Honestly that’s the entire discussion here. I’m similar to @ChristienMurawski in that I could listen to about any subject, I like talking to people. But the key is that nobody wants to talk to a person with poor conversation skills. We all know the type: monotone delivery, not much emotion in what they are talking about, not very descriptive, and one-sided delivery (not listening back or interrupting when you speak.) Like listening to Ben Stein playing the teacher in Ferris Beuller.
We talk about this kind of thing during our game night, especially when the couple of smokers take their break. There about oh a half-dozen or so games parents have purchased to play the game at home, and we hear about those experience and sometimes make suggestions to make it easier for the younger kids.
I am really happy when someone plays one of my game and then they tell me they bought it for themselves and their family. The idea of young people playing games is great. My sister told me about Spot It and my 4 year old nephew’s experience with, a game I recommended, that he apparently loves. It was bout 10-20 minute conversation.If she were in my game group, it would be fine there too. I have one friend that might whop out of her phone during that conversation but everyone there knows her and it’s what she does, with most situations not just just parents.
It’s really about this:
And also just knowing your group, your audience. My group was heavy in one industry for awhile, still kind of is, so it’s natural for work talk to come up. Since we’ve added some non-industry people as well as some spouses to the mix, I try to steer them away from it, and I can read them, the non-industry group. It’s easy to tell when they’ve had enough because I’m looking for it.
Now there’s a wholly different thing. And that’s something people of all walks of life fall into. They need to unload, they themselves lack the capacity for empathy a that moment to see their part of the conversation is not hitting home and they keep going.
I have been talked at a lot by my wife about her work and it worries me. I want to be talked with. Being talked at makes you feel glossed over, like a thing, not a person. I myself used to talk at people a lot when I was a kid about my “special interest” (aviation) to have learned not to do that. Not about what sort of shit is coming out of the baby this week, not about the awesome sim I’m flying.
Thank you @ArmandoPenblade for bringing that term into this discussion, because I think we have found a way with that to reconcile the overwhelming need of parents, especially those of (first!) babies to talk about their experience. Because it is overwhelming. It is everything to them, a bit like aviation was to young slightly autistic me.
Oh shit, you too? I have had that a couple of times. It really weirded my son out because I had told him when dad cries it sounds like a string of curses and invective… and that time I cried without cursing so what the hell was that all about? He did very sweetly try to console me. How did yours react?
It is awesome. Only 2 couples of the 6 had kids (but they were of a similar age), but now all of us do, so there’s little concern over your kid bothering others, since everybody is or has gone through it and is understanding with the difficulties, so you can just relax.
With so many kids together, once they grow up a little they’ll have plenty of play by themselves, leaving the adults to the wine, as it should be.
Can confirm. My girlfriend and I just got back a couple of weeks ago from a cabin trip to the mountains with 4 other couples with kids. (I was actually the only adult who was kid-less: mine being with their mom.) The kids did a great job running around like hooligans, making forts, playing in the snow, etc while the adults spent most waking hours expertly maintaining our buzzes.
She’s not even a year old yet, and it was her bedtime story, so she was asleep before I even got to that point. At first I was relieved, then I was struck by the silliness of feeling like I had to save face in front of my infant child who wouldn’t remember the incident anyway.
I just want to pop in and say that I’ve really enjoyed reading the most recent turn of the thread, and it’s been really helpful. I’ve got an eight week old, and my wife and I are just getting to the point where we might be able to socialize with people who aren’t there specifically to help out with the baby. (Regular Gloomhaven starts back up this weekend! Yay!) We both tend to relax more with friends than family, so the shift has been enormously isolating at a time that has already had enough other challenges.
I wanted to quote this and read and re-read it because I 100% resonate with everything you said. This was me in graduate school, when I had my son. Even now, I pick and choose what I mention, and choose only the one-liners that are either most interesting or most relatable, because my now-ten-year-old is somehow more human now that he’s older. “What did you do this weekend?” can be answered with “I played SimCity 2000 with my kid,” which is easier for folks to digest than “I sobbed on the floor of the bathroom after my kid’s fifth meltdown of the weekend.”
Man, there is some truth to it. Non parents can still appreciate (and in my circle of friends, be jealous over) things when you say that you spent your evenings all week putting together a 900 piece Lego set with your 5 year old. They all get why that is a fun and enjoyable evening. But when you answer ‘how was your weekend’ with ‘I spend the night holding back tears in the bathroom because my 2 year old was up all night puking, and was curled up in a ball on your lap shaking’ it’s the kind of thing a non parent may have a hard time understanding that literally nothing else from the weekend even registers. Or when you are potty training said toddler how your life is now structured around their biological imperatives.
All things that were true for me in the last week as well.
Which is a long way of saying more kids stories all!
