an autistic kid like mine means talking through a lot of things, explaining especially social things. We did that from a very early age without even knowing he is autistic. But being autistic and therefore strange in the eyes if others meant that my kid was often left out. And most of the times he was fine with it as even three kids together would have been difficult. Now as a teenager he has a selected group of friends and this works really well. I learned to trust the process and to trust my kid to tell me, when something doesn’t feel right.
Julia, I love what you said here about how you "learned to trust the process and to trust your kid to tell (you) when something doesn't feel right." I think that trust element is so important; you're trusting him not "controlling" him. I'm curious (as a doctoral student this website is really my platform for exploratory research on how friendship in motherhood (or lack thereof) affects mothers' mental health)...did you struggle to make friends as a mom when your son was growing up/in grade school? Were some seasons of life easier than others to make friends, and if so, did you tend to have a few friends or a whole group? Did you ever experience loneliness? (no worries if you don't want to answer). :)
Julia, I love what you said here about how you "learned to trust the process and to trust your kid to tell (you) when something doesn't feel right." I think that trust element is so important; you're trusting him not "controlling" him. I'm curious (as a doctoral student this website is really my platform for exploratory research on how friendship in motherhood (or lack thereof) affects mothers' mental health)...did you struggle to make friends as a mom when your son was growing up/in grade school? Were some seasons of life easier than others to make friends, and if so, did you tend to have a few friends or a whole group? Did you ever experience loneliness? (no worries if you don't want to answer). :)
My daughter is 4. I haven’t noticed a time she was left out, and she hasn’t mentioned feeling left out to me yet. I was in her classroom (I work as an infant teacher but have worked in all classrooms over the years so they sometimes have me cover for a bit in the 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s) toward the end of the day for a couple weeks back in October, so I would be there during outside time. She always seemed to be playing with one or two friends, and they were mostly running around or rolling around in the leaves.
I of course have had times in the past where I felt left out, but it really hasn’t happened all that often since becoming a mom yet. I am curious about the dynamic change once she starts kindergarten in August of 2025 when it will be a whole new group of moms and kids.
Hi Laura, thanks SO SO much for sharing this little anecdote. I am just picturing your 4 yo daughter rolling in the leaves with her besties, lol. ;) ...yes, it will be interesting to see what happens for YOU when she starts Kindergarten in Aug. 2025 and there's a whole new group of moms and kids. I'm so curious if mom friendships or "cliques" form differently in different cultures, even sub-cultures like geographically. I am here in New Jersey where I'm working on my doctoral degree in clinical psych and raising our 5 & 6 yo....would love to learn more about what your friendships look like right now? I know we've discussed them a little bit in other threads, like that you have a few close friends and your sister.
I work full-time as an infant teacher so I don’t have a ton of time to hang out with anyone really during the week. So I have a couple coworkers who I consider my good friends (one was my coteacher for about a year, but it looks like they are about to move her out of the infant classrooms for a bit early in 2024, so we will see if she gets to be in that role again). Since we worked together every day we talked about everything and we get along very well (we both have ADHD, her son is a year younger than my daughter so we are both moms to young kids). I have another coworker that I have known since 2019 and we became good friends probably toward the end of 2021. Armando is my only close friend that’s a man. He is currently our assistant director but was also my daughter’s teacher for a while (and he prefers being the 4s teacher to the admin role, but we had a director that quit in October so he felt obligated to take over). We have hung out a couple times outside of work, but mostly I just enjoy having someone in management be my close friend (I wish he could be Hannah’s teacher again, but that currently seems unlikely). I think we got closer once he got married to his husband Kyle in 2021 because it seemed like that was when we all started talking about married life more, and he and my coteacher and I got closer. My friend Angie was my coworker for years but recently left the school so I still consider us close as well- we hung out at Armando’s earlier this month, and we text weekly/every other week. Angie worked with me in the infant room as well for a while before she moved to the 2s for a while before she left.
My sister is my best friend- we talk on the phone daily (usually we talk multiple times a day, on my way to work, on my lunch break, on my way home- I drive 30 minutes so in the mornings we do a conference call with my parents usually). We do DM on Instagram and send each other things to read, but while I am at work, my phone is in the closet of my classroom so we don’t communicate all day every day. I usually see her weekly, my mom likes to have Saturday gatherings where we all have dinner, so Hannah also comes with me on Saturday afternoons and we have family dinner (my husband only goes for birthdays usually, and my sister’s husband usually doesn’t come to these dinners weekly either, so it’s mostly me, my sister, my two nephews, my daughter, and my parents). My sister and I also do solo outings sometimes like brunch or pedicures and our parents or husbands watch the kids.
I have one close friend from college that we just spent time with on a girls’ trip this past weekend. Her kids are 4 and 2, so we have all been navigating parenting together. She was my sister’s college roommate, so initially she and my sister were closer, but by 2014 or so, the three of us became close friends (we called our trip a sissy mountain trip because she feels like another sister to us since we have been friends 17 years). We text weekly or every other week, and we get together multiple times a year (we usually attend birthday parties for each other’s kids, we had a sleepover with the kids in September, we usually plan some kind of outing in the spring or summer).
I also have friends that I have known for years that I keep up with mostly through texting but no longer really see in person. My friend Shorace became my friend when we worked together at summer camp starting in 2008, so we worked together/hung out a lot the summers of 2008-2011. Her parents lived up the street from mine so during the summer we could literally walk to come hang out. We walked together often the summer of 2010, we liked walking before work/after work and chatting. We always talked a lot- very in-depth conversations. Even now it is hard to schedule a phone catch up because it is always going to be an hour long call minimum. We still text pretty frequently and she has met my daughter. She was one of the first people I told when I knew I wanted to marry my husband because we had had so many conversations when I was in college about me worrying about not finding a husband (she is still single, but she really likes her life and her house, she is an assistant principal at a middle school that she has worked at since she was originally a teacher there back in 2010). I have a couple other coworkers that I still consider friends that I text monthly or so but don’t really see.
That’s pretty much it- I would still mostly just say my friendships are primarily my sister as my best friend and my coworkers/few close friends.
There is also the element of my sisters-in-law are both my friends, but we don’t talk quite as frequently although we see each other at family events. My husband’s sister and I get along well in person but don’t text that often, and my husband’s younger brother’s wife and I used to hang out more, but she doesn’t have kids so our relationship has been less close the last few years because she still does things like go out with friends during the week and go to concerts frequently (which I don’t really do).
This is amazing. Thanks so much for sharing about your experiences with friendship in motherhood, Laura. Would you want to publish this as a post on your site, and I can cross post it on mine? Or could I publish your words on my site, linking back to you? I can also take your story, edit it for clarity, send it back to you for approval, and then publish it? My goal is to start collecting stories from moms and sharing them each week.
You can always just link it back to me! It’s nice that you want to share stories.