8 Easy Ways to Find New Mom FriendsBeing a mom is hard enough, with cooking, cleaning, reading bedtime stories, being a rule model and raising little human beings. Having a good friend around that goes through the same things and can comfort, offer advice and make that time easier, is a valuable gift from the universe. So how do we find those friends?
Here are ideas for you to find other moms that would love to be friends with you and help you through that pleasurable yet difficult times.
Collababysitting
How hard it is to find a good babysitter and being able to afford it for all the days in the week in which you need (or want) to go out for the evening? How about sharing one? I can assure you there are plenty of moms out there, looking for a fellow parent to share a babysitter with. It can be a local teenager that’d babysit for all your children at once, if you drop your kids at your new friend’s house (or the other way around), or it can be you that’d babysit for your and your friend’s kids in exchange for an opposite arrangement for next time. I’ll leave it to you to figure it out.
Playground Time
When was the last time you went out with your kids to the playground? Every kid deserves a bit of sun and fun slides in their childhood. I bet there are other moms in your area that are looking to give their kids exactly that too! Why not start chatting with them? I’m sure they would love to have a conversation with another mom while they’re watching their kids playing - maybe even with each other - and maybe makes some friends.
Friend of a Friend
The previous point brings me right to this one: Once your kids have made new friends - in their kindergarten, in afternoon classes, or school, or whatever it’ll be, try to get to know their parents. It could be easy to do that, since they’re probably gonna pick their kids up from your house or the afternoon class, ect., or you’re gonna pick your kids up from their house, so starting a conversation should really be a natural thing to help you with beginning that new friendship.
Also, if you already have some m
om friends (which I hope and assume you do have at least one), try and ask them to meet up with other mom friends they have. Or if your friends aren’t moms at all, ask them if they happen to have friends who are moms.
Finding friends through mutual friends is such an ancient, easy and natural way. You can also assure that way that these moms are good people, because they are already friends of your own friends (or maybe your kids’ friends parents, that hopefully will be nice to you as their kids are nice you to yours).
The Hitchhiker’s Guide
As we’ve established before, your new mom friend’s kids might be going to the same school/kindergarten/afternoon classes as your kids. Being a mom (or just a parent) takes a lot, including, driving your kids. Why not finding someone to share your rides with? Say you’ll drive your kids and your neighbor’s kids to Tuesdays’ activities, and they’ll drive your kids and theirs on wednesdays’, and in the meantime, you could start befriending them, along with helping them and yourself with saving time (and the environment).
Be the Host
There are many big (and small) events in a kid’s life that require time and place and someone to supervise over all of this. Doesn’t sounds like a lot of fun, right? But hear me out: Hosting an event - a birthday party, a holiday, a random tea party for the neighborhood - gives you a lot of opportunity to meet the parents in your area, all the moms of your kid’s friends. Plus, there sure are other parents hosting birthday parties and local holidays in their houses - why not pass by with your kid and check out the people? You might just lend on your new best friend.
Shared Interest
Let me ask you: What do you like? Before being a busy parent, before being a tired mom, what do you like to do when you do get a free time? What makes you happy, where do you enjoy hanging out? Are you the baking kind, the artsy kind, the traveling kind or the relaxing on the beach kind? Find your interests and then look around for other people who have the same ones. Some of them are outta be moms. Remember that this is the first way we all make friends as individuals (before motherhood, even in the long lost days of school).
Offer Help
Being a mom is exhausting. We all know this. And how amazing it feels to get help, especially when we don’t expect it.
As a mom, you should understand that. I know you would probably appreciate an offer of help, and so other moms surely would. So offer help! If you see or know about a mom in your area, just ask if she needs anything, or even start off by giving that help right away. It doesn’t need to be something difficult that’s out of your reach - just something simple that you can do or share. See a mom struggling to pick up her child’s toys in the end of a long day in the kindergarten? Just go and help her. Hear her complaining about not having ideas for good meals for her kids? Give her a recipe that you and your kids enjoy.
There are tons of ways you can help a mom without even putting into it the slightest of effort - and you’ll only benefit from that! In having a new great friends!
And don’t forget that it goes in both directions. If a mom is offering you help with something - just accept it. Why being all heroic and distant when you can just be happy for having that person around you, someone that willingly helps you make your life easier. Be open towards people who are kind enough to offer you help, in the same way you want them to accept your kindness and help when you find the courage to offer it.
Let’s bring back sisterhood into motherhood and create mutual support friendship!
Online is On
Now you might ask - but where do I find all these things? I don’t have the time to talk to the moms when I’m picking my kid from kindergarten (which is a shame, by the way), or don’t know where I can find a babysitter to share with a fellow mom. How am I suppose to find all these people?
Lucky for us, we live in the age of the internet. Finding babysitters, afternoon classes (both for kids and for moms), or simply open forums, exactly for moms that cannot find moms around to communicate with.
I know that putting yourself on the internet can be scary, and sometimes we don’t have the time to search for new friends there, or even trust the process to work - how do we know we’re actually gonna find new mom friends and not just weirdos online?
I guess it’s a matter of trust, luck, and experience. As you become more and more familiar with the web, with Facebook groups and room chats and want ads for babysitters and classes and so on, you’ll be able to trust more, and hopefully, luck will follow!
So there you go. Here are 8 ways for you to find new mom friends. Sure, it takes courage, it takes trust and as always, some luck to stumble across the right people, but for what it's worth, trying to do our best in the fields that are in our control - like the suggestions above - is gonna take us at least half way there.
So be brave! Go out there and meet new people! You’ll thank this list later on, when you’ll be sitting with your new besties and you’ll laugh together about your mom problems and pleasures in life. I promise you, this is right around the corner!
Good luck :)
Arthur Ellis is a family, headshot, and boudoir photographer located in Charleston SC.
He can be contacted through his website at: https://www.arthurellisphotography.com/
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