first friends

Today’s note starts with a Band-Aid and ends with one of the biggest lessons parenthood has taught me: I can’t choose my daughter’s friends. I can only help her recognize what love, kindness, and safety feel like — and trust that she’ll find her people. kids, friendship, mom friends, all of it.

hosted by Kathy Patalsky

healthyhappylife.com

IG: KathyPatalsky + notes.kathy

Transcript

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And look at my daughter. She's gonna have to figure it out herself. She is the captain of her little ship, and her friendship radar is still being built. She's not supposed to know who her forever friends are when she's five years old. You're listening to notes with Kathy Pachowski. And if you're watching this on the video version, I apologize because this is a complete temporary office. We are in the middle of some transitioning stuff right now. So I've just literally thrown my computer in the middle of the room, random wall behind me, and that's just the vibe. I don't care. So that's where we're going. I am talking about something today that I really love. This morning was camp drop-off, and I am loving summer camp for a five, almost six-year-old. It's the perfect mix of sending her off to be crazy and silly with her friends. It's water play and art and bubbles, messy dirt. Then she gets to come home and spend time with her family. I just got back from dropping her off at camp. She got a little ouchy on her pinky yesterday. And she had a band-aid, which we changed out right before I pushed her off to camp. I pulled a band-aid out of her backpack, and it was this band-aid with Sky from Paw Patrol on it. She went through an intense Paw Patrol season. And so we have a lot of Paw Patrol things. So I pull out this band-aid, I open it up, and she sees Sky and she gasps. She goes, No. She's just like, no, I want the tan one. No characters. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me see. And I stuff it away and I get her a tan band-aid and I put it on her finger and she's fine. But just the fact that she wanted nothing to do with Sky from Paw Patrol when she literally dressed up as her last Halloween, you know, less than a year ago, is just hilarious to me. It just kids are inconsistent. By the time you've figured out what they love and invested in it, put energy into it, they've probably just about moved on. And that's okay. That's what kids do. They're like trying on all different variations of themselves and seeing what fits. I think one of the most powerful versions of trying on different things is friends and friendships, not only with your kids, but with yourself. The tricky part is when your mom friends and your kid friends start to sit together in the same basket. You start to feel like, oh my gosh, this is perfect. We're all friends, we're all together. This is the dream, right? But what I have learned looking around as a parent, I've started to question wait, what is real? Because quite frankly, when you're in this stage, there's a lot of social performing that goes on. You go to school, you go to camp, birthday parties, and all the adults in the room are like, oh, hello, how are you? Oh, hug, hug, kiss, kiss. Let's all be nice and friendly for all the kids that are watching, learning how to socialize in the world. And it is, it's a lot of social performing. And to me, that is exhausting because I'm an introvert. I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians don't like to bullshit. They just like to be real. I'm not even that into that stuff. But lately, I just a lot of it makes sense. So I don't like to bullshit. I like people to be real. I don't like putting up masks and veils and faking things or playing nice. I just want to be real. Like that is just where my heart is at. So when I'm out in this world of kids, families, and schools, and just like needing to put on your best possible face. Friendly, perfect performance of let's all be nice to each other. It's just an interesting place to be in life. And you start to question wait, what is real? Are we all friends? Does everybody here really love each other? Are we all gonna be in this forever? And of course, as an adult, you're like, we are being friendly. We are showing kids what a supportive, loving community looks like. And you don't have to be best friends with everybody, but we're all gonna be kind and cordial and lovely to everybody. So it's a lot of social performance for these kids. And it can look like a facade at times to people who are really digging deep and looking at the details of clicks and people talking behind people's backs. And oh, those parents look like their besties. They were just kind of complaining about each other's kids last week. It's just a lot of complexity and confusion and feels like high school, basically. That's the quote. So as an adult, you're like, okay, I get it. I've been here. There's gonna be seasonal friends, functional friends through this stage in my life. I'm gonna make friends with other parents and teachers and whatnot who are going to help me function in this time of life. And we can show up together and be social and live life together, and that's gonna be great. And then there's also probably gonna be some soul friends that I'm gonna pick up that I just connect with, that I just love. And having lived for 45 years, I know the difference. It takes some time, it takes some quiet meditation, really absorbing people's energy and feeling things and watching and all of that. But I know the difference. I've spent my entire life building my own friendship radar, you guys. It's like an antenna. I know what it feels like when I meet somebody who just fits. I know the difference between someone I genuinely want in my life and someone who's just part of the season that I'm in. I don't always get it right. I've definitely put my heart into friendships that didn't last, but I understand the differences now. And the truth is, we don't dream about collecting dozens and dozens of functional