I have a lot of driving to do to get my kid to school and back. Today was really weird. There were all these tiny little birds in the air flying at my car. Then I realized they were bugs. And I thought I was hallucinating.
After I picked up my kid I was all, “What are all these bugs?”
And he said, “Oh. They’re butterflies. They’re migrating. Our P.E. teacher looked it up when we asked about it. It’s because we’ve had so much rain.”
When we got home they were all flying over the house in the same direction. It was really strangely exciting.
So there is a weird butterfly migration confluence happening and my kid educated me on it.
As @fire says above, as they get older they become somehow more human. I love the way she puts that. It reminds me of Lost in Translation when Bill Murray’s character says, “Your life, as you know it… is gone, never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk and you wanna be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.”
I don’t see it as a ‘seeming lack’ at all. I don’t think you should put it that way. You’re a good dude IMO and you care for your friends. The choice to not have kids is totally valid, and is not a lack.
You are absolutely right about this. I had to sit between two people at an awards event who only wanted to talk about a computer game they were playing and I was just looking longingly at the other people have conversations about life and other things. That said, I was at a party a few days later when somebody asked me about movies and I realized many minutes in that I’d overstayed my subject welcome. I told her I had done a show about my top ten for the year. She asked what they were. And I went on and on and didn’t realize I was being tiresome.
Very, very well put. I also try to pull people in to the conversation and find what they’re passionate about. Unfortunately in a lot of social situations this begins and ends with, “So what do you do?” Meaning, “What’s your job?” If you’re a stay-at-home dad, it is a dreaded question. If you’re a novelist who hasn’t published any of his stuff yet, it is a dreaded question. So I try to probe a bit to find out what they’re into. To be honest, hearing Tom do interviews and watching him talk to people taught me a lot. How to ask open-ended questions that might lead to topics everybody at the table will want to discuss. I’ve gotten better at that because of him.
Again. Absolutely agree. My friends who can’t stand kids, or just don’t want them…I get them and I get that. I will not look down on them.
The difficulty here is that many folks who don’t have kids don’t realize that going out to the movies is going to cost $80 at minimum because of child care. And that’s not including dinner or whatever. I’m not asking them to make allowances, just to understand. Having a kid was my choice. So I have to deal with that. That’s on me. I just don’t want to be judged as a bad friend because I don’t show up for the group event at the Arclight Theater because I cannot afford it.
We often traded off movie nights because of this, and so would often go alone. But again…my choice to have a kid.
Yeah the cost can be a thing. One of the reasons I am in a movie club is a save everyone 1.50 per ticket for movie nights i plan. I buy all the tickets. I often give discounts because I get them, and I secretly pay for tickets sometimes because someone needs a boost.
I do have two larger events almost every year though that involves kids. The annual pool opening which involves a few rules, is an all day thing for people to come and go and usually involves like a lot of kids running around my pool all day long, very loud too. I warn adults they can swim but uhh there might be 8 kids in there with them.
The other is the river rafting venture. That’s newer. There was debate about whether it was an adult friend thing or a family event, we decided family event so more would go. One of the kids, I think he’s 12, probably talked for 3 hours straight. Haha. He wasn’t in my raft though… but I could hear him. It was great fun.
If you’re prepared for it, no kids at home friends can probably handle more than you imagine. Heck during our Disney World trip my poor little nephew just peed in the middle of the floor in the hotel room. He got so excited I guess he forgot to go, so we just cleaned it up. We missed going back to one park one afternoon because he was just, well he was done for the day, pool trip it was. I went knowing I was going to get to hang out with a 4 year old and what that might entail. It’s not worse than going with adults just… different.
That whole post warmed my heart, @Nesrie. But this in particular did. Because sometimes being told, “We really want you here, but it’s adults only,” for a party or whatever, gives parents an excuse they might not make for themselves. And when a friend offers to pick up the slack, it’s huge. I find it to be rare, to be frank. And part of that is on me. I didn’t like asking for help.
It’s better to be able to, but you just don’t want to intrude on the lives of others sometimes. It’s scary to give a list of things your kid can do to a non-kid friend. And being told “Nope” is scary too. Sometimes it’s just hard to impose.
Another thread diversion. I don’t know what cycle they were in, but at some point in the last 10 years my GF and I were parked at fast food place during a cicada invasion. We’re sitting in the car and this odd-looking stout woman is standing under a tree. She has an old-fashioned prairie dress on and coke-bottle round glasses and a straight-bob haircut. She had a picnic basket in her hand and a strange smile on her face as she plucked cicada after cicada from the tree and put them into her picnic basket.
My GF got freaked. “She looks like she’s straight out of a Stephen King novel. She’s going to eat those cicadas!” Indeed, that had to be her plan. Cicada pie. My GF told me to GTFO RIGHT NOW because it unnerved her so. It really was very, very, strange. I will never forget the expression of sly bliss on that woman’s face.
