Meeting up with your friends AND their kid(s)

Having a conversation with your friend, with their child in the room. In my experience this is almost impossible. What’s impossible is to have an actual conversation, a dialogue. Where one thing follows another and it continues. So often you say the same sentence again, because you don’t know when you stopped talking. Or you just start again from the beginning because you forgot what you were saying before you were interrupted.

Even if your friend would like to have an actual conversation with you it remains a challenge. A quick chat about this and that is certainly possible. But more in-depth conversations require attention, which cannot be on you fully in this setting. Of course you can say what’s on your mind, with interruptions, but you can feel like you are not being listened to. After all, the attention has to be split between the child and you. And usually it goes to the child: fact.

Never mind

You need to pay attention to them, just to make sure they’re not killing themselves, start breaking things or just because. To be honest, I only find it annoying when I need to talk about something that is bothering me or I need advice from my friend at that moment. In such a situation, I sometimes don’t feel like doing my best to keep the conversation going or have any kind of conversation that is not surface level. I sometimes even think: never mind. And then the time with my friend is not what I had hoped for or needed.

A chat on the side

Then there is also the question of energy. Do these kinds of meet ups give you energy? I think kids can be exhausting. Some kids even require you to entertain them constantly. To me it’s not just the entertainment, it’s the constant noise. If it's just for an hour, it's doable. And if you like spending time with their child then that’s perfect. But then it becomes a different kind of visit. The goal is not to really catch up with your friend or talk about things that are going on in your life. It’s to play with the kid and have a chat with your friend on the side.

The friendship

I think it’s best to not expect too much when meeting your friend. Focus on spending time with your friend’s kid and keep the real talk for a later time when it’s just the two of you. To me friendships have value because you can talk about anything and everything and there is mutual understanding and support. So as long as there are possibilities for me to meet my friends at times without constant interruptions, this value remains.