friends. No, we dream about finding our people, the friends who feel easy, like home, the friends who stick, even when life changes, even when the scenery changes, even when schools change and ages change and your hair color change or your face changes, all of it. And I know that about myself. I don't want dozens of functional friends, you guys. I want the real friends. And I think most people would say that. And I look at my daughter, she's gonna have to figure it out herself. She is the captain of her little ship, and her friendship radar is still being built. She's not supposed to know who her forever friends are when she's five years old. Maybe her gut, her soul is starting to tell her, but she's still figuring it out, and that's why kids jump around. She's not supposed to know who she'll be still talking to in 20 years. She's calibrating, she's like an Alexa. When you first plug it in, and the little blue light spins around and around and around, trying to find the Wi-Fi, the password, waiting to come online, and then it suddenly says, Hello, my name's Alexa, and everything makes sense. That's what she's doing right now. She's spinning, and every new friendship is teaching her something. Every play date, oh, I think Alexa just talked to me. Um, so every new playdate is data. Every hurt feeling that I don't want to see that breaks my heart to witness or hear about is also data. Oh my god, Alexa's still talking to me because I said her name. Alexa, stop. Thank you. So every kid that makes her laugh is really important data. And they just start giggling, they stop talking, they stop using real words, and they're just communicating through giggles and grunts. That is hardcore data because adults do that. We communicate through texts and memes and little glances and glares, and we also communicate through giggles. Some of that is the most important data. And every single kid that makes them feel small or nervous or scared, that's important too. It's all helping her build that little friendship radar. And I can't build it for her. I can guide her, I can remind her to notice kindness, to notice safety, the people who make her just feel like herself, but I can't choose the signal. She has to learn to hear it for herself. And I know she will, but watching her figure it out can feel really uncomfortable at times. Not choosing your kids' friends and letting those little hearts find each other in the mix of life, on the playground, in the messiness of a school classroom, letting these tiny little hearts beep at each other and find each other. That is so freaking beautiful. And you can't do that for them. They do it themselves. And that is scary because I don't want her to spend social energy and love and generosity on the wrong people. Nobody wants that for their kid. But that's kind of the reality of life. We're all gonna do that, we're all gonna figure it out, and we're all still collecting data. She's watching me, and she's watching all her other friends, and she's watching the world go by, and she's figuring out this whole crazy system of connecting to other humans. So this whole episode started with Paw Patrol band-aids, and it ends on finding soul friendships. It doesn't happen in one season. You will hold on to them even when the scenery changes around you. So this whole conversation reminds me of the ending scene of Toy Story 5. And if you haven't seen Toy Story Five, I mean, spoiler alert. The spoilers are really intense, but still. Um, so Bonnie, she finally finds a friend who just gets her, right? The weird friend who she can be imaginative with, and they're just both silly and they speak the same language, and it's a beautiful moment. And as a parent, you're thinking, okay, that's her person. This is great. But then at the very, very end, there's a part that I think we can't forget about. It's when those two neighbor kids who are the ones who kind of just ignored her in the beginning, and you kind of thought, ew, they're jerks. Why didn't they go play with Bonnie? But in the end, they see her playing with her friend and they kind of wander over and they want to play too. And does Bonnie slam the gate on them? Nope. She just lets them in, and all of a sudden they're all playing together. I just love that because it's so real. It reminded me that kids are still figuring each other out and themselves out. They surprise us. The friend that your kid comes home from school crying over because they said something mean might end up being their best friend by the end of the year. The friendship you think is forever might not be. Kids surprise us. That's why we can't build their friendship radar for them. They are doing it themselves and they are doing a beautiful job if we just trust them in that process. And to end this entire episode, I just like to pause and kind of feel how my body feels. Like, what am I thinking? And what happens is my kids' entire social life flashes in front of me. I love being the safe space for her that she comes back to at the end of the day. I love to be her very first soul friend. And if I can be her first and forever soul friend, that's all I want. And if she can find the safety and other people that she finds at home with her parents, that is what I want for her. I think this is the age when that starts building, when they start separating from us, being out there in the social world all by themselves, and then coming back to that warm, safe place at the end of the day. When they can find little pockets of that warmth within their day, within friends that they're meeting, I think those are their signals. She's probably collecting those signals all day long. I have to just trust in her ability to recognize love because she found it at home first. That is why friendship is such a big deal. It's how kids find love out in the world on their own for the first time ever. It's not in things, it's in people. It's in their very first friends. Thanks for listening. This was Notes by Kathy Petalski. Follow Kathy on Instagram or visit healthyhappylife.com.