How rose colored are your glasses?

[Jean in Newcastle]

I see so much on this board about issues with friends and wishing our kids had the free and easy relationships with neighborhood friends or classmates that we had growing up etc. I've said the same thing, myself. But last night I got to thinking - really thinking and remembering what it was like different years. Because in my case anyway, I think I've mentally lumped all my childhood together into one big mental file called "friends from childhood". In my case, when I really stopped to think about it, Rachel was really only my friend in first grade. Then she moved. And Marty and I were friends all through elementary school but not really by choice - it was one of those "being thrown together because our dads were in the same job" deals. In reality, we were like night and day, fought a lot and once we got to middle school and started to pick more of our own friends, stopped talking to each other and never looked back. . . There were good examples in there. My friend Lynn and I are still friends (but not besties) and we met in 7th grade. Sharon and I don't have an adult friendship but as kids we were tight and she was a true blue friend until we just moved apart by going to different colleges.

 

But my point was that in my mind, if you asked me who my childhood friends were, I would start listing Rachel, Marty, Lynn, Sharon. . . And they weren't all my friends at the same time and not all of it was so perfect. In fact there was some pretty dark (ie. abusive) stuff in there in our neighborhood that I find that I don't want to remember and certainly doesn't make it into my "when I was a child" stories for my kids.

 

What about you? Was your childhood experience with friends really rosy or are your glasses a bit foggy like mine?

[justamouse]

I moved a lot if grammar school and had a very hard time making friends. I had two good friends in HS.

[Karen in CO]

I lived in a tiny town where I was related to a good number of people. I had best friends in 8-10th grade, Susanne and Marie. I had a best friend in college, Suzanne. I had a close friend when I started working, Kristen. I'm currently married to my best friend, :001_wub:. I don't look back with rose-colored glasses at all. I work hard to help create a sense of closeness and overcome the distance from family for my kids.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Karen in CO

[eternalknot]

My glasses aren't rosy because I grew up in a large family, so most of my friends were (still are ;)) my siblings and cousins. Not much has changed on that front, so it's easy to remember things as they were (still sometimes are ;)).

[fairfarmhand]

I was one of those unfortunate kids who had few friends. I remember having a birthday party, inviting every child in my class and having noone show up. :(

 

In middle school, I was miserable. Never fit in.

 

In high school, I was past caring, and then I ended up having some fun. But most of my schoolmates weren't who I hung out with on the weekends. I had friends from church (grown-ups) who were more interesting to me. But I did meet my dh when I was 15, and had a long distance relationship with him until I graduated high school and then we married.

 

All my friends from childhood????

 

I see them on facebook from time to time but that's it!

[elegantlion]

I lived in a stereotypical suburban neighborhood. All the kids, and there were a lot of us, played together well in elementary. We rarely went to each other's home, it was just outside. In junior high and high school that stopped as cliques formed and people got busy with other stuff.

 

We had two-three friends in the neighborhood that we would play with all the time, one of them practically lived at our house until high school. He was like a little brother.

 

From school I had 1-2 good friends throughout high school. We had a group that ran around together, guys and girls. There was the group of "school friends". You could sit with them at lunch, joke during class, but we never did things after school together. We had a large high school where the students were spread out over a wide geographic area, so it was harder. One year my friends were 3 male foreign exchange students, we hung out together a lot. When they left it was so hard. I've talked to one of them a number of times over the years.

 

Now, I have some of them as facebook friends, and one girl that I've maintained friendship with since sixth grade, we were in each other's weddings, we used to hang out, our dh's get along well. One friend from high school introduced me to dh, but we've kind of lost contact with him.

 

I don't think it was easy. I remember getting hurt by "friends", feeling lonely a lot, and thinking sometimes there was no one who really understood me. I still feel that way sometimes. :tongue_smilie::lol:

[Scarlett]

I see so much on this board about issues with friends and wishing our kids had the free and easy relationships with neighborhood friends or classmates that we had growing up etc. I've said the same thing, myself. But last night I got to thinking - really thinking and remembering what it was like different years. Because in my case anyway, I think I've mentally lumped all my childhood together into one big mental file called "friends from childhood". In my case, when I really stopped to think about it, Rachel was really only my friend in first grade. Then she moved. And Marty and I were friends all through elementary school but not really by choice - it was one of those "being thrown together because our dads were in the same job" deals. In reality, we were like night and day, fought a lot and once we got to middle school and started to pick more of our own friends, stopped talking to each other and never looked back. . . There were good examples in there. My friend Lynn and I are still friends (but not besties) and we met in 7th grade. Sharon and I don't have an adult friendship but as kids we were tight and she was a true blue friend until we just moved apart by going to different colleges.

