I wish there were an easier way to invite a woman on her own to join a group of chatting women at a place such as the swimming pool or a school event or kindergarten pick-up or the park or whatever. I know from experience and from other people’s reported experiences that sometimes a woman is standing there feeling isolated but with no idea how to JOIN. And sometimes a group looks like a cohesive, established, everyone-is-best-friends group when actually it’s a mishmash of some people who know each other well and some people who only know one other person but only just met the rest and some people who didn’t know anyone else until it turned out their kids were friends. And sometimes a group, for whatever reason they think they can justify, is not welcoming to a person who tries to join—but you don’t want to hang out with them anyway.
I saw someone pull off a “Join us!” successfully the other day at the pool, but she knew the other woman somewhat even though the rest of us didn’t. She was like “Jen! Come join us!” And Jen joined us. But there were two other women, each on their own, casting looks at our group that seemed to me to communicate a wish to be part of it, but none of us knew either of them, and of course maybe they wouldn’t WANT to join us or were too busy watching their kids to make sure they didn’t drown. There didn’t seem to be any good way to find out, was the problem I wish I could have solved.
I had several methods for getting myself on the inside of these groups, in case you are wondering.
1. Initiate conversation with other people standing on their own. Joining a group cold turkey can be difficult-to-impossible if you don’t know anyone in it. A single person is an easier nut to crack IF they are also standing there wishing to be included. If you can leap the hurdle of “being the first to say something” (and it IS a hurdle, especially at first when you’re not used to it; I had to pretend I was someone who found it easy), routinely approaching other people who are also on their own means you soon know a whole lot of people, if only lightly. Don’t underestimate the “knowing someone enough to say hi to” category of acquaintances: that’s an important stage. Pretty soon you will start standing in groups with those people, either because some of you form your own group or because you’ll see them in groups with other people and they’ll call you over.
Initiating a conversation with someone new is easier, I’ve found, in situations where there is very limited time: for example, while waiting to pick up the kids after kindergarten. It’s harder if it’s a big school social event, or if you’re at the pool or park, because then if the other person does not seem to want to talk to you, you have to find a way to get away from them; if it’s just five minutes until the kids come out, all you have to do is wait in silence for that to happen, and then not approach that person again. (If it IS at a longer-term thing, I use my kids as an excuse. I stand there pretending not to feel awkward for a minute, and then I say, as if something’s just caught my eye, “Whoops, I better go see what going on there. See ya!” Then I go over to my child and put my hand on their upper arm and say something like, “Remember we’re leaving in half an hour” so it looks as if I had a stern talk with them.)
The limited-time sort of situation also makes it easier to invite others to join a group. In the days of waiting around at kindergarten pick-up, sometimes I might be talking to Jen and Melissa, another day to Tracy and Jess and Alison; another day I might arrive before anyone else I knew. So if I was on my own and I saw someone on their own, I could just wait casually nearby and make a casual opening remark: “Which one is yours?” is a good one when kids are involved, or “Which teacher does yours have?” If she seemed eager to talk, we could keep talking; and the next day, if I was talking in a group but saw her arrive, I could say, “Oh hi! We’re discussing the new first-grade teachers,” and then she could take that as an invitation to join in if she wanted to. (Telling someone else what the rest of us are talking about is my number one best strategy for inviting. I highly recommend it.)
When Rob was in kindergarten and I had to wait for him every day, that was when I started doing all these things. I figured it like this: I am standing here wishing we were not in a big awkward group where a few of us seem like besties and the rest of us stand in awkward silence. I would like it if someone would talk to me. So I will work on the assumption that some of these other people want that too—and that if they don’t, we’re only standing here for five minutes until the kids come out, so it’s not a big imposition on them for me to make that mistake. Each day I would stand near someone else and make a comment about the weather or something. I know people say they hate small talk but it is the absolute best way to test the waters: if someone doesn’t want to talk to you and you say, “Wow, sure is hot!” they’ll say “Mm, sure is” and go back to looking over at those trees. But if they DO want to talk and have been standing there feeling lonely and awkward and like they have no idea how to make friends, they’ll say “OH I KNOW! It is SO HOT! I am DYING!”—and then off you go, having a conversation like real people who are not at all socially anxious!
