The Working Dad and I are older than your average first-time parents, with a combined age of 85. So most of our friends' kids are older, in some cases in college. We've found it, if not hard, certainly not easy to make friends at School. It's not for lack of trying, but I guess the reality is that when you're a busy professional trying to get to work stopping off to chat with the fellow parents is not always easy. And your schedules have to match up just right. We've made some starts at friendships with a couple of sets of parents, but I guess I was sort of hoping for more of the same. One dad and daughter made it to The Boy's first birthday party, which was really awesome.
And there's a PTO at The Boy's School, which I joined. I'm not sure exactly what the point of that was since I've never been given notice of any meetings. Apparently, the PTO only exists to do things on Teacher Appreciation Week, which is fine, but it would be nice if the PTO would sort of function as a way for parents and teachers to get to know each other. Isn't that the usual way they function? I'd suggest that, but we've never had a meeting, as far as I know, at which such a suggestion could be lodged. Alas.
And I volunteered to be a room mother, but I learned just before Teacher Appreciation Week that another mother was The Boy's room mother. That's fine, and she's done a great job with the Teacher Appreciation Week stuff for our class. We have tentative plans to go to lunch soon, so maybe we'll make friends. (In fact, she's The Dude's mom, so that would be GREAT for The Boy!)
Maybe I had my expectations set too high for making new friends. I guess I had thought that we'd all bond together in our new parenthood. But we're all working parents, and thus all very busy and under pressure with our old job demands and new family demands. That leaves little room for socializing and making new connections. But maybe slowly those will form. And I guess even these four paragraphs suggest that they already are. I just need to be something that I am often not: patient.
