Hellobee Boards

We're kind of in a similar situation. We live in the NYC area. My husband's family is in Toronto (8 hours drive), my mother lives in Georgia. I have siblings in Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and California. So no family that's close.

I wouldn't say we "have it together", but things are okayish. I do have a group of mom friends. Thing is, we're all busy so we only get together once a month or so, but I have them. Even though our parents aren't geographically close, they are all extremely supportive. They are retired, so as long as they don't have a planned trip, they will come to us if we have a real need, as long as we pay. I know some people think it's odd for kids to pay for parents to visit, but our parents are all on (relatively healthy but still) fixed incomes, and if they are doing us a favor, we don't want them to used their fixed income on flights or whatever. We're all good with that situation.

We have a part time babysitter, and we lucked into a good situation where our sitter has created a whole group of other nannies/kids in our building or nearby, so our kids have a lot of built-in friends from this, PLUS, I have additional sitters I can call who already know my kids when I need to. Like a few times, my sitter has been sick, so one of the other nannies picked up my oldest from school and kept her until I got off work.

So basically, our village requires money. We use the money to fly our parents in or to pay our sitter. It is what it is.

No village here - I always struggle with the emergency contacts too - I have coworkers and a couple friends I could call but they do not really know my kids that well and then the carseat issue in an emergency complicates things.
We think of moving to neighborhoods with more kids but I know moving to one is not a guarantee for friends - you never know what kinds of neighbors you will end up with. I think your plan to be involved at school and being open to meeting future friends through various activities that you are interested and your daughter is interested is good - that is our plan too - hoping for the best .

Our situation is similar - we live in a city with tons of universities and medical centers, so there was a period of time when a ton of our friends were in school, doing residency, etc and we had so many friends. But eventually most people left. Around that time I also started traveling a lot for work, which made it even harder to build new friendships. Family is multiple flights away. And now with LO, I'm lucky if I have 5 minutes for myself in the evening. Some of the few friends we have are considering moving (and we are as well). I think it's one of those season things, and I'm just not sure I'll be able to have many local friends until LO is older and time is more abundant...

We live far from family too. Its hard because we were used top having them close by. Our kiddos get lots of social interaction from church, daycare buddies and neighbors. The issue is we don't have a good enough connection to leave our kids with any of these people. Throughout their lives they have always been with family or school. I am just not comfortable leaving my kids with friends or even paid babysitters.

I suffer from social anxiety disorder and have made a major move 7 times in my adult life, so I have been village-less more often than not. Most of the time I made friends via church or my husband (he's so much better at meeting people than I am). But with our most recent move, I successfully made my own friends through a New to Our City Moms Facebook group, LO's preschool, and a semi-random introduction. If you can find other people who are likely to be trying to expand their circle (like new to the city, or new to a school) it feels a lot easier to put yourself out there and suggest meet ups and message each other questions and commiseration to build your connection between meetings. Sometimes I wondered if it was too soon to text a new friend stuff like that, but it's all gone over well so far! You don't know how glad I was to finally have names for the emergency contact section!

I should add that our family has a special trait that has been a bonding point with other families like ours--we have an intercultural/interracial relationship. So when we run into similar families, it feels like we are starting that friendship bond two steps ahead.

Also village-less here. As a couple, we’ve lived in 4 different countries so just when we start to make close relationships, we check out (or friends leave). We were in our last place nearly 5 years and I did make some very close friendships in the second half of that stay. We’ve been in our new location 9 months and there’s one couple we could definitely rely on in an emergency, but it’s not the same as having a wider net. I do have family here, but we aren’t close and there’s a language barrier. I would call them up in an absolute dire emergency, but we don’t really see them often. I’ve joined mommy groups and expat groups and those have been the best for finding social circles. Although, I met one of my closest friends at the local playground, and another was actually introduced to me via a fellow hellobee-er! Getting involved in school is a bit complicated here since school is way far out and I never go except for parent teacher meetings or the rare party (my kids take a bus). It’s hard, but I think you also have to put yourself out there a bit.

@Anagram: yep, we pay for our village too. And what village we do have keeps moving to the burbs!!!

@ElbieKay: we are just starting pk3 in September. We will see how it goes through K hopefully!!

@ElbieKay: wow congrats! Yeah we are stuffed to the brim at our place; we are hoping to move next year but stay in town. I can’t recall where you are but maybe it’s the nyc area also? Aka space at a premium and then some.

So I'm actually from a DC suburb and while my parents had their parents/family close by to serve as their village, truthfully, my mom suffers from pretty clear social anxiety disorder and my Dad is just a total snob who won't be friends with people who don't have doctorate degrees, so my parents just....don't really have friends. Once I got to Kindergarten I started creating my own little village, which was always hard because my friends would constantly move away on me - but I made friends and then their parents became the people my parents could ask for favors of, and they would do them because I was a polite kid and tried to be helpful when I was at their house, etc. So, don't feel like you have to build a village for your kid, they will do some of that on their own and then you can work on being friends with their parents. My Dad's best friend is the father of a kid my sister and I met at daycare that had pretty significant special needs and we were the only ones willing to play with him. So, raise good children, and a village will follow. And as for the emergency contact form, just ask your single friends without kids and hope it never is actually a problem - that is what we did when we started daycare, and eventually we found our fellow village-less daycare friends and all put each other down as emergency contacts.

This was us when we lived in DC and the DC suburbs. We have since moved to Baltimore and made a conscious effort to grow a village. We had to be open vulnerability - it almost feels like dating - but have found it to be well worth it. When we meet families that we think we might like through activities or school, we invite them over for a meal or a play date. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but often it does! It helps that it turns out my husband is a social butterfly - something I didn't know until we moved here. We joke that I make the friends and he keeps them. He's good about making sure we have at least one social plan each weekend.

But by far the biggest contributor to our feeling of community has been forming a babysitting co-op in our neighborhood. I had been wanting to for a while, but didn't really know enough people to pull it off. I mentioned it to a burgeoning neighborhood friend (I really didn't know her that well at the time), who was really interested. She invited a few of her other friends, and it has grown from there. We do group social events about once a month and some of the dads have started a monthly poker game. Highly, highly recommend considering starting a co-op. It has the double benefit of free babysitting plus community!

I'm in the (way out) burbs of DC and I too feel like we have no village. I honestly feel torn about it bc on one had I like to do what we want when we want and with us both WOH our home time is limited and we usually have things to do or if not we want to just relax so I don't relaly want people just dropping in or stopping by or hanging out. However, as DD gets older, she's 4.5 I can really tell that it would be great for her to have some friends to play with.... unfortunately in our current home there are no kids around. We do plan to move within the next year so I am kind of hopeful there'll be some families moving in too and maybe we can make some friends. But then I feel like I am going to have to worry about setting up boundaries etc.

I feel like having a village is a double edged sword for me... LOL.. like I want to have one when I want one and when I need one.. but all other times, I'm good

Yep I agree that the ages of kids or number of kids really affects the ability to make a long term connection with someone. If their baby is older or younger than mine, it’s hard to have a play date if one kid needs a lot more managing. Also distance..in my community if someone lives a 15-20 min walk away it makes it hard to get together often.