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hs03842

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  1. The thing that has plagued me has been the lack of awareness of typical female cattiness--usually I don't notice it until way, waaaay later when I think, "Hmm...whoa! These chicks didn't really like me! Wow. They wasted their time doing stuff 'to me' that I didn't even notice until now." [Does anyone else know the feeling? Please tell me I'm not alone!] That's why I said it has "plagued me but also been kind of great." It has spared me a lot of hurt feelings where, looking back, I always seem to be drawn in to groups of women who aren't in to gossip or cattiness because we seem to be the type who speak plainly. Women who I perceived as unfriendly or "tough nuts" ended up over time being the dramatic sort who were looking for gossip buddies or something like that. I credit it to growing up with several brothers and no sisters. Brothers speak plainly. I didn't have a sister around to pull passive aggressive stuff at me and make me expect that sort of behavior from other women. Even my cousins were mainly male--the nearest female cousin is 10 years younger than me. My closest friends are basically without exception women who grew up with only brothers or a large (8+ year) age gap with a sister. One day I took inventory of that, and it struck me that we must all just communicate in a way that works really well for each other. After my mom remarried and we gained a few step sisters the difference in how a girl house and (mainly) guy house communicate came into sharp focus. Most of us were adult children at the time. My mom, who herself grew up with two sisters (and it shows--it is so easy to hurt her feelings), had a really, really hard time learning to be a family with these other women and, truth be told, they all still just can NOT handle it, and it has been a looooong time. I am simply not equipped for this stuff and don't want to turn into that type of woman. No offense to anyone. So with that in mind, it's easy for me to have not noticed if these people hadn't really wanted me around all along and were just being polite. I tend to go in to groups of women expecting that everyone is being themselves, wants to make friends, and is trying to create the sort of inclusive and friendly environment that I am hoping to create. It takes a lot of aggression in a single event or of time for a series of smaller weird interactions for me to even take notice of something like this event as rude or a potential slight. It's not out of the realm of possibility for me to have missed something here or there for several months and to have only noticed it now when something more concrete occurred! 😅 Thinking of it this way has made this entire thing feel much more familiar. The difference here is that my kids normally aren't involved in these interactions at all, but for this they could get their feelings hurt. It's a new twist. Anyways, I feel much better about it now and am very thankful that I was able to talk about it on here and get feedback from other with other neighbor experiences.
  2. Thanks for everyone's input! I'm feeling better about this today and have a better idea of what direction to go. My husband is an introvert with social anxiety, so I have not discussed this with him. His answer is always, "Why do you care about this! Just ignore them indefinitely and stay inside!" 😂 Thanks to you all I have been able to come up with a solution without bothering him or even any of my other family members. I'm going to act like nothing happened, treat them politely, and move on. There are other neighbors to meet who do not have children playing in the street--older, empty nesters, teens, etc.--and, honestly, I'd rather find a few families that don't let their kids do that to invite to our house for play dates in the backyard eventually. I do need to remember that people aren't always genuine and that some people don't always have kind intentions without letting it ruin everything for me. Overall that sort of stuff has had a very small role in my life, so I can be thankful for that! Sorry for bringing up Santa...I was just mentioning it to say that the event itself wouldn't have been necessarily our style but that it would have been nice to be included especially as new people. I'm chalking it up to a newbie reaction, though I have experienced a different, defensive reaction from a lot of people (not just these neighbors) in telling them we are homeschooling this year. Typically it's other mothers of school aged children who are not homeschooling. My long term friends and family have been supportive or are/were homeschooling, too. It hasn't been terribly mean, and I have made a point of validating the choices of others, but there is an edge there that I didn't know about until I was the homeschool mom. It wasn't enough to write people off, just a new thing to me. Having been in their shoes, I guess I know why some may react like that at first meeting (see below). This may be part of it, though there are a lot of people willing to do their own thing while using the public school (ahem...not doing Santa for instance 😅. And you should see how we dress...😂). In my experience it really wasn't uncommon for a public/private school parent to get heavily criticized by -some- homeschool families (typically at church) about how bad parents are for using school outside the home, and, at least for me, I always assumed that a homeschool parent I was speaking to was thinking those things about me when I talked to them. It was very specific to that interaction. It's like you start off below zero in the interaction and really can't recover. Being on the other side of that now is helpful for me--it's nice to see that it can feel the same way from the other side. I have to remember that people can feel tacitly judged by a homeschool family simply because they assume that the person is thinking poorly of them without anyone being specifically negative to them in that moment. This isn't perhaps the best way to approach people, but it may be built on past experiences. If a family makes you feel judged just by being there--without even saying or doing anything to you, merely making a different choice--then it can be easier to just not want them to be around. That dynamic I am familiar with since it was pervasive at my home church growing up. So it's not that "they don't like/approve of us because we are homeschoolers," it's "these people feel uncomfortable around us since we are homeschoolers." Kind of a different thing. Overall it has been helpful to see this, and it gives me a general sense of compassion for moms in both boats. My mind jumped to that in this case because I really can't think of another reason they would act this way beyond being uncomfortable around us. But oh well. Moving on.
