Advice on friendship with this lifestyle

Thanks! I just don't know what to do .... The emotional side of me says to just leave 'em all, by golly! TO heck with them. But the logical side of me thinks this would be closed-mindedness in that I am not open to their values/ideals. I should try and help educate them on more baby-friendly ways, as well. I dunno....
PS -- Everyone here has babies. It's the military. Breeding grounds?

Sorry for your troubles.........And I agree if they are good friends I would try to help them to understand why you do what you do (if they are even interested, be prepared though they may not be). You could always just say "thanks, I appreciate your input...but we feel...." Hopefully they aren't too judgemental and value you for the friend that you are. I think eventually though you will migrate into more like-minded friends once your child gets into a larger social circle, from maybe sports or camps or other age appropriate group events for his/her age. I wouldn't sweat it though.

I feel the same to an extent, but in a different way. When and if I do get a chance to have an outing with a friend I'm always chosing to be with a friend who wants to include the kiddies and not someone that asks me to join them for an adult outing. I haven't seen some of my better friends in quite some time because of it and that's fine, as we usually just play catch up when we do.

I must say though, that I really don't know what all of the abbreviations in your post mean, can someone interpret for me? I'm going to guess...NFL natural food living? AP=attached parenting? EBF =
I'd love to know these

i do a lot of things VERY differently than my oldest & dearest friends. i mean a LOT. i'm crunchier then them all (and i'm soooo not crunchy ) i have delayed some vaxing, don't even get me started on refined sugars, dyes & other chemicals in food, etc., etc., etc. I'm also the only WOHM.

Bottom line, i love these people. they are my *friends*. thick or thin, differences and all. maybe i've known them so long it all doesn't matter. i think we open each other's minds to different things. i don't judge them & as far as i know they don't judge me.

that said, i don't think you should just swallow the criticism. but if these are friendships you value, you could either lay some ground rules about what's up for discussion & debate & what's totally off limits. or, you can develop a mantra like "isn't it great how we're all so different?" say that a few times & the topic WILL dry up!

mom2olivia- i know there's a post about the acronyms- try questions & suggestions forum. for now:

EBF= extended breastfeeding
AP= attachment parenting
NFL= natural family living

read the user agreement too, that may help with some of the more obscure ones!

You're in Little Rock??? Keep your friends, and accept that we are all different and that people will choose to parent differently. Do keep some info on you about why EBF is good though, so that if anyone is interested, they can see that you have some documented info on the benefits. Otherwise, you can find yourself in arguments with people who believe crap very deeply, but have never, ever researched thier beliefs. Don't keep the info on hand to enlighten them. Keep it on hand to spare yourself the aggrivation of having arguments with people who know nothing about the subject! LOL!

But frankly, I'd keep whatever friends you have and stay open-minded, with a few exceptions. (Heaven knows you can't accept just any old thing...like illegal or abusive stuff.) You're going to have to teach your children to be tolerant too, so now's as good a time as any for you to get some practice and become a good role model for tolerance and for getting along with people who are not really like yourselves. Personally, nobody I know parents the way I do either, and I'm in Central NJ. In fact, I don't really know anybody like myself at all. I'm a minority every where I go, and I find ditching people who are different than myself to be a luxury that I don't really have. So how to I get through my days? I bite my tongue a lot, and when I disagree with certain things, I remind myself that if I didn't know this particular family, the children would still be parented the same way, anyway. I also remind myself that they wouldn't agree that my choices were the best one's either, so who am I to judge them, and then ask them NOT to judge me? I just do what I want, but I keep my eyes open and try to learn from what I see-- for the good and the bad, that's all. You never know when you can learn something from someone you usually don't agree with.

Faith

Well I have a similiar situation in that I am a African American woman living in Maine where there are few folks of color. I have some friends who are also women of color but they are so not AP. In fact this weekend I had a get together and one woman who brought her 5 mo was trying to let him CIO : for his nap until I kept suggesting that he maybe wanted to be held. They think we (dh & I ) are bonkers for holding dd for her naps and my BF'ing at 8 mos is viewed as odd.

I say all this to say that despite the fact that watching my friend's ds being gourged with formula we are still buddies. This group of friend's serve a very real need for me so rather than fuss and be upset over the fact that they are not AP, these simply are not folks who I talk parenting tips with. Instead thanks to MDC, I have met some local AP Mamas who I hang with to fill my AP needs.