 

But my point was that in my mind, if you asked me who my childhood friends were, I would start listing Rachel, Marty, Lynn, Sharon. . . And they weren't all my friends at the same time and not all of it was so perfect. In fact there was some pretty dark (ie. abusive) stuff in there in our neighborhood that I find that I don't want to remember and certainly doesn't make it into my "when I was a child" stories for my kids.

 

What about you? Was your childhood experience with friends really rosy or are your glasses a bit foggy like mine?

 

My first friend was when I was about 8. We moved away when I was 10...and in later years what I heard from her and about her made me realize we would not have stayed friends.

 

When I was 12 I met my (still) best friend. But that relationship has had a fair number of bumps and bruises. Sometimes I'd like to never see her again,but then I begin to miss her and I guess at this point she is like a sister in that we will never be able to do without each other even though we sometimes don't like each other.

 

I've had many friendships of various depths over the years. We helped each other through rough times and then for many reasons moved away from each other...either geographically or just in our day to day lifes. I haven't worked in 12 1/2 years but am still fairly close to one woman from those days.

 

Currently just moved 2 hours away from the area I lived in for 29 years (my entire adult life) so am facing the realization that I need to make new friends here.

 

I do not have rose colored glasses on about my childhood though. It was hard. I had a lot of fun and did a lot because my (very poor and single) mother was that kind of mom....but I always felt outside looking in as far as friendships go. My son is the same way....I try to explain to him that you never know when a 'best friend' might walk through the door and we have to be open to new people/places things to try.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

Well, I had it much easier than my kids do, actually. Our street was teeming with kids and we all played outside all day, every day in the summer. We mostly all went to the same school (some went to the local Catholic school), and we played together at recess. We all went to each other's birthday parties, and slumber parties, etc. Of course, there were the typical trials and tribulations of kids, like "wars" and taking sides about things, but I don't think I really have rose colored glasses about the kids on my street because one asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, and I'm friends with several of them on Facebook (even though we all moved away after school days) and we all seem to have similar memories. My best friend from 8th-12th grade is still a very close friend, even though she moved 10 hours away. She came to visit me when I was a graduate student in France, and she makes a point to get together with me and my family when she comes back to visit her parents.

 

We don't live in a kid-infested neighborhood like mine was. Kids around here are over-scheduled and do not have time to just hang out and be kids together. I feel sorry for my kids. They try to make friends at their various activities, but the relationships never extend beyond those activities.

[Bluegoat]

Well, in the elementary school years I ran around with fairly large groups of kids in the few places I lived in. That isn't to say all were my close friends, there were usually a few I was close to, especially as I got older. But there was a kind of web of kids that all knew each other and ran around doing stuff.

 

Not all of those relationships went smoothly all the time, and there were even a few serious conflicts, but I don't really consider that a bad thing.

 

As I got older, I tended to have fewer closer friends and they lived a bit further away, so I learned to take the bus around grade 7.

 

I'm not close to most of those people now, but I have some contact with some. I have a few as friends on Facebook, and I meet some occasionally around, especially since I moved back to my old neighbourhood a few years ago.

[Bluegoat]

We don't live in a kid-infested neighborhood like mine was. Kids around here are over-scheduled and do not have time to just hang out and be kids together. I feel sorry for my kids. They try to make friends at their various activities, but the relationships never extend beyond those activities.

 

Yeah, that's what our neighbourhood is like.

 

The main group of friends my kids have made are at church, but those kids are not close by. We see a fair bit of them though. But my eldest in particular is always wanting to get together with kids she meets at activities, and she sometimes calls them up, but it never seems to work out.

[lovinmomma]

My glasses aren't rosy because I grew up in a large family, so most of my friends were (still are ;)) my siblings and cousins. Not much has changed on that front, so it's easy to remember things as they were (still sometimes are ;)).

 

I like this. :D

[mumto2]

I think we a definately wearing rose colored glasses. Like you I had many friends along the way -- most were not long term. Some moved or I moved. Some went to different junior highs. Some changed (drugs and boys) along the way and I didn't as much. I really think my children's friendships are honestly not that much different from what my own were if I am honest. They don't function as part of a "pack" like in school but they do have a "best"friend who considers them to be the same and a few other friends for activities.

 

I am only in touch with 5 childhood friends(defined as K through 12). One is Dh so I see him frequently.:lol: Other than him it is xmas cards and very occasional phone calls. It was that way before we left the US too. I did start home ed with one of these friends but when her dc went to public school our contact became far less. Our moms are best friends still and she is 4 years younger so she probably doesn't count as a school friend.

