Yes, life ebbs and flows and friends come and go. Some by choice and some just by circumstance. But, really, how hard is it for you to arrange visits with a few friends your son has told you that he wants to stay friends with?? It doesn't have to be anything special, just invite a couple kids over to play in the backyard. You all must live relativly close right? As a new school year starts your child will make new friends and may not see the old friends as much, that is true. But to "just encourage him to make new friends" because vacations and camp will make it to inconvienent to see his current friends?? Seems a bit harsh and won't do anything to help teach your child the value of friendship.

See those you can. I can't remember how old your kids are, but to an age-appropriate degree you can encourage the fine art of letter/postcard/email-writing to those they can't see, & help them if you need to.

(Always nice to get actual correspondence in the mail...and you can teach the idea that replying to email/notes/postcards is generally a good thing to do if they get replies and possibly foster quasi-legible handwriting in the case of postcards/letters, or typing skills for the emails. All of which are useful things.)

Summer is the time for an open door policy. I'm not working now so that's not too hard. Even when I was working, as soon as we were home we were open to young visitors. Keep plenty of fruit, snacks and appropriate drinks on hand and live with the chaos and the mess. This is when friendships become strong.

I talk to other parents when I'm arranging camps. There's one girl my DD has gone to camp with the past couple but our schedules didn't work out this year. We had a multiple family email exchange as everyone sent out their camp/date preferences and we all tried to pair up at least two kids per camp.

Friends are just so important to kids. I would defeinitely find a way to maintain one or two important relationships over the summer. And I would give priority to those they'll be going to school with next year. Think of how much more confident and happy the kids will be when they go back to school knowing they already have friends there.

This is why it IS good to have some summer arrangements, a camp or a sport, so they will still get that socialization and fun part.

These days email would be great. You can write emails together to say hi and send pictures of your summer fun.

Also, you can try and make one date for July and one for August with the friends- that's far enough in advance so people can make it solid, but if they can't come, that's ok too- make it something you'd go by yourselves and have a good time also (like movies and pizza- most theaters hold reduced price family movies early in the day during summers)

I remember one summer in jr. high, I had NOTHING to do at all. My parents had given a pass on camp, and we lived in a bad neighborhood, so I was stuck in the house 24/7. My mom let me call all my friends, but they were all out of town, busy, or couldn't be bothered. My mom made up something for me to do with her that weekend, and started trying to include me more in her errands and stuff. Im not thrilled that I spent my summer at my mom's skirts, but it means so much that she tried to keep me occupied.

My son is finishing first grade, and we've managed to maintain a few friendships from his daycare. (They've all gone on to separate schools.) We coordinate so the kids are in the same swim class, and if there's no class, we have a standing time when we meet to swim. We coordinate camp -- it worked out last summer, but not this summer due to vacations. We have them over, and they have us over. It takes a bit of work, but it's been definitely worthwhile.

For keeping the connection over the summer, tomorrow we're having our annual summer planning session with our neighbors/friends. I have everyone over for coffee & cinnamon rolls and we bring our summer calendars. Every parent picks a few days to take the group of kids. Some parents do organized activities with themes. (I did food last year, going to an organic farm one day and picking blackberries and making jam & pie the next day. Another parent--a geologist--took the kids fossil hunting.) Some parents just let them loose in the back yard. Since about half of us work full time (but with flexible schedules so don't need full-time care), this makes it easier to share the play time responsibilities--I just take some vacation time for the days I have the kids. We also note when other families are out of town so we know who to call on the unscheduled days.

As far as longer term, my kids both have friends that don't go to their schools. We just plan activities with their families--dinners, camping trips over the summer, etc.

It's different between pre-school and high-school. Honestly, we've only kept up my daughter's daycare friendships with the child of the parents *I* enjoy hanging out with. Most of her daycare friends live upwards of 30 minutes away. Wen you have family in town, weekends get taken up with that often (or religious events), and evenings rather obviously don't work out very well. It's hard. And to a pre-schooler, seeing each other every 3-6 months is not enough to really keep up a friendship.

The mother of my daughter's best friend from pre-kindergarten weirded me out months ago. So that didn't encourage me to want to figure out how to add in play dates. Once I learned they wouldn't go to the same kindergarten, that just clinched it. Not worth the effort. Fortunately, she has other friends who will be there for kindergarten and whose parents aren't strange.

i don't see anything wrong with letting some friendships die. we're talking 5 year olds, right? this is also the time when children should have stretches of unstructured time. coordinate a play date or two & let the rest happen. that is what summer is all about.

How many of you adults out there remember friends from pre-school? Kids grow and make new friends at each stage of their schooling. Some friends will overlap stages but eventually they move into adulthood and make friends thru work and having kids of their own. A few might become lifetime friendships but those would happen w/o any parental involvement. A child who learns to make friend at each stage along their life's path will do fine.

My stepson is finishing 8th grade and seems very sad about moving forward. He's excited about high school but has romanticized his elementary school friendships (we moved to MD after he finished 6th grade in DC). He remembers his elementary school friends as being "nicer" to him, though I suspect that those kids have endured the same social horrors of middle school. While he keeps in touch with his elementary friends through soccer and Hebrew school, his social world is almost exclusively with his classmates. We always suggest that he pick up the phone and invite his old pals over or meet them somewhere, but he rarely does. Perhaps it's easier to preserve those special friendships in his mind as he believes they were; the idea of "nicer" kids and happier times may help him navigate the harsh social landscape of early teen years.

My stepson is finishing 8th grade and seems very sad about moving forward. He's excited about high school but has romanticized his elementary school friendships (we moved to MD after he finished 6th grade in DC). He remembers his elementary school friends as being "nicer" to him, though I suspect that those kids have endured the same social horrors of middle school. While he keeps in touch with his elementary friends through soccer and Hebrew school, his social world is almost exclusively with his classmates. We always suggest that he pick up the phone and invite his old pals over or meet them somewhere, but he rarely does. Perhaps it's easier to preserve those special friendships in his mind as he believes they were; the idea of "nicer" kids and happier times may help him navigate the harsh social landscape of early teen years.

I remember having a close friend in elementary school. We went to different middle schools; seeing one another at our birthday parties over the next three years was pretty much the only times we saw one another until we landed at the same high school. We're still close friends to this day, and we're 36!