Sins of the Mother

The weather here these past several days has just been delightful. In keeping with the gorgeous temperatures, the kiddos and I have been venturing outside as much as I can swing to breathe in all the fresh air (and pollen, but hey, bad with the good) and run about before it gets too hot to do so comfortably. Mostly we've been sticking to the neighborhood, as it seems sort of silly to go driving around just to find a place to run about when we have a perfectly good yard.

This has, unfortunately, driven home a point that has been festering in the back of my brain since the whole MOPS fiasco though: my kids are pretty much doomed to figuring out how to be loners because grown ups, for whatever reason, tend to seriously dislike their mom. I hate that. I hurt for them. But I don't know what to do to fix it.

See, there aren't a whole bunch of kids the same age as the elder boy in our neighborhood anyway. But there are two families (ish) that have kids close enough. We spent a good bit of time in the early fall playing with one little boy in particular - and I loved how well they got along. The other little boy is also very active and, while he's about a year older, they still had lots of shared interests and had quite a bit of fun. I even thought that his mom and I got along reasonably well. And then, rather abruptly, they stopped coming by. So we toddled over that way a few times and while they would play if we came and rang the bell, it was pretty clear that had they found even the slightest reason to demur, they would have. (Well, I shouldn't say they - the little boy had fun and always seemed happy to see elder boy, it's really the mom.) And now, over the last several months, if we've played it's because we've initiated it and it just seems to me that at some point you have to let the other person come to you so that you know there's some element of interest on their part. So I've backed off a bit, hoping that they'll come by, but in the mean time, the elder boy is missing his friend. (Am I wrong on that? Should we just be the people who keep turning up like a bad penny?)

Maybe it's the area - most of the people (kids included) in our neighborhood seem to live in their houses and you only see them on the odd occasion. And I'll admit, Tim and I are like that to a degree as well (really, it's primarily since having kids that we venture out much in the yard at all). But still, I wish that the kiddo had a friend or two who lived near enough to play at the drop of the hat rather than a well scheduled play date. (Though frankly, I'd even be ok with having more options for the scheduled play-date...we really only have two families who we even do that with, and they both have older kids who are being homeschooled, so their time is pretty limited, so he's lucky to get one playdate a month between the two of them.)

So sure, maybe it's the area...but it really feels like it's probably just me. Maybe I should set up a playgroup for active kids and outspoken mommies...wonder if anyone would come.