I feel this deeply. Been there, done that.

I have two little ones who live in Florida and they have never had a playmate outside of day care or school. Never had a bday party or anyone over to play. There are zero kids in their suburban neighborhood. Or, at least there are zero kids to be seen. They are 6 and 3 so not yet in a position to gather a circle of friends on their own. It is not as if they encounter one another out on the sidewalk and in the front yard as it used to be.

The birthrate is way down and I think that it shows in subtle ways.

Sure it is probably a bit different in a place where there is more multifamily housing. The suburbs can be so isolating.

Eld - We did exactly the same thing. Slightly different scenario but my son came home one day in grade 5 to tell me that his best friend had become one of the bullies and had turned on him and so he needed new friends. We got out the directory, went through it and he made a list of three boys that he liked. (He wanted me to make the phone calls and I said no) We wrote up a script and he called these three boys, the first couple of times they said they couldn't play, but then they started to say yes, and started to reciprocate as well. Now, more than 20 years later those three boys (men!) are still his best friends and he was the best man for one of them when that friend got married 2 weeks ago. My sons b-day is this weekend and they will all be celebrating with him.

It's hard finding friends and you sure hate to see your kids hurt when they're trying to find a friend.

Thats sad the the boy was not included. i remember making up the list of guests for my kids birthday parties. You had to draw the line somewhere. There were the neighborhood kids, and they were all invited and some friends from school. There were some my kids didnt particularly want to invite but it would have been unkind to leave them out.

There were so many kids i the neighborhood and mine were outgoing so they always had friends.

I can think of times when I learned about a party and I had not been invited. That hurt, although I could see where I was on that particular person’s B list and once again, sometimes you ca’t invite everyone. But who wouldn’t want me?? ;)

I did feel bad when I was not invited to my neighbor’s son’s wedding. Other neighbors were invited, not many. Ironically, the power went out the night of the wedding and I have a generator. I am sure they wished they could run across the street to my house to get ready but felt uncomfortable since I wasnt invited! I would have suggested it but did not know it was happeneing that night. Oh well, I got over it .

I rather feel for the mom, who is so introverted herself that she can’t do like eld and make playdates for her child. We can’t always rely on others to do the reaching out, but we introverts often do just that. And, other moms, and kids too, tend not to reach out to the introverts. It’s rather a circle.