Struggling to Relate to Your Friends With Kids? Here’s What to Do
When parenthood enters the group chat, friendships can change drastically. Many millennials are at a point where they may not have a child (now or ever), but their friends do. So how can you still relate to your friends when you don’t have a kid? We asked Danielle Bayard Jackson, friendship educator and author of the new book “Fighting for Our Friendships,” for her advice.
All my friends have kids, and I don’t. How can I still relate to them?
Jackson gave us a simple solution: Ask about their lives, even if it revolves around diaper cream and nap schedules. “If your friend is posting to social media, those are your prompts. So you don’t have to come up [with questions]. A lot of times they’ll post about baby’s first steps, or feeling tired … you can use that as a lead-in,” she explains.
Another tip from Jackson is to see if your friend(s) will try something new with you (like an art or cooking class, or going on a weekly walk). Emphasis on new. “We can’t help [but] compare our present to what we’re familiar with [from] the past … but they’ll never be able to return to what they had before,” says Jackson. “What are new things we can do, to show that we can connect?”
If you’re in different life stages, you’re not always going to relate to one another — and that’s okay. “You [might] need support for the things that you're going through. But there might be a period or a point in time where your friend can't offer that kind of specific mirrored support because she's in a different stage or her priorities [have] changed.”
That’s why it’s important to talk to people who understand what you’re going through. “Where do you feel a lack of connection? Do you feel like [your friend] lost interest in your dating life or she's not offering adequate support? Can you be more intentional about making other friends, not to replace your friend, but to bring [more] into the fold?” asks Jackson.
Oh, and if you’re experiencing the opposite — you’re the only one with kids in your friend group — the same advice from Jackson applies. Ask questions, think of new ways to bond, and understand that you might need more or different friendships in your life.