You may remember I was making a list. All of that was #1, apparently. “Initiate conversation with other people standing on their own,” if you don’t want to scroll up.
2. Say hi to people. This one is especially good if it’s too hard to initiate conversation, or if everyone is being so silent you don’t know who to sidle up to. Instead it goes like this: You arrive to kindergarten pick-up, a few people glance up, you say “Hi!” Optionally, when more people arrive, you glance up and say “Hi!” That’s all. Pretty soon it changes the group: people get used to saying hi to each other as each person arrives, and the whole atmosphere is more primed for people to start talking. Or at the pool: when I joined the section of parents waiting while their kids took swimming lessons, I would say “Hi!” Maybe the first day you do it you surprise someone and they say “Oh!…uh, hi!” or they say NOTHING because they’re snobby or more likely because they’re thinking “Did she say hi to me?? Ug, what if she was talking to someone else, and then I say hi back and it’s super awkward??,” or something else happens that makes you feel you bungled it, but you do it enough days and people get fully used to it, and then they start feeling like they know you, and you start feeling like you know them, and pretty soon someone will start a conversation. Or some of them will say hi and then look pointedly down at their book, and you will know they are using these minutes to have some peace and quiet, but saying hi didn’t ruin that for them, and now you have the valuable information that they are not feeling left out and hoping for someone to chat with.
Saying bye to people can do the same thing but without any need for follow-up lines. Let’s say you stand there awkwardly on a Friday afternoon, and then your child emerges and you can leave. Turn your face back to the group as you leave and say “Bye everybody! Have a good weekend!” Again, the first time you do it, it may catch some people off-guard. But if you persist, you work steadily on building a culture where it is easier for everyone to talk to each other, and where people feel as if they know you. Meanwhile you are out of there before people have to see you stammer or blush, and so you come across all confident and friendly and socially relaxed.
3. Accidentally become friends with someone who knows everybody. My newish friend Morgan knows EVERYBODY. I was at the pool and I saw her, and she was like “Hi hi hi!! Oh do you know my friend Katie?” and then I lightly knew Katie, and then their friend Michelle came over and joined us and then I lightly knew Michelle, and then Michelle called Jen over and then I lightly knew Jen, and then there I was standing in a girl gang at the pool, hanging out with other women complaining about our children and how hot it was outside, admiring the pedicure of the one woman who had one, talking about where to get the best swimsuits, talking about what things we’d signed the kids up for this summer. Basically living the In A Group dream, when half an hour ago I only knew Morgan! But I ended up in a group, because Morgan knows everyone and naturally forms groups. And now I kind of know Katie and Michelle and Jen, so if I see them next time I will feel more comfortable joining their group. But this is what got me thinking I wish there was an easier way to invite others.
One more note: if you’re a socially anxious person, you may find that even once you’re good at joining groups, you don’t feel the way you thought people in groups were feeling. They all looked so happy and confident and close, but maybe you still feel kind of awkward, and maybe you’re still worrying about things, and maybe the bonds all feel more casual than you expected. For a lot of people, this is so normal: it’s only from the outside that a group appears to have been close friends for many decades. From the inside, you can see that sometimes a group is just a bunch of near-strangers who know each other lightly and know how to form a chatty group at public events. You may decide you actually prefer to hang out on your own without the social pressure.
Public. Service. Announcement.
Thank you, Swistle—this was encouraging and practical. I wish I had something to add, but I don’t, I’m awful at joining groups. I feel like most of my life, even online, I come late to conversations. Then, I’ll make a comment, but it’s so close to the natural end that the conversation is petering out and so it feels like my comment killed the conversation. Or my comment ACTUALLY killed the conversation. Definite possibility.
My extroverted husband has taught me to assume most people will be interesting to talk to and that they will want to talk to you. He will open up a conversation with anyone based on these premises, and he’s almost always right. In the rare instance he’s wrong, his assumption is that wasn’t a very interesting person after all (as opposed to my assumption something about me made it a bad conversation) and moves on. Trying to adopt this attitude has made opening up conversation so much easier.
