about making friends

I was thinking of writing about school gate politics, so I looked at a couple of articles online and felt depressed.

I considered the rules of friend making.

As a teenager, I was annoyed when my mother befriended my friend’s mothers. She was newly divorced and, having moved away from her home town, had no other way of making new friends, but my thirteen year old self didn’t know that. She adopted my mother in law as a sister and they are irritatingly close. However, I socialise with the mothers I have met at the school gate and at least one of them I would consider a best friend for life, so I can longer grumble can I? That is because that is where I have made friends over the past ten years; antenatal classes (one friend), parent toddler groups, (three friends), nursery (three friends), Sunday school (three friends) and the school gate (number to be confirmed)

I agree with the forums I read in one respect, there are certainly tribes at the school gate and I belong to the part-time mum tribe, but after three kids and 5 years of school so far, the full time mums have gotten used to me but not my changing work day. There are differences too, when my eldest started at the school nursery, she made a best friend in the first term and has kept her right through primary into year 5. (We are not thinking about what happens after year 6 when different secondary schools beckon.) My middle child was born in August and I wept when she started nursery two weeks after her 3^rd birthday and then a year later when she started school two weeks after her fourth and was immediately invited to a 5^th birthday party. Playing a continual game of catch up for the first three years, once divided from her cousin in reception, she has never really bonded with any one child.  We are always away for her birthday or her classmates are away, so birthday parties were abandoned which, in return, saw the end of party invites. The youngest, half way through reception, knows everybody and runs up to little boys and girls forcing them to hold her hand whether they want to know or not, we are inundated with party invites, I appear to be spending at least two hours most weekends, ferrying her to one play centre or another. Here I sit amongst strangers, the only thing I appear to have in common with is the age of our children. Over pale tea and party food we begin stilted conversation and strange rituals of swapping mobile numbers, discussing chid care and weight loss.

 Really, I have enough friends, I just want to read a book, but I will go and chat to the other mums so that they will invite my child to another party and … you never know, my new best friend could be sitting there.