You don’t need a co-op or a program to build community. Real friendship grows from shared life, not organized activity. Let it take time.
When I was newly married, graduated from college and back in my hometown with no children yet and no desire for a job, I taught a language arts class at a local homeschool enrichment coop. Over the course of Friday morning, four different age groups cycled through my room and we read St. George and the Dragon and Beowulf aloud, practicing grammar knowledge with sentences I pulled from what we read. I was an idealistic English major twenty-year-old.
My class was not supposed to be anyone’s full language arts; it was entirely supplemental. What the moms and kids all told me was that this coop was their day out of the house with friends. They signed up for the opportunity to make friends, not to be educated. Education they were doing at home.
Not worth the time
I sympathized. I grew up homeschooled. The weeks at home can be long and tedious. Siblings know how to push one another’s buttons and get into ruts of just doing so with no reason to act civilly. Church was where we made our friends and Sunday the only day we played with friends. Most Sundays either I would go home with a friend or a friend would come home with us after church, to be returned at evening service. My mom didn’t do coops — not worth the time to pack everyone up and out of the house.
After a few weeks of teaching at the coop, I knew my mom was right. Each hour 10-12 kids cycled into my room, sitting around the table for the next supplemental, extra, doesn’t-really-matter class. This is how they spent Friday mornings, paying for their opportunity to finally play with friends at lunchtime.
They were squirrelly. They didn’t pay attention. They didn’t care. They messed with one another. And I had no reason to be stern. My class didn’t matter, and we all knew it. Choosing books with dragons and battles that were a bit above them, I did hold their attention much more than silly crafts or workbook pages, but I was working a tough crowd — not because they weren’t good kids, but because all they wanted was to make friends, yet the majority of the time they had with said friends had to be spent sitting around the table being mostly silent and still.
Friends need time to play
When my own homeschooled kids were of an age to need friends, we did not do coops. Actually, a friend of mine from church had started a mom’s group for a handful of us that all had our first babies within a year. We met weekly for coffee, playtime, and lunch. At first, it was just 6 moms and 5 babies. Ten years later we were still meeting, but then with 5 moms and 19 kids.
Instead of leaving playgroup for academic options, we arranged our plans to accommodate the real friend play time available. Free play with the kids you’ve grown up with and go to church with is so much more valuable than sitting in on an extra class with crafts and enforced table time. School and friends don’t have to mix, as long as there’s time built in for both.
Friend time also doesn’t need the excuse of academics to make it valid. Friends are good in their own right. Play is good in its own right. It’s ok to make time on the calendar for both, even if there are no school goals being met.
Unorganized time is better
In fact, the friend and play time is most likely more valuable if it is less organized. Kids learn from stretches of time to occupy themselves, to create games with others, to accommodate a group creatively, to mix and learn how interact “in the wild” and not only in preset, highly managed scenarios. Of course the moms should be nearby, keeping an eye and ear open, but we need to also second-guess our impulses to interfere.
I think the same principle holds true for mom friendships as well. In our playgroup setting, we also learned how to interact “in the wild,” over long stretches of time - a few hours every week for years and years. We weren’t forcing or rushing friendships. We weren’t trying to accomplish anything. For the children and for our church community, we kept at it, overlooking minor differences and not allowing our toes to be stepped on as others made different choices.
We didn’t do anything special, really. No book club. No activities. No extra phone calls. No texting. We just ended up doing life together by sharing life on a weekly basis.
Mom friendships, too
At one point with a single toddler, pregnant with #2, I thought maybe I should try to expand my acquaintance circle beyond my home church. I joined a MOPs group in town. I don’t remember now if I lasted 3 or only 2 months.
In part, it seemed like my co-op experience again, but this time with moms. Just getting together for coffee and chatting while helping with laundry folding was not legit. To make friends, women need childcare, a devotional, and a craft — except that in this highly programmed environment, there was no real way to get to know anyone. We were divided up into small groups at tables, but all that happened between organized segments was complaining about husbands (or boyfriends!) and children.
A group of complainers don’t want to hear your gratitude about your husband. As far as I could tell, no one was actually interested in doing better or learning more. And, I realized I was not comfortable giving my toddler over to a nursery program where I knew none of the volunteers. So, I quit MOPs.
Our casual playgroup = friends for kids and moms!
How was playgroup different? Firstly, zero crafts. That is a huge bonus. No chotskies came home with me.
Secondly, we were all theologically on the same page, receiving the same teaching week by week, and gratitude was preferred over complaining.
Thirdly, to have anything to talk about, we pretty much had to share the little trivia and trials of daily life as new moms, then of daily life as each new season hit. We did it with a desire for sanctification and learning and troubleshooting, not of mere complaining and sympathy.
Sharing real, full life - joyfully
So because of our weekly playgroup, I gained 6x the motherhood experience I would have if I’d been doing it alone. I had a broadened understanding of what was normal — not just from reading, but from actually *seeing* it. I *saw* other moms mother their children through situations.
We picked up phrases and tactics from one another. We thought of new ways to handle housework, naps, rashes, tantrums, dinner, lunch, and all the other daily realities of mom life because we were generously and graciously sharing our experiences with one another, open to thoughts and suggestions.
Our gatherings were unscripted, unprogrammed, without agenda or plan. We just spent time together: being moms, socializing our children, and eating together. I had never eaten zucchini or red bell pepper before playgroup. My whole life was expanded in almost every way by our very casual but regular playgroup.
Friends are not based on feeling
Playgroup was an anchor in our long weeks when all the children were small. It was then when I lost our third baby in the second trimester that I realized that I really did have real friends in these ladies. I thought I’d go to keep life normal for my little boys and so that I wouldn’t have anyone asking why I skipped, but I’d keep my fresh, devastating news to myself.
Yet when I came in, sitting down on the floor with my one-year-old, I suddenly started crying. My friends needed no organization system to start taking care of things. We didn’t need any official meal train. They brought me books, movies, and food while I waited and while I recovered.
We think we need programs and official organization for women to form friendships and take care of one another, but we really don’t.
We need to let one another into our real lives. Share openly in our real spaces, take care of our children together, talk about meal plans and chore routines and all the mundanities. It doesn’t have to look impressive or spiritual for God to knit our hearts together into a real community - one that loves each other’s children because we’ve seen them in their good and bad moments at every age, one that notices when something is not right and takes care of the hurting member.
Friendship isn’t first and foremost a feeling you share with another. It isn’t found in micromanaged official programs you can “plug into.”
It takes time — years, even — living together, caring for one another, talking shop about home and motherhood and life. Spend time in one another’s homes and with one another’s children. Do that, and one day you will suddenly realize that, where you least expected it, you have found friends.
Series on friendship from Simply Convivial Podcast:
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