 

Last week my mom had me busy googling " where are they now " for my school mates. We were having great fun until I discovered 2 girls who I really disliked growing up are living where I did before moving to the UK. One even goes to our old church. I had a panic attack -- then I calmed down because I am not moving back there ever. I could not believe that a 48 year old could be that upset because of an old tormenter. My mom could not believe that school was that bad for me -- I actually had a pretty active social life. I obviously was not as well adjusted as she thought!

[Ottakee]

I went to a 3 room rural school for K-8th grade. There were 6 girls in my class, none in the grade ahead of me and 1 in the grade below me (but only some years) so friends were just who we were stuck with.

 

In highschool I did make some friends by my sophmore year and did a lot with them through my junior and some of senior year (but by then we were all working). Out of those friends I am friends on facebook with 5 or 6 of them but haven't seen them in years. I do think though that those years were valuable even if the friendships were not "forever" ones.

 

My best friend now I met 6 or 7 years ago at church. She is 11 years older than me but has experienced infertility, adopted, did foster care, homeschooled, and has horses, and her husband is a firefighter (mine was) so we share many key things in life.

 

I have some other friends that I see weekly for walking/at church and then a few that I see every few weeks, etc.

[lovinmomma]

We don't live in a kid-infested neighborhood like mine was. Kids around here are over-scheduled and do not have time to just hang out and be kids together. I feel sorry for my kids. They try to make friends at their various activities, but the relationships never extend beyond those activities.

 

I've been noticing something lately. Before we moved we lived in a town that had "school of choice" not neighborhood schools meaning that every parent got to choose what school their children went to and there was a lottery type of thing if there weren't enough spots. This led to the children (in the 2 neighborhoods that I lived in while there) not really knowing each other since they didn't go to school together or ride the bus together. In addition, I lived in nicer neighborhoods when I lived there and there were a whole lot less children.

 

Now where I live there are a ton of kids and it reminds me much of how it was when I was growing up. It's not a very nice neighborhood at all (cheap), but the children all go to the same school and most of them ride the bus together. After school is out you will find 20+ kids out in the neighborhood all playing together in different age groups. My house has sorta become the hang out spot and I often have multiple kids that aren't mine in my home. I usually have to send them home for meals. lol

 

So, the difference is huge in my opinion when I compare the 2 places that I have lived with my children. I love the sense of community where I live now even though it's not the best neighborhood. All of the adults walk back and forth between the homes looking for where their kids might be. We sit out and chat on nice evenings, etc. I love it.

[justLisa]

I have some good memories, but I do not have rosy glasses

[JenC3]

My 2 best friends in grades 1-7 were Stacy and my cousin Becky. Neither one went to my Catholic school. School friends were Patti, Mindy, Theresa, Jenny. I'm FB with two of these girls, but neither have had much to do with my HS or adult life.

 

Grades 8-12 I ran around with Karen, Heather, Kara, Stacy and Tammy. Only one of these girls has stayed a close friend into adulthood. The others are FB friends only.

 

College friends: Jeanne, Joni, Holly and Tracey

 

The bolded names are people I still talk on a monthly basis an considered close friends. These are also just the female friends. I always had lots of male friends as well. My other day to day friends are those I've met through church and LaLeche when my kids were small. I have a friend I do things with who is another ballet mom.

 

I've had LOTS of other friends who were close at one time or another, whose lives intersected at the right time with mine, who I worked with, etc. I would be happy to see them, but life moves us and we attach to where and whom we can. Each of them gave little bits over to me and I tp them. I'm sure my children will do the same thing in their lives and maybe not. My mom was/is a good friend, she taught me to do the same and that's what I'm teaching my children.

 

I hate to see my children hurt/hurting, but relationships are hard work and people are crazy. Getting hurt sucks, but I've always felt it makes you grow reflect and be better.

[Lara in Colo]

I do not have rose colored glasses.

My childhood stunk (friend-wise). I suppose that is why I just don't care overly much if my children avoid all that drama. I already see some of it with the few friends they do have. I know they have to do through it, but I was so miserable, I am glad they have me and each other.

[Dory]

Nothing rosy to report from here. I remember a lot of my childhood fairly vividly and although there are definitely some good times, I haven't forgotten the not good times.

[bobbeym]

Michelle was my next-door-neighbor/best friend in 3rd grade. She moved away at the end of the school year and we never talked again.

