Our kids have always had friends, of one kind or another, though until recently they've mostly been through friends of my wife and I, or family, like cousins. I'm not outlining this because I think it's unusual, the opposite actually. That's the way of things, they'll at least initially only really hang out with people we already know and want to see.
In Maryland our (eldest) kid's friends were largely limited to the children of some of my wife's co-workers that we spent time with regularly. We also made friends with another boy at the neighborhood park, admittedly because his parents are much more forward than we are, and got together with them a handful of times before moving away. But that was about it there, excepting for visiting far-flung family and some adult neighbors who loved to play and relive when their kids were younger.
On moving we had to restart. Luckily we have various friends here, several with kids of their own, but none live super close either. Our arrival in Minnesota was in November, so it was cold for the first six months and we weren't outside that much. And then, for whatever reason, we still didn't connect with other nearby kids last summer. I guess at age 3/4, with summer travel and sports and everything else going on that shouldn't be super surprising. The state of life and friends was pretty unaltered through 2022, even though our eldest (still focusing on him at this point) was in preschool the entire year. For part of that time he went only Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was difficult for lack of cadence, and since September he's gone Monday-Thursday, but through it all there seemingly hasn't been development of friends that will outlast this school year. Maybe that's our fault, I don't know, it's hard to know when to pursue that stuff.
Suddenly, in the last couple months, as we're slowly emerging from wintertime, he's become fast friends with a couple boys (10,9) on our street. It started since they, like any other well-adjusted youngsters, play outside a lot, frequently at the permanent full-size basketball hoop in their driveway. Our son started going over there occasionally to start, then he started looking for them all the time and it's become an almost daily occurrence that the kids play. The investigations on the neighbor boys' status have become known as 'buddy checks' and involves both our boys, who get very excited on positive sightings.
Foremost this is a great development. Our kid wants to play outside, doing sports activities and whatever else, but just generally gets to be a kid with other kids outside a classroom. He even prefers this outside time over watching TV, like Paw Patrol, which is very welcome. The best part is this happens right here on our street and he's old enough that I can trust him a little bit, i.e. I don't need to be watching every second. I've had to remind him a few times to look both ways before crossing the street but he's getting better at that and our street has minimal traffic.
Problems are presented by the combination of our other children and the time of day this usually takes place. Our two year old, as already stated, is also ecstatic when spotting the neighbor kids, because he also likes to play with them and vice versa. Usually after letting the four year-old out someone usually comes looking for the younger one too, most often the 10 year-old (twin) sister of one of the buddies, who carries him around and takes him for rides on her scooter. This requires me to really trust these other kids, because there's no way I'm letting our wild child wander the streets himself, who knows where he'd end up. Thus far they've done a commendable job of taking care of him, which is fully appreciated. This could easily be a continuation of Learning to let go, it'd be a good running series.
If you're wondering why I don't just follow the boys around outside, there's a final piece of this puzzle. During the week the neighborhood playtime lasts between about 4pm and whenever the families eat dinner, like 6. The other kids are home from elementary school around 4 and I get our son from preschool a little after that. He usually runs off asap, like as soon as he gets out of the car. This is where I'm torn. The baby always needs to eat right when we get home so that has to get done. Once a bottle is warm I can sometimes feed her from our front porch and keep an eye on everything going on. Sometimes it's pretty cold and I don't want to be doing it from there. Then much of the time I'm handling dinner as well, and if we're cooking something (most every day) I can't be doing that and watching the boys, though that'll be easier during the upcoming grilling season too.
So the long and the short of it is I'm really happy our kids have made friends that, for the foreseeable future, they'll play outside with something like every day. This will likely be a lot of our summer. But it's also made those hours a real challenge for me as I need to take care of the baby and dinner all while trusting these other kids (and to some extent their parents, who we're just getting to know) with our two young boys, who can't bear to be sitting around our house when they see their friends outside. They're free spirits, and that's good.
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