I don't have my own kids, but my experience with people with kids is that they're often desperate for social interaction, they feel limited in their ability to go out of the house, and they really don't want the extra work from having guests over.

So I try to act accordingly — help cook and tidy up the kitchen afterwards, help bathe the kids and/or put them to bed where appropriate, or just sit on the couch fiddling with my mobile when not interfering is the best course of action. Just slot into their routine and provide an extra pair of hands. For people you're comfortable with, socialising happens around these things just fine.

> I don't have my own kids, but my experience with people with kids is that they're often desperate for social interaction, they feel limited in their ability to go out of the house, and they really don't want the extra work from having guests over.

It depends on the age of the kids and situation, but visiting people can be helpful if done carefully.

From reading (likely too much) internet commentary about having babies I assumed I'd be completely exhausted and worn out from constantly giving the baby attention for the first few months. Then I discovered that newborns sleep literally 3/4 of the day.

The hard part is the disrupted sleep schedule when their newborn stomachs are small and they need to eat every few hours. It can be really hard to adjust for people who have lived their lives with 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep all the time.

Funnily enough, having lived with middle of the night insomnia and disrupted sleep my life I wasn't really bothered by the newborn feeding schedule (via pumped milk in bottles, my wife did the real work during the day).

The value of socializing for us, which I didn't expect at all, was to fill the boredom. We were lucky enough to both be able to take a lot of time off work at the same time, which combined with the newborn sleeping 2/3 to 3/4 of the day left us feeling unplugged from the world.

Everyone is different, though. I've had friends who just didn't want to see anyone or have other people in their house for the first few months, so we respected that. I know some people who got tired of endless visitors trying to help, while others lamented not having enough help. It can be tough to feel it out so try to be especially intune with subtle social signals and look for hints to take.