Good read. I am bad at groups. I’m ok at saying hi to people. There’s this one Mom who I’ve been saying hi to for years, as I bike past and she walks with her kids to school. We’ve never actually talked at school though, since her school age son isn’t in the same grade as either of my boys.
I spent all of Little League season not really being sure who was whose Mom and thinking that they likely all knew each other fro, previous years anyway. They kind of said hi a few times. Same here.
The pool I spotted my son’s friends’ Moms all in a group way on the other side of the pool. I’d rather just be on my own in that case though. I brought my sewing with me.
Thank you for this, Swistle. I am not socially confident even a teeny, tiny bit so this is really helpful!
This is so helpful; thank you!
I have one! Comment approvingly on the other person’s child. I made conversation friends at swim lessons by asking “is he yours? Look how brave he is!” (Little one still sniffling, but doing the activity.) And another one by saying out loud how well a kid was floating, which prompted his mother to say thank you, both identifying which kid she went with and opening a door to conversation.
This is a great idea. Parents love hearing their children praised and noticed. You can also compliment the parent (“What a cute haircut!”, “I love your shoes!”, etc) Who doesn’t love that?
Totally. There is so often something I genuinely admire about the other person’s get up.
I was actually thinking about how to explain this type of thing to my daughter who bravely went to work in a sleep away camp not knowing anyone and found the other girls friendly but already busy with their own groups (like they all say hi in passing but she’s still sitting with nobody to talk to at meals). I was thinking about what tools to give her… I will try to translate this into teenage girl…
I have a child who will be attending sleep-away camp for the first time. She’s an anxious mess. She is also lucky in that she will have 2 buddies going as well. We talked about how if there’s someone there that doesn’t seem to have a buddy, she should make friends (or, be friendly, maybe they don’t click). Because the worst would to be to go to and find everyone BUT you was all buddied up. (And, even then she would survive it and learn from it and the world will not end).
Best of luck to your girl! It’s a hard thing to do. She is already brave and resilient.
I think you know that I read this entire post with my heart beating extra fast and with my mental stenographer taking rapid notes.
So, I’m from the other end of the spectrum where I like the people I like but generally avoid talking to people AT ALL. And I think some of the moms (at school, and baseball, and etc) think I’m a stuck up bitch but really I often just don’t want to talk to people.
I like your idea of making a general small talk comment and then following their lead for precisely this reason. This one mom would hunt me down and talk to me every.single.day as if she thought I was standing on the outskirts bc I was shy when really I just want to get my kids and go home and not be bothered so finally I relented and now I am friendly with her but it is FORCED. I don’t really want to walk home with her every day but I look like a jerk avoiding it. I prefer my actual friends who I can go chat with if I feel like it and just wave to and stay away from if I don’t feel like being social.
Sorry that’s a tangent but also another view lest anyone read this and suddenly feel the need to go be overly friendly to people who are perfectly fine chilling at the pool watching their kids and not wanting any social interaction.
It’s the pity thing that really doesn’t work, right? My therapist always reminds me, when I get pushy toward a friend who isn’t responding, “Match energy with energy.”
“Nice day!”
(Silence or nod) — that’s the cue. You may nod back but that’s it. :)
A hard lesson for some of us ambiverts.
Ooo, this resonates with me…match energy with energy. Wise words I just committed to memory.
Yes, I came to the comments to make sure I wasn’t the only one to feel this way! Please don’t talk to me! I am PERFECTLY content in my own little bubble. People think I’m stuck up too, but really, I’m just…. fine? Like, I don’t need or want anything from anyone. But I would also never want to hurt someone’s feelings, especially if they have made an effort to put themselves out there. I have a lot of “clinger friends” because I don’t know how to extricate myself from their attempts at befriending me, and it’s exhausting for me to keep up the facade when we’re interacting. It is interesting how we can all be so different. The previous comment about matching energy with energy is spot on.
