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How to Meet New Mom Friends

Updated: Dec 2, 2021

Loneliness is a global issue but it is not really talked about openly. It is a struggle to find genuine friendships as adults, let alone being adults that have children! It is something I’ve struggled with and I know many others have as well, so I’m going to share some strategies that have helped me.


Episode #6 on the Wander Mom Diaries Podcast addresses this exact issue and how to overcome the adversities that come along with trying to meet new people as adults, specifically, other moms! Click the image to be taken directly to the podcast episode.




I hope to at least help you at least get started and take some steps towards finding some mom friends in your community. By the end, you will learn about where to find a community or an opportunity that has already been organized for you to meet new people. You will also learn what to do if you don’t see an opportunity to join in and you find it best to take the first step and initiate a friendship.


Fear of Rejection


Making new friends means that you need to allow yourself to open up to someone you don’t know very well. The feeling can no doubt keep people, especially adults, from making that first step to meeting new people. I want to preface my strategies with this acknowledgment. No matter what your personality is, it is completely normal to feel a fear of rejection when you are just about to take action. For me, I feel something in my gut. You may feel your heart start to race, maybe your body gets tense. Evolution has brought us to have these feelings of flight or fight in an unknown or unfamiliar situation. It is a basic survival skill to feel defensive, so first off, it’s not you, it’s biology. You may be thinking that they aren’t interested, that you’ll make a fool out of yourself, that they’ll say “no thanks”, you may think their friend circle is full and there is no room for you. There are an infinite amount of thoughts that can pop into your head when you’re about to try to befriend someone, and that is totally normal.


There are many different strategies you can take to get over this fear of rejection and start developing some awesome mom friendships. My advice is to be aware that you may feel the resistance or be hesitant, but you need to take action. If nobody responds, or things just don't work out the way that you want them to, try not to expend too much energy at that moment and move forward.


Keep that in mind as I go through these strategies to meet new people and make new friends. If you are warned in advance that you may feel this fear or nervousness, it prepares you so you won't be caught off guard when you actually try.

Join Events in your Community


So let's dive into two different pathways you can take to meet new people and build some relationships. So the first one is you can join in something that already exists. And the second way is that you can initiate something. So I'm going to first go into different ways where you can join in on a community that already exists or something that is just already built for you.


Public Library Events

I was recently just on the library website, and I was blown away at the opportunities that they provide for not only kids of all ages, but also for adults. There are adult book clubs, parent meetups, and all of these things where you can bring your kid and you can also have the opportunity to meet other parents with kids around the same age. So check out your public library website and see if there's anything that looks interesting to you where you can join in and you can start to meet new people that way.

MeetUp

The next resource I'm going to talk about for opportunities where you can join into something that already exists is Meetup. So Meetup has been around for a long time and is a reliable meet-and-greet platform that I’ve had a lot of success with personally. You can search for events in your area and you can also narrow down by topic of interest.


If you'd like to go hiking or biking or running, there's a lot of active groups out there. Or you can search for mom groups or people of all ages and backgrounds meeting up that have common interests. So I encourage you to check that out and see if there's anything that looks interesting to you.


If you feel nervous or hesitant to actually attend one of these meetup events, just keep in mind that the meetup exists because somebody didn't want to do something by themselves, they wanted other people to join in. So it's a great way to go into a situation where everybody has a common mission to meet new people.

Create your Own Opportunities

So the second approach you can take to meet new people and make some mom friends is if you initiate something yourself, and with the resources I'm going to share with you, this will seem less intimidating. Let me reassure you that there are some very easy ways in which you can start some communication on your terms and it feels safe to have that kind of control.

Kids are excellent ice breakers to meet fellow parents in your community. I feel like a park or playground is always an easier place for socialization. It is easy to strike up a conversation about the kids, how old they are, where they go to school, etc. Don’t be afraid to use your common tie as a gateway for conversation.


