Parents who travel with children get very good at introductions. Playground, pool, cafe, beach. The kids meet someone within ten minutes and it looks like everything is fine.
It is not the same thing as friendship. A friend is someone you have been bored with. Someone who has seen you in a bad mood and came back the next day anyway. That takes months, not minutes, and it is the single strongest argument for slowing down.
This is the slowmad idea, and it is less about travel philosophy than logistics. Two to six months in one place changes what your children can actually build. Under a month, they collect acquaintances. Past two or three months, they get sleepovers, in-jokes, a birthday party they were invited to rather than the guest of honour at. Same kid, same charm, different outcome, purely because of the calendar.
The honest catch is that parents pay for this differently than solo travellers do. Making friends as a family is harder work with less energy behind it. You are not going to a hostel bar at 10pm. You are meeting people through your kids, through school gates, through whatever local group will have you, and that requires showing up repeatedly when you would rather not.
That is a lot of why the Digi Yesmads Parents group exists. Families in Phuket keep landing on the same realisation: the community was not going to assemble itself, and the fastest route to your child having a proper friend is you having a proper friend first.
Pick fewer places. Stay longer in each one. Let the friendships get boring enough to become real.