This is all great advice. I always get nervous talking to strangers in public, because I know that I often get annoyed when people try to talk to me when I just want to read my book oh god leave me alooooooooone. (Most of the time I don’t mind all if a stranger wants to talk! But I’m not ALWAYS in the mood.) I always have to remind myself: do I get annoyed when someone ignores my clear signals that I don’t want to talk? Yes. But do I get annoyed by someone just saying hi or trying to make polite small talk, but also respecting my boundaries? No, and in fact I’m MORE inclined to talk to people who aren’t pushy about it. So I try to keep that in mind–there’s nothing wrong with giving it a shot, as long as you’re willing to back off if the person implies that they’d like you to.
I’m trying to think of how I met my current closest friends, to see if I have any advice to add to the pool. Let’s see…well, I’ve known two of my best friends since high school, so that’s not super applicable here. But I do have one very good friend who I met because we were part of a volunteer project together, and she and I both knew several of the other participants but didn’t know each other. She seemed awesome, and I wanted to be her friend, but it was hard to break the ice because she (understandably) always gravitated toward the people in the group she already knew. (We had a few mutual friends in the group, but mostly she knew different people than I did.) So I went with the approach of acting like we were ALREADY friends. I’d greet her in the same way I’d greet everyone else I knew in the group, invite her to join conversations, ask about things she’d posted on social media (in a non-stalker-y way, e.g. “I saw on Facebook the other day that you went to [new attraction in our city]. How was it?”), etc. There was another time when I was talking to one of our mutual friends in the group on a subject that required some background knowledge, so I turned to her and said, “Oh, we’re talking about [past event],” and gave her the backstory so she could be part of the conversation too. At least one of those things must have worked, because she’s one of my best friends now.
I should add that we became Facebook friends before we knew each other very well–the Facebook remark might not have been as well-received if I’d been looking at her page before she’d added me!
This is so timely… I just made it through two weeks of preschool camp (daycamp) drop off and pickup for my three year old. After 1.5 yrs at our old preschool I had forgotten how FREAKIN AWKWARD it is before you know anyone. To add to the confusion this is a Spanish immersion school so one nice grandma broke the ice with me by saying “hola” and pretty much maxed out my Spanish right there. I did make hallway friends with one mom- I forget how it started, but our daughters had made friends in the easy way children can and that does help. I suggested a playdate and she gave me her number… not sure if that was a brushoff or whether we will actually get together… why is this so much like dating…
I love this so much, especially since it so accurately describes waiting around for pick-up that I can see the whole past two-years of pick-ups in my mind. I have one of those friends who seems to know everybody, and not only that, she actually FACILITATES adding people to the group. I only had a social, school-moms related group the past two years because she and I were friends, and she pulled me into a play date with some other moms/kids, and then as the year wore on, she added a couple more to the group, and then when our kids all moved up to first grade, she added other people, so there’s this sort of rotating group/widening circle. It’s kind of amazing. But I also feel awful, because she and her child recently started attending our church, and I am terrible at facilitating, so for once, I am the person who knows everybody, but I feel like I haven’t successfully introduced her to one person.
I am someone who likes to say “Hi” at preschool pickup, to pretty much everyone. There was one mom I could not get to look at me, so I thought, huh. Introvert or tired. Then we connected on FB because I’d taken some photos of her son and all the kids looking at zoo animals…which led to chats about R&B music online, which has led to play dates! She actually posted a funny cartoon about hiding behind a corner at school pickup, so she’s just introverted!
Now I have a new friend! Because I sent out an awkward email offering kid photos!
Swistle, this is SO GOOD! Both from outside and inside the group! Applause!
Such good advice! The other thing that works is good. If you are at pick up everyday or at swim classes or whatever and it’s all been very awkward, try bringing donuts or cookies “for the staff, but there’s plenty, do you want one?” See if that works.
Gah! Typo! Good was supposed to be food
Love this advice so much. I would also add it’s always a nice icebreaker to compliment the other woman somehow. Something like “I love your shoes/dress/haircut/nails” and then it will naturally lead to more of a conversation if they want to chat, like “oh thanks, I got these shoes on sale, and I love them, I wear them all the time.” If they don’t want to chat, then they say “thanks” and then they think you are a nice person (because who doesn’t love to be complimented) and it’s a win-win overall.
