We are so excited that y'all are reading this blog and passing it along to your friends! Some of you are even starting to email us your questions, which makes us feel a little bit like Oprah. Thank you for showing your love! We will periodically try to tackle some of these reader questions. For our inaugural Q/A post, we selected...
Q: DD #1 is in Pre-K this year, which leaves me with DD#2. Until now,
they've always had the same friends. What do I do now that DD#1 will
have her own school friends? Who will #2 play with? Plus, she's
just starting to be excluded from #1's playdates and
friends' birthday parties and it breaks my heart to see how upset she
gets. Have you had this experience yet?
A (from Cara): Yes. In fact, your question is timely because this weekend we are celebrating Drew's birthday party and I tried to pull off inviting only "his" friends, instead of Cade's (i.e. their joint friends). Drew has amassed, from two years in preschool and three years in MOMS Club playgroups, a grand total of 5 friends. And 3 of them cannot make it to the party. So I invited a few of Cade's friends in the neighborhood to up the festivity factor a little. When told who would be attending the party, poor Drew immediately commented, "But [insert name of Cade's friends here] are Cade's year, not mine!" So he is acutely aware of where allegiances lie. Of course, last week when I asked him about making new friends at school this year (in a discussion unrelated to the party), he told me he didn't need new friends because he already had a friend named Cade. (Baby Bunching Perk Alert - Twiblings are Best Buddies!) So maybe I should just invite Cade to the party, stick a candle in a cupcake, and call it good.
The obvious answer, since I can't very well keep Cade locked in a tower playing with Drew, is to find friends for Drew. In light of the fact that Cade will be in school more this year, I am making it my mission to help Drew make more friends. I have two mornings a week with him where Cade will be in school that I plan to devote to reaching out for playdates with existing friends and new classmates. The new baby makes it a little hard for us to do classes of some sort (Little Gym, Music Class, something), but if I didn't have #3 behind him, this would be part of my plan of attack. Finally, (fingers crossed that Drew's preschool teachers aren't reading this in case I lose my nerve and change my mind) I am seriously considering volunteering to be his room mom so that I can try to organize some social functions between moms and kiddos on the days we don't have school.
Note that cultivating more friends for Drew will inevitably result in scoring more friends for mom, which always a welcome thing! A Baby Buncher can't ever have too many moms in her support system.
Good luck tackling this topic and as always, readers please share if you have ideas to add!
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