LA moms are busy and our plates are full. The worst part? Many of us don’t have a strong enough support network to lighten our load or even just be there for our parenting journey. Luckily there is one simple change that can help build an LA mom village – invest in temporary and low-priority relationships.
Here’s how:
Don’t Leave (Your Friendships) Before Your Leave
In a metro area of 10 million people, it’s easy to stop caring about high-maintenance/low-return relationships.
We lose interest in new friends if we discover they are moving out of town. We schedule fewer playdates with kids who are going to attend a different school next year. And we definitely don’t keep in touch with parents from previous sports leagues or after-school programs.
Here’s why this might be a problem –
In her 2013 book Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta Platforms, observed that many women step back from their careers before they need to and to the detriment of their future careers.
But what if these same women are also leaving their relationships before their time, to the detriment of their personal life and their ability to build their village?
On the one hand, it’s clear that we don’t have time for everyone. But on the other, we need to be honest and accept the fact that there are no shortcuts in building our village either. There is no friendship, no bond, and no village that can exist without an investment of time.
But just how much time do we need to spend on building our LA mom village? Luckily, science has an answer:
Invest Time Building Your LA Mom Village
A 2018 study found that it takes the following number of hours for people to advance between various stages of friendship:
50 hours: transition from acquaintances to casual friends.
90 additional hours: transition from casual friends to simple “friend” status.
200 additional hours: transition from simple friend status to close friend.
What this means is that we’ve already invested a lot of time and energy in friendships without paying much attention to them.
Who knows, maybe our child is one month away from making a new friend or we’re two playdates away from connecting with a new family.
Does this mean we have to invest in all these relationships? No, but we could benefit from keeping some of them alive for longer than we usually do.
Read on for some tips on how to do just that, even when our time and resources are limited:
Use Simple and Creative Ideas to Maintain Relationships
As many busy moms know, we don’t always have to work harder but maybe just a little smarter to get things done. If you’d like to keep people in your network for longer, try these simple ideas:
- Scrolling through your camera roll? Send old photos to people you haven’t seen in a while as a way to say hi.
- Attending a public event at your church, synagogue, or mosque? Invite people from your relevant network to join.
- Create a tradition of hosting a potluck in the park every spring and invite your outer circle to join. No need to do anything but send out invitations and bring some paper plates and cups.
- Send birthday invitations to some friends from the past whenever you are hosting events that can accommodate extra people without additional cost or work.
- Send a group invitation to meet at the Annenberg Beach House once each summer. Between the playground, the beach, the pool, and the restaurant everyone will have something to do without any advance planning needed.
The important thing is to not implement ideas that will end up being more work but instead choose a simple idea that can help build our mom village over time.
With these small investments, we can ensure that we have opportunities to invite and re-invite people into your circle of care and build our LA mom village.
Want more information about building a mom village? Read 11 Simple Ways to Build a Strong Support Network for some easy to implement ideas.