Not all people are meant to be all things to us and if you like these folks accept them for what they bring to the table. In some ways I think its a good thing to not have all our friends be just like us, it creates what I call learning moments.

HTH.

Shay

Thanks so much everyone for your posts. Food for thought. I appreciate the responses and help.

TO the PP who inquired... my dh is active duty USAF here in LR. The ladies I have met are ALL, and yes I do mean 100 percent, mainstream to the core. There are a a few women I have met who have BF to 12 months, but all weaned at that point.

Interestingly, when my friend was berating me for BF, I just started staring off into space and then I went home and bf immediately...

I'd probably not ditch the old friends... but I'd sure try to find some like-minded women to hang with... LLL ladies have become my staple friends (and when you move often - former USAF wife here - it's the easiest way to make friends!)

I too started to "wean" my friends when my lifestyle started to change. I still talk to them here and there might visit with them now and then but I looked for new mommy friends that were undestanding and open to other parenting ideas then their own. I meet a group of SAHM through Meetup.com, you might wanna give that a try. I too am not all that crunchy is comaparson to true crunchies but I am by far more crunchier then some of my friends. Being different makes the world go around

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Thanks so much for the info & advice, I will check those out! I've been pretty good at figuring most of these out, but I don't think I've ever seen so many acronyms in one place (well except maybe the US GOV!)

I, too, know what you mean. And I'm from a military background, and all my old friends are military. No offense to the military families, but I think that living on a small base and all, you get that sorta 'pack mentality' after a while and no on thinks outside the mainstream box.

Now that I have a baby, it's putting strain on my friendships, especially with other friends who have children, as well. They hear the way I'm raising my babies and I think they either feel like I'm just wrong and stupid, or it makes them think I must disapprove of them and think they are stupid. And honestly, I do disapprove... so that makes it difficult as well.

Just last nigth, I had a long discussion with an old friend who was APALLED that I din't vax, that dd (5 mos) has no solids, that we plan to homeschool, etc. She flet like I was critisizing her when I tried to defend my desicions. And, sadly, I do think she's doing a less-than-stallar job, considering her 8 month old "loves honey comb cereal and vanilla wafers" and that he sleeps through the night "because he knows I'm not gonna come get him when he cries." Ouch, poor kiddo!

What I've tried doing is getting on the regional forums here to make some friends (I found a playgroup here of AP families). I'm on Myspace as well, slowly finding like-minded people (they have AP, CD, and EBF groups), and I plan to start taking some mother and baby yoga classes in the day (I figure the women there will at least be stay-at-home moms who care about health and their bodies, so we have SOMETHING in common, at least).

I'm not dumping my old friends, but I am finding new ones that reflect the way I want to live now. Of course, that being said, I'm not living near my old friends anyway (we've moved five times in the last year), so they can't think I'm avoiding them or anything.

Good luck. Have patience. If you try to surround yourself with people who reflect similar ideals, you'll have good friends soon enough. And even if you don't have child-rearing ideals in common with your old friends, you still have the history, so keep in touch.

Carolyn

Carolyn - My name is Carolyn, too!

I think all the people who have posted have made stellar arguments. I think the points made are very good. Some of the friends I believe I will wean simply because they are "superficial" friends to begin with, so the loss is not great. The long-term friends, I believe, for hte most part I will try to keep. It is the in-between-sort-of-good-friends who I am still on the fence with.

I guess like Carolyn wrote, I do disapprove of their parenting lifestyles. And they disapprove with mine. So that being said, we're always with our kids. SO therefore conflict will inevitably arise in the future. Can it be avoided? Averted? Handled? Maybe only time will tell on this issue. I may have to feel my way out.

I am going to re-read all the posts and think about it some more, then just see what happens.

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When the issue of parenting choices come up can you just nip it in the bud by saying "Let's agree that we all love our kids but that when it comes to individual choices, let's agree to disagree." I know for me when I am hanging out with Mamas who parent differently even whenthe kids are present we aren't discussing our kids, so that helps alot.

I mean when my friend made the comment about holding dd while sleeping, I just said hey it works and moved the discussion along. No need to create drama, hell it hurt to watch a 5 mo old being gorged w/ff (it was so not pretty I can't even describe it) but I am not gonna lose a friend over. By the same token I also recognize that in my case these Mamas are not folks I am seeing daily but maybe just a few times a month.

Shay