I just replied to this same comment on the facebook page. I’m not going to copy and paste. You’re right, I see nothing controversial here, just a retelling of our own experiences. Also, we’re talking about kids, not teenagers, the 2 are quite different. I’m hoping I’ll have a teen ( soon) who still likes mum and dad, at the moment that’s working out, but I’m just waiting for the shift that may or may not come. We’ll deal with it if it comes, find a new way. Long term friendships don’t generally develop before the teen years in my experience, it’s impossible without the means or independence to actually get togther and arrange meetings. My friendships over decades are now all gone. That’s fairly typical from what I’ve seen, my friendships of 30, 40 years were unusual and people always commented on that. I always say 30-40 years because I’d known these 4 girls since I was 4. In reality, we weren’t friends until we were late teens, we saw each other in school every day, but out of school socialisation has to start later, we couldn’t just hop on a bus and go visit, we were dependent on parental cars. Our lives are now too different, our geographic locations too diverse for us to relate. It was inevitable that those friendships would evaporate as we all moved on with our lives. Had we all stayed in our home towns maybe we’d all still hang out together every Friday night, but that’s not the way the world is for us. I don’t buy into the idea that class mates are friends in any way, it’s a lie told to kids to help persuade them to surrender their freedom age 5. I have new good friends now, mostly from the last 1-2 years, friendships that came because of like minded people coming together, not through being thrown together in the same classroom. They are far more enduring and solid, I think, than those of teenage convenience. Tell me what you think kids gain developmentally through classroom interraction with same age kids. All I can think of …well you can imagine, an interest in whatever, game, fashion, boy band or whatever is currently going around. ( my 2 get this in spades from the internet, agin, times have changed) Also, I never said that any travelling child goes without this, as I said , there are plenty of kids everywhere, if the child wants to find them. Our last few weeks have been totally taken up with other kids. Some my boys didn’t enjoy being around, others were an absolute delight, but still they could pretty much take it or leave it. They’re cool doing their own thing and that’s a bunus of having 2, same sex. Right now they have their aunt with them, next week one of the above mentioned children again, week after back to their London friends then team Romania. That’s what they’re really looking forward to, our Breb gang, all adults. And that is how it goes.
The child above was simply going on holiday for a year. No big deal at all so I considered her father’s worries unfounded. Very few travel long term. We do, and we manage it very successfully, if it didn’t work for us all we simply wouldn’t do it. I presume you’ve noticed the extended time we spend in London. Our friends live there, so we stay the kids can hang out. In the same way that the above family will return to their friends, wherever they are. But I get very tired of constant social demands, it seems everyone wants a piece of us these days and I can’t give it all the time. I need peace and solitude in big doses, it’s not unusual.

They have zero interest in email or Skype Deanne, I force them to send an email to grandparents once in a blue moon, otherwise they never even check it. It’s still totally through me and will be until they can make their own arrangements, be old enough to have phones, go places alone etc. Just as it was for me when I was a kid. but I think girls crave the gossip and interraction far more than boys, particularly as I have 2 of them.