Babies Socialising Killed My Social Skills
October 2, 2008 at 4:52 pm (Kids) (Baby, conversation, mother and baby groups, networking, socialising, stranger)
My son is now over 7 months and old and up until now I have not really given him the opportunity to interact with other little people (apart from my spell in the mother and baby nut house). So I decided that as much as I didn;t want to I really had to make the effort to go to one of these ‘Mother and Baby’ groups. I have avoided them until now as i viewed them as a mothers boasting platform where mothers go and basically say ‘When did your child first do x’, you reply with the answer and then they respond with ‘ Oh, well my Charlie did t a month earlier than that’. I just don;t want to buy into the whole competitive parent thing.
Anyway, so I went along and I didn’t really get the chance to find out what they were talking about at all. I was immediately transported back 22yrs and it was my first day of school where I don’t know anyone and everyone just carried on chatting to their friends. Thought that it was quite rude to be honest, I think that if I were in a group and someone new came then I would make the effort to talk to them. I spent an uncomfortable two hours there and then finally it was time to leave. Praise the Lord. I hated every minute of it and I am dreading next week, but you never know, it might be a bit better next week and unfortunately the baby enjoyed it so I have to go back.
I came away realising that I am not the person that I used to be. I have always been very social and speak to anybody about practically anything but yesterday all of my social skills went out of the window and I didn’t try and strike up a conversation with anyone. I don’t know whether this is because I have forgotten how to interact with strangers or whether I just couldn’t be arsed and just didnn’t really want to get to know anybody there……..
I guess I’ll find out next week what the answer is.