 

Tracey, Stephanie, and Esmeralda are the only junior high friends who I can remember. We stopped being friends once we got into high school.

 

I remember lots of high school friends. Of the two that fall into the bestie category, one I email/IM with daily who lives out of town and the other in town I see a couple times a month for lunch or dinner when our schedules mesh. One other person I'm FB friends with but we don't actually talk outside of what our kids are doing. I don't talk to any of the others.

 

So when my youngest complains that his old friends don't talk to him anymore (which is no big loss IMO!), I tell him that he's making lots of new friends through our HS group, youth group, and 4H and some of these kids will become friends that will stick.

[Wheres Toto]

No rosy memories. I had very few friends in school and none that lasted through the whole thing even though I went to the same schools with the same kids from Kindergarten through graduation. I usually had one or two people to hang out with but not a real close "best friend".

 

Most of my experiences were along the lines of a mild "Lord of the Flies". :glare:

 

The only people I'm still in any kind of touch with (including Facebook) from my school years are my cousins.

[Tap]

I was mixed for me. I went to private school and my neighbors went to different schools. I had school friends and neighborhood friends but they didn't cross.

 

I was considered poor compared to my private school friends so they didn't come to my house to play.

 

I had a few friends in my neighborhood. What I remember:

 

2 girls lived in a house up on a hill surrounded by hedges so you couldn't see the house. The mom and dad split up (he left) and the mom was an alcoholic. The girls were pretty wounded by the fighting/alcoholism, and I remember that clearly so it must have been pretty significant.

 

2 girls lived at the end of one street and they were nice, from a nice home, but them moved to another state after a few years. I remember that they had rich grandparents that bought them expensive gifts. LOL

 

1g/1b lived across the street and seemed to live hand to mouth. They were a bit rough and mean. I remember their house was very, very dark and stunk. The both ended up in jail for drugs.

 

1g/1b went to a different private school that I did. The parents were 'swingers' and we all knew it. Kids weren't really allowed to go into their house.

 

2girls had a principal father. Both had leukemia in their youth, one died as a very young teenager. There was a lot of hurt in their lives from a young age and you could feel that they were fragile as kids. They didn't play outside much.

 

 

 

I guess I just remember a bunch of hurt kids, and everyone knew everyones business. I don't have rose colored glasses, but I sure wish it were different!

[Julie Smith]

Growing up our neighbors were the best of friends. Even when I moved a 24 hour flight away I still flew back to live with them for 3 weeks in the summer.

 

Then I made another group of friends.

 

But the group of friends was always small, 2 or maybe 3 with some extra friends on the side. The extra friends were people you could sit with at the cafeteria, but not the people who you would stay in touch with after highschool.

[shanvan]

I see so much on this board about issues with friends and wishing our kids had the free and easy relationships with neighborhood friends or classmates that we had growing up etc. I've said the same thing, myself. But last night I got to thinking - really thinking and remembering what it was like different years. Because in my case anyway, I think I've mentally lumped all my childhood together into one big mental file called "friends from childhood". In my case, when I really stopped to think about it, Rachel was really only my friend in first grade. Then she moved. And Marty and I were friends all through elementary school but not really by choice - it was one of those "being thrown together because our dads were in the same job" deals. In reality, we were like night and day, fought a lot and once we got to middle school and started to pick more of our own friends, stopped talking to each other and never looked back. . . There were good examples in there. My friend Lynn and I are still friends (but not besties) and we met in 7th grade. Sharon and I don't have an adult friendship but as kids we were tight and she was a true blue friend until we just moved apart by going to different colleges.

 

But my point was that in my mind, if you asked me who my childhood friends were, I would start listing Rachel, Marty, Lynn, Sharon. . . And they weren't all my friends at the same time and not all of it was so perfect. In fact there was some pretty dark (ie. abusive) stuff in there in our neighborhood that I find that I don't want to remember and certainly doesn't make it into my "when I was a child" stories for my kids.

 

What about you? Was your childhood experience with friends really rosy or are your glasses a bit foggy like mine?

 

Foggy like yours. My realizations about past friendships has caused me to stop stressing about Dc and friends. They have a few here and there, but they don't hang out in the neighbor and I'm happy with that. I really think public school and socialization issues have affected beliefs about friendships. I would actually like Dc to have different ideas about friendship than I had as a child. I don't want them to learn to gossip, or to tolerate being treated badly, or to think it is wise to bare your soul to anyone who shows an interest, or a lot of other things---yet I still want them to be friendly and enjoy the company of others. My ideas about friendship are too long to post here and they have matured to have much different ideas than I had in grade school or even as a young adult.