Friendship after Parenthood

Please welcome The Chaos Manager’s guest blogger- Change of Tomorrow. This post touches on friends and friendship after parenthood. How do your friendships affect your children? How do your children’s friendships affect you? Change of Tomorrow strives to help children and parents get better at making decisions today to have a happy and healthy tomorrow. Follow them @CofTomorrow on Twitter! Be a part of the conversation and follow their blog here.

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Have you ever wondered how drastically your friend circle reduces over the years? Especially once you become a parent. WHAM! It’s hit the rock bottom. And now you’re surrounded with more family and relatives and nannies and all your neighbours but less and less of your friends.

And you’re ok with that. Going around with your everyday life of parenting, until your kid starts talking about their friends and you suddenly remember your days of being a kid and having fun and what-not.

Your children’s friendships

As a parent you hear more about your kids’ friends than yours. In fact, you hardly hear about your friends anymore. Life takes a lot of turns and eventually you have to settle with remembering the names of your kids friends and not yours.

But sooner or later, your kids will go through the same phase and hence it’s important for them to enjoy these “friendship days”. Our children teach us the value and love of friendship in far more ways than one. But as parents, we often neglect or just plainly ignore them. Either due to the amount of work we do or just because we’re always running after them making sure they don’t fall in dirt, or more worse, eat dirt.

Lessons in friendship

For example when your child shares his lunch with their friends, they teach us caring is sharing. Or when your toddler hugs his friend after seeing him, although they don’t really know how to hug properly, they inadvertently teach us the value of human touch and connection. When your teenage children take the blame of something they did not do just to save their friends, they teach us the value of sacrifice, love and bonding that we are rapidly forgetting being an adult and a parent. Not to mention how hard kids try to be friends and keep in touch after they change schools and colleges. And unlike them, how easily we as adults let go of relations and acquaintances for some petty reasons tells us that although we might be more matured, when it comes to friendship and caring, we still have a lot to learn from our kids, and their friends.

Rekindle your own friendships!

So why don’t we meet our friends often? To rekindle the old bonds and have some old gossip and fun, while reliving the old, happy (happier?) days.

Although a lot of us get caught up in earning, paying bills, sorting our children, looking after the house, getting things done and meeting deadlines, every once a while, we can and should try to get in touch with our old friends and see how they are doing. One of the best ways is to plan a trip with them. Depending on how grown up your kids are, this trip can either be a short day trip, or a long weekend trip outside the city.

Whichever it is, all you have to do is make a few phone calls, get on zoom and you can find a good day and time to set things up for that old reunion you’ve been putting off since years. I’m sure a lot of your friends want that, but no one is willing to pick up the baton. But you can.

Don’t wait. Learn from your child. I’m sure as soon as they come up with any idea, no matter how boring, daring or deadly it might be, they contact their friends and make it happen. It’s time for you to let your inner child come out.

Live a little bit, after all, age is just a number and you’re still a child.

Do Change of Tomorrow’s words resonate with you? How are your own friendships reflecting onto your children? Please comment & share your thoughts!

Planning that trip with your friend? Check out some road trip travel tips here- Surviving a Road Trip!

Being a parent is tough! Looking to go back to work after being home? Check out some tips from The Chaos Manager.