If you’re anything like me, then you find having to chat up other parents about as much fun as a late third trimester internal exam at the OB’s office. Something you wish they’d serve up a cocktail of good drugs beforehand to get you through it. I’ve been at this game for thirteen years. THIRTEEN YEARS. I’ve sat in “observation rooms” at Little Gym, the YMCA and tae kwon do. I’ve belonged to “mother’s groups” at the church and “parent discussion groups” at the pre-school and mom drunk clubs, er, I mean book clubs. I’ve been seated in bleachers, on folding chairs and on the grass at school plays, Christmas concerts and t-ball games, and up until now, all I could say about it is: Mommies Suck.

Why is it that when you get a group of women together who happen to have bred, all they talk about is their children? If not the children themselves, then peripheral child-related things like kid clubs, kid homework, kid food, cleaning up after kids, and kid so on. You get a bunch of men together who happen to have bred, and they talk about anything BUT the kids. It isn’t fair. Then try hanging out with the dads instead of the mommies and you’ll find yourself blackballed from said church group, parent discussion or book club. Because mommies are also a testy little species.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a time and a place for discussing your kids. The time is whenever I feel like it and the place is the internet. Some of my best friends are women I met on one of my kid’s birth board. Surprisingly, we talk about kids AND other things, too, because they’re moms or mothers not mommies. While I love to talk about my kids as much as the next person, it isn’t the extent of my topic repertoire, and it was a glum day when I realized that the women in my vicinity seemed incapable of talking about anything else.

But, I’m here to tell you there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My oldest is a teenager, and there’s a whole lot of bad that comes with that, but one shiny nugget of good is that I’ve noticed I like his friends’ parents. For one thing, we don’t talk about the kids. Not really. There is the occasional bitch session about a particular teacher or policy or whatever, but those conversations are few and far between. Typically, we talk about travel and books, restaurants and movies, politics and religion and tell funny anecdotes—about ourselves!—not our kids. It’s a world I suspected existed, maybe somewhere in France, but couldn’t count on it here since I saw no promise of it all these years.

So, what has changed? Were we all just running in different circles years ago, all of us the single bright mother in our group of dim-witted mommies, wishing there was another intelligent being on the premises? Is it that parenting smaller children is just so all consuming, sapping time and energy from us completely that we have nothing more to give by way of small talk? Or maybe our kids are just too embarrassing at this tender age to talk openly about them? Really, they’re teens, what would we talk about? Deodorant brands that actually work? Suspected masturbatory inspirations? How many times they shouted, “I hate you, I hate, you, I hate you, you don’t let me do anything,” in the past week? Whether the acne will clear up on its own or if you need some of that infomercial stuff? Whatever the cause of this turn of events, I’m thrilled with this unforeseen boon of parenting a teen. The kids are nice, have values similar to our own (even if they do sometimes smell a little strong and take an unusually long time in my bathroom), and the parents are all articulate, well-traveled, well-read, witty and just fun to be around. I know that not all parents of teens are people I want to hang with. There’s not a universal metamorphosis that happens where the kid turns 13 and the parents become good conversationalists. I see the kinds of parents from before in the hallways at the school, or catch snippets of their redundant, idiotic conversations at teen events. They’re just not MY kid’s friends’ parents. Which means that there is some specific selection thing happening on the part of the kids.

Since becoming aware of this phenomenon, I’ve paid more attention to the mommy-talk when I’m out and about specifically for my younger children, thinking maybe it’s just me. It’s not. The moms of my 9 year-old’s friends still dominate the talk with kid-related things. I try to pull it away (because now it’s more of an experiment than an actual conversation) and they reign it back in. Any prolonged silence (like the intake of a breath or longer) and they start rapid firing questions about math tests, seating arrangements, field trips, pant sizes, and reading groups. How do you like the teacher, what book is she reading, does she do Webkins? Wow, her hair is long. Does she brush it herself, when did she start tae kwon do, how much does she weigh?

The almost three-year-old is worse. A lot of those mothers are new mothers, this being their first kid, so a lot of those conversations are just mind numbing. Literally make you start drooling and feeling like you might need a shape and color quiz like the one they’re giving their kid just to stay sharp enough to drive home. I don’t begrudge them this, because it’s crazy worrisome when you’re new at it and everything seems so big and overwhelming. But, it’s like an endless cycle of déjà vu for me. Haven’t we had this conversation already? Twice? No, that was some other mother in some other park years and years ago. The exceptions to this are the parents who also have older kids and the parents I met elsewhere and have a different foundation for the friendship, and oh how I love them.

I would just skip it. I’d keep away from the other mommies and mommy populated little-kid activities. Figure I’ve been there, done that, don’t need to do it again, but I don’t know if that’s fair to my little one. What if the child will only choose friends with cool parents later if I pay these dues now? What if my dinner table rants about how fucking brain-dead stupid some of these other mothers are is a big character-building exercise that we don’t see the results of until much later? How can I properly parent her then, if I don’t have these simps to mock and ridicule in the evening for her benefit? I need to go to these classes, sit in these groups, have the same conversations I’ve had before, roll my eyes, offer up the wisdom of my experience (and have it blatantly ignored) and do my time. But, it should be easier this time around, I know there’s a pay off ten years down the road for her and for me.

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