If you have kids in daycare or if they are school-aged, use that as an opportunity to start your own parent meetup. I offered to start communication between the parents to see if there would be any interest in getting our kids together outside of school for playdates, and it was actually really well supported!


The teacher forwarded all the information and in the end, we had our first playdate at the dairy farm, it worked out really nice. I then created a spreadsheet where parents can add events that they are interested in having people join in on so it's not just me initiating each event. It’s a simple way to initiate a gathering that doesn’t take much extra work and parents were really appreciative because nobody wants to make that first step!


The next approach you can take is through social media, specifically in a Facebook group. Search for a local or mom-specific Facebook group and just post! It doesn't need to be long-winded, just something like, “I'm looking for a fellow mom with this child of similar age and I'd like to meet up” I’ve done this a couple of different times, and to be honest, I got a lot of replies. However, they were all replies of moms with kids of different ages.



If you have a one-year-old and somebody has a two-year-old there's a huge gap developmentally so I was really just looking for moms with kids the same age. So that one didn't work out so well. But I did get a lot of responses. If you're not picky. That's the way to go!


Another way is to look for a post within the group to see if someone already had a similar inquiry by searching keywords within the discussion boards. For example, somebody posted that they had a daughter the same age as mine, and they were looking for a playdate. A couple of other moms responded, me included, and we actually ended up getting together. Funny enough, the person that created the post never showed up to the playdate, however, three moms ended up meeting up and we've been friends ever since!


Another way to use technology to help meet other people is one that I just discovered. It is an app called Peanut. I downloaded it mainly to explore and I was pretty impressed with how many moms in my immediate area were on the app. You can see how old their kids are, if you want to wave at somebody, you swipe down if you'd like to just save for later.



This app allows you to connect with moms who are obviously looking for somebody to connect with, otherwise, they wouldn't be on the app. In addition to scanning the moms in y our area, there are these “pods”. Sometimes it just takes a good conversation to feel better and the app attempts to bridge women together through these live discussion pods.


Pods are live, audio-only discussions you can join with women who are currently active in the app. You get an idea of the topic of discussion with the title of the pod and then can join in and contribute or just listen. You can also create your own discussion pod where moms can join in and talk about the topic that you posted about. It’s very much like a nonexclusive Clubhouse (the audio app) setup for women.

I noticed that when I downloaded the app, there were lots of different topics. So it's not just for new moms, it's for women going through menopause, pregnancy, and more.


What I liked most about it was the ease of being able to meet people in your area, specifically, people who have a similar age child like you, it allows you to kind of filter your options whereas, on Facebook, you really don't know much about the person that's responding.


If you are looking for a very specific type of person, this could be a way that you can get to know people before making the commitment to get together.



For professional and helpful guidance on how to nurture friendships, you’ve tried to start, check out Danielle Bayard Jackson’s podcast and website. Her podcast is called Friend Forward and her website is www.betterfemalefriendships.com. She drops so much advice and so many tips for addressing all of the different issues that women feel when they're trying to build friendships. If you are not sure how to go beyond the first step of initiating a friendship, Danielle is going to have so much advice and many tools for you.

My personal advice would be to just keep following through if you really want to make new mom friends. From my experience, many people have chickened out at the last second (me included) because you realize you need to actually interact! But once you take action, you will be rewarded with the start of something whether it's a new friendship or a new community, a new hobby, or just a new excuse to get out of the house and have some fun.


Additional Mom Group Resources!

MOPS (Mothers Of Preschoolers) https://www.mops.org/

Search for your local MOMS group (Moms Offering Moms Support)


Being a mom is hard work and exhausting and it's very lonely, but you know who can empathize? Other mothers! So why not try to step out of your comfort zone for just a little bit and try to create some new friendships. Try something this week, I've given a lot of different tips and advice that you can take action. So try one or more of them today!


Do you have any follow-up questions? Did I miss a great resource that should be added to this post? What other questions do you have about being a mother that loves to go on adventures? Do you want to be featured on the podcast? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then leave me a short voice message by going to www.speakpipe.com/wandermomdiaries!



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