  3. Honestly this perfectly sums up my thoughts. I have thought that it was on them and that, on some level, they should feel bad because, personally, it's the rudest thing I've ever seen done in a neighborhood. I mean--right out in their front yard? Wow. It did lower my expectations of them, and quite swiftly and dramatically. I have been a bit sad about it because I do tend to like being friendly with neighbors. Now it's more of a "hmmm...are my kids going to want to go out with these people now? Because I don't want to. But there are no other kids." 😕
  4. Thanks everyone. Lots of good points here. Right now we are moving in to a self quarantining phase so that we can visit with some elderly relatives for Christmas. I've told the kids that they aren't going to get to play outside with kids right now. They've been through this two times before during a potential exposure (negative) and a weird bug we got (just to make sure). After that it will be much harder to keep them inside. I have no idea how a Santa discussion may have gone amongst the kids. 😂 We don't hate on Santa, they just don't believe he is real. We tie it to St. Nicolas and an example of generosity to copy--in essence we are "Santa" when we are generous during the holiday season. I've told them many times not to talk about that with other kids because a lot of kids believe in Santa, but who knows. Kids talk. I'm always out there while they play, and they don't really seem to be merely chatting much. It's mainly tag, hide and seek, stuff like that. I've been aware through reflection that just because I live near these people it doesn't mean that they are good friend material. These are people I have allowed into our lives due to 1) convenience and 2) a general value we have of reaching out to neighbors/being neighborly. We make a specific effort to meet people, though it does occasionally take time at the scope that we like to do. I do not believe in waiting for others to come to me--I need to go to them. In the past I have been able to make rounds multiple times until we have connections established. We have lived here almost seven months. This neighborhood has way, way more young families than where we have lived in the past which has shaken up my typical approach more than I thought it would. Now that we've settled I am hoping to take Christmas/holiday treats to 36 houses along with a Christmas card to either greet people we know or meet people we haven't gotten to yet (mainly older neighbors who I really like knowing). Typically we have had older neighbors or other more receptive neighbors who have been more friendly. This neighborhood isn't bad, but that doesn't mean friend material lives here. Anyways I'm sure it's a newbie thing to question if this sort of stuff comes from being a homeschool family. We are totally open to continuing to reach out in a neighborly fashion, but at this point I've dropped some hopes of having good friendships with that particular group as a group. I'm more concerned long term with having to be out there more than I want to so that the kids can play. Finding companionship for the kids without having to drive all over the place is kind of priceless at this point. I guess that's a silver lining in itself.
