As I sit here on a cold Thursday afternoon updating pages for the Tiny Acorns Ltd website (and keeping an eye on the clock as it’s nearly school run time), I’m wondering if we actually had a summer this year….. brrrrrr!

One of the advantages of being part of Tiny Acorns is the opportunity to make friends for your little ones and for you. I love hearing you arranging your curry nights and girls’ nights out, and seeing those dads on Sunday cautiously inviting each other for a drink after our Dads-Only class is really lovely.

Making friends isn’t easy. As a child we know no fear, no fear of rejection, so we go up to any random child and say hello and immediately become engrossed in a game of shops, dollies or Star Wars (am I showing my age here?). Yet as we get older we become more self-conscious. We word our greeting in our head before we’ve said it, we overthink things, we over-analyse things – and we don’t get to play dollies!

I remember attending my first baby classes when my now 4-year old was born. The opening line tended to be “How old is your little one?’ Come on, how many of you open with that one?!

The sense of dismay when another parent would say 6 months and turn away, argh the horror. That’s really how Tiny Acorns came about, from knowing how it felt to be plucked from an international career managing hundrends of things at once to having a tiny baby and very few friends going through what I was.

I knew there had to be another way, there had to be friendly groups because let’s be honest, anyone who knows me knows I can talk to a wall and get a reply, but I kept drawing a blank on the baby front where parents were concerned.

Sick of my complaining, my ever-supportive husband told me I should just do it myself, and…. the rest is history!

I’ve created what I always wish had existed when I had tiny babies, a group where there is no clicky behaviour, where people are genuinely pleased to see you and where you belong! And for myself, I’ve made friends too… so it has been win-win.

So it goes to show, from one seemingly negative experience, the opportunity of a lifetime could be waiting………..

Right, I’m now 5 minutes late for school pick up. See, I told you I talk too much!

Laura

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