Yes, mom friends are hard to make. Especially these days when it seems like every six months we are back to canceling playdates, school, and other social events. But in the event that you CAN make mom friends, here are the ladies you will want as part of your parenting village.
The One With a Baby the Same Age As Yours
No one wants to hear about your three-month-old’s poop except other people with three-month-olds. The intimacy of early babyhood can be a great friendship bonding topic, as you endlessly dissect the minutia of wake windows, weight gain, first foods, rolling over, tummy time, and the other things that parents of toddlers or older kids have long forgotten.
The One Whose Kid is Slightly Older
The mom with a kid about six months older than yours is like a magic eight ball, telling you what’s up ahead for you and your little one. She’s the one you text “did yours do this???” at least once a month and she says, “oh yeah, a few months ago; this is how we handled it.” She shares her preschool checklist with you and gives you the scoop on the unspoken expectations of teacher gifts. She tells you all the cool toys to put on your kid’s birthday list so you don’t get a bunch of crap they will never play with. Like your own personal fortune teller, she gives you a peek into the near future, with the wisdom of the past stage still fresh in her mind.
The One With Big Kids
Bonus points if your friend with Big Kids has three or more total children. This mom has a Ph.D. in parenting earned from years of experience. She’s your reality check when you are down a rabbit hole of research about the best tricycle for your two-year-old’s motor skills, telling you it doesn’t matter and even likely handing you her kid’s well-loved trike as hand me down proof. She’s seen it all, or at least most of it, and likely has an answer to every problem you might encounter with your tiny human. Or, she can at least can tell you that the stage will end eventually. She even offers her teenage kids to babysit yours- parent friend gold right there.
The Local Friend
This is the mom of your kid’s BFF from school or your neighbor down the street that invites you and your children to their pizza and movie night, saving you both the marathon of the before bed hours and the trouble of cooking dinner. You may never have met without the proximity, but you become staples of each other’s daily lives. You offer to watch kids for an hour or two, chatting outside while the kids play, and feeding snacks to the masses. She is your adult sanity in the sea of conversations with four-year-olds, reminding you that you are a human with interests and passions.
The Intimate Friend
The mom friend you can detail that first postpartum poop with is a special friend indeed. Discussing your still-present hemorrhoids, soup bags of post-breastfeeding boobs, attempts at sexual intimacy with small children, and the irrationally heinous thoughts you have about your mother-in-law sometimes are not for the faint of heart, or the faint of friend. It’s not just anyone you can unload on about your mental health, relationship conflicts, or how you hate your kids sometimes. This lady doesn’t bat an eye at any of it, and likely will counter with a confession of her own.
The Researcher
This is the mom who, when you bring up something you are navigating with your kid, says, “Oh, I have an article about that.” She reads parenting books for fun and is always up to date on the latest research. In this day and age of information overload, the friend who has done the homework for you and can tell you what is relevant and what isn’t saves you not only time but the headache of sorting through fact from fiction. She’s your go-to source for empirical evidence and the occasional book recommendation.
Do you have these mom friends in your village? Any other titles we should add to our list?
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