A+
I grew up thinking I was an introvert-not realizing till I was in my late teens that I wasn’t an introvert, it was just that my siblings were on the extreme end of being extroverts. As in we would get on an elevator, and by the end of the ride they would be the best of friends with our fellow elevator travelers. They would share and receive personal details with strangers that made me feel uncomfortable, to say the least.
So now it is funny to me that other people perceive me as being so outgoing, when compared to my siblings-I’m a retiring wallflower. Anyway, sometimes I also notice when I am in a group talking, and I see others wanting to join in-I kind of break the circle and say “HEY, how are you!!”, and when they answer, if I don’t know their name I say something like “shoot, I’m so bad at names…I’m Maureen and this is…” and hopefully they will introduce themselves at the end. I do really try to pick up on social cues, and not bother people who seem like they want to be left alone. From experience though, you can usually get the feel for when other people would like to be included.
Since I grew up in this really loud and outgoing family, I used to perceive people who didn’t join in as being snobby or aloof. It wasn’t till my first job where we did one of those personality tests, that I realized the many people are actually just shy, that was a revelation to me.
I stumbled into number 3 in law school and then again when Youngest started elementary school. In between were so many mildly awkward social years that I’d forgotten what it was like to have an extreme extrovert friend who introduced me to everyone she knows (which is everyone). Boy does that lubricate social interaction! I wish I could do it everywhere all the time.
Just chiming in with some randomness…
Moms that are friends may not have kids that are friends. Kids that are friends may not have moms who are friends. I’m a little introverted and always found it hard when my kids were little and moms were always trying to set up “play dates” with us. Ugh, just that term… no. I’m much happier now with three teenagers. I don’t have to fake small-talk in the pick-up line. I don’t care much about “fitting in” and that mindset has carried over to my kids’ views, which I consider a bonus.
I tread carefully when inviting someone new into a group for fear I’m over-stepping. I’m also cautious when joining a new group because so many times groups can be gossipy (although they often have all kinds of info about school, sports, and everything else that I’m in the dark about!). I think most people can’t figure me out because I’m not on facebook at all…. which makes me… weird. I guess?
Shrug.
I will happily exchange banalities on the elevator or at the bus stop with strangers. But I feel like a perennial outsider at my daughter’s hockey games because everyone there is So. Into. Hockey. that what would be my natural icebreaker (something along the lines of how cold/early it is, how I can’t tell the girls apart in their gear, or how I don’t really “get” the appeal of sports) falls a little flat in that crowd. On the one hand, I’m lucky that my husband is the regular parent who does the hockey thing, on the other, the fact that I’m only there for the occasional game probably works against me really bonding with the other parents.
This is me at all of my son’s sporting events! I have two other children and a life outside of sports, and I never fit in with the sports mom crowd. One year I went to the end-of-season celebration for his baseball team and attempted to make small talk about how I was glad the season was finally over. SCANDALOUS!! The moms I were talking to, after they picked their jaws up off the floor, told me their season was just beginning bc they were doing travel ball all summer and just! could! not! get! enough! of it. Since then I’ve learned to sit next to the moms who show up at ball games late in their work clothes. Those are my people.
I wish I had read this about 3 years ago, when I first moved. It is so! good! but the advantage to reading it NOW is I can see which strategies I fell into (the friend who knows everyone), and which ones I can try (the hi/bye to general group) and see what happens next. Also my youngest is starting a school new to all of us, so they don’t (yet) know how bad I am at this, and maybe I won’t be so bad at it this year!
I learned from a different blog to literally just walk up to someone who looks interesting and say, “Hi, I don’t believe we’ve met! I’m (name).” In my limited experience this leads to the other person cheerfully offering their name and then you’re off to the races. For some reason having a verbal script to follow helps me not freeze up.
In a more big-picture way, my favorite method for making friends is to put myself in the path of an extrovert and wait for them to adopt me. When they inevitably invite me to parties and such, I pick off their other introvert friends like wounded gazelles on the Serengeti.
(NB that I love my extrovert friends dearly for themselves, not just for their usefulness in flushing out other introverts.)