  5. It's more among the parents. A certain group of moms congregate in one particular driveway and hang out/do chalk, whatever. I've walked my kids down there and hung out a few times assuming that, because they are "front yard people," they want to/are willing to meet others (this is how I would feel but I guess not everyone is like that...live and learn). Overall I thought that things had been going well. My girls hit it off with a few of the kids, and the moms seemed normal. Well, yesterday they decided to hire a Santa for pictures with Santa, then install him in the front driveway. We only discovered it when we drove past the house on our way home from visiting grandma. It was very obviously a coordinated, planned effort, and they arrived all dressed up for pictures/a front yard party. Kind of like throwing a block party but not inviting one or two houses, those houses being people who have made an effort to be outside and know the neighbors. Now, our family doesn't believe in Santa. (These people don't know that.) Our kids have never believed that he is anything other than a fun Christmas character, and we don't have a pictures-with-Santa tradition. This is not something they would really get to be honest. However, if we had been casually hanging out in the front yard during this event they would have wanted to go over there to hang out and have fun and may have been turned away. To top it off, a couple of the moms had been walking home from it past our house as we got out of the car, and they avoided eye contact and were kind of dodgy about it which was weird. Today I went out to the mailbox near the driveway and, while I would normally have a chat with people during that, nothing. This is rather lame behavior for women in their late 20s/early 30s. I have come to not expect this sort of thing and am now dealing with it from people I live near. 😒 [To note: I grew up with all brothers and am absolutely deficient in female drama and code speak. This issue has plagued me my whole life but has also been great.] From my perspective--yeah, it stings to have have been left out of something like that/not even told. We are the only family with small children on the street that seem to have not been given the memo which makes me feel a little worse (and wonder if homeschooling is a part of it as we are the only homeschoolers on the street...). But, in reality, normal me would be like, "I don't need this crap," and have already met other friends in other contexts. This is a bit rough for me because my kids have come to rely on playing with kids whose parents quite obviously don't want us around. So...what does someone do? I'd like to just make a bunch of friends at a co-op or something and not really pay attention to the Jr. High on the street, but I'm afraid that my kids will be constantly pressuring me to go outside/be sad about not being able to play with these conveniently present neighborhood street kids. So. What would you do? How would you expand your kids' social life in this circumstance? What do you do when neighborhood kids/people aren't a good fit?
  6. Thank you to everyone for sharing your perspectives along with challenging viewpoints and encouragements as I navigate a new neighborhood during covid. It has given me a lot of food for thought, and I appreciate you!
  7. (My mom remarried in this age range.) I second the join-a-club/be set up by friends suggestion. You sound like you are only really interested in meeting someone if it has the potential to be a serious relationship. You are better off putting yourself in the position to meet people who have similar interests to you at a club than just fishing around online (if you have the time for that). I met my husband online but in a different age bracket, so I’m not 100% opposed if you want to just have it going on in the background. Just quit if you get discouraged. My mom was widowed and single for several years. She met my stepdad—also widowed—while volunteering together at church in a children’s ministry. She was dealing with several kids, a small business and personal life stress, so she never dated around before him. For her the volunteering was just part of parenting and something she would have done anyway. Same for him. If you join a club you at least come away with the enjoyment of the club activity even if no dates come of it. If you want to check out an over 50s singles group go ahead—just be aware that they may not be a great place to meet someone. My mom found them to be for people who like a good time (which she wasn’t up for given her life), people who for whatever reason never grew up or for people who weren’t ready to date for whatever reason (which is their right but limits the pool). It helps to remember that being Christian is a faith, not a hobby or interest. Christians can be found out in public doing other things, but the small group of singles at your area church may or may not include a Christian who is interested in the same things you are otherwise. Maybe a special needs parenting group or an advocacy group for your child/ren’s needs would be a great place to find someone. I wish you the best in your search for someone new!
  8. We have one more child to teach to read, and I'd like to move away from using 100EZ. Any suggestions for what to use?
  9. I guess it all comes full circle. Once I get more confident in how to actually teach language arts I would love to have it be on some sort of autopilot system. For math my goals have been pretty easy to identify and incorporate, so at least one major subject doesn't have me saying, "Wow...I need to learn a LOT more about this!" 😂 Thanks for all of the feedback!
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