Ostracised for staying at private school

I don’t really know, is it a particularly cliquey area? My son was the only one going to private school but none of my primary school mums held it against me (or him).

So people in large cities are all open minded?

There not really your friends, they are just the parents of children your son was friends with. He doesn’t go to the same school as them now, I’m guessing he’s no longer in touch with them if you are not so they are not his friends.

The parents may not have been looking to find friends of their own. Unfortunately from their POV they don’t have any reason to keep in contact.

It was mean of them to exclude you after you asked to be included, are these really people you would want as your friends anyway?

I think the best thing to do is try and be friendly with the parents at the private school as your son is going to be friends with their children.

School is for your child to make friends, it’s not a social opportunity for you. If you want friends, find them somewhere else. For your child, be friendly with parents but know that these aren’t friends, they’re people you interact with for the sake of your kid. Once your child has no link to their child, there’s no link to you.

So many people need this up! You are separate to your child. If you want people who want to hang out with you, you need to meet them without the child link.

The mums who ostracise you aren’t all besties. They just hang together because at the moment their kids have something in common. Once the kids fall out or something happens, they’ll drop each other and relationships will change. Everyone is only loyal to their own family.

I live in a village with two state primary schools. Most mum night out things are for parents whose kids go to the same school. It’s just the way it is. Some of us are friends with a few of the other parents but the social groups when kids are little are largely restricted by which school they go to.

It changes later when they all start playing for the locals sports teams or going to the dance school. You do have to make a big effort though.

I think sometimes with schools its perceived as a criticism of their choices more than anything.

100%

A lot of parents are funny and rather sad like that. We moved our children to a different state primary school after a lot of issues arose at the local primary school where the school was failing in many ways and we felt it was letting our children down in a number of ways. While our children went on to thrive at the other school, I was dropped instantly by people I'd thought were my friends that I'd hung out with for years. Quite eye-opening, in fact. It was like a door slammed shut, and the multiple weekly get togethers with the other mums were over. I never received another invitation except from 1 mum who also privately acknowledged she didn't agree with me no longer being invited to the events but wouldn't speak up against it because 'she had to live with them' essentially. Said more about all of them than me, though.

Small villages can mean small minds. Tell everyone to get out more.

As someone who moved to a village and spend 12 utterly miserable years there I can confirm, if you don’t do exactly what everyone else does you are pretty much ostracised.
I don’t drink and am not Christian and working in the local town I was called a dirty southerner (Geography wasn’t their strong point as going further than 5 miles from the local town was unheard of)

The only thing I can recommend is ignore these people and delete them off any SM block their numbers and move house. Don’t ask to be invited out again as they will take great pleasure in ignoring your request

We eventually sold up and moved and I couldn’t have been happier.

Yes, actions have consequences. I'm surprised you couldn't foresee this.

I think you need to take the initiative here and invite them over. They are in a local school community bubble and will be seeing each other every day so get -togethers will be spontaneous and much of what they talk about will most likely be school based, so you need to be proactive if you want to see them. But you also need to establish contacts at your son's school. Are you sure most of the Reception children are boarders, or are they being dropped at school early by working parents? Ask your son's teacher if there is a parents' contact list so you can set up some playdates for your son and meet other mums that way. The friendships you make when your child/firstborn starts school are friends you keep for years and you will make them, but they may not be the nursery crowd from the village.

What??? Do you honestly believe that a parent's decision on where they educate their child is a reflection of a superiority complex? Wow!!

So are you not in the UK?

I live in a village, my 2DC went to the village schools. Over the years, parents have taken their DC out and sent them to local private schools. When they leave the WhatsApp group tends to be the time we stop seeing them.
Nothing malicious. It's just what happens.

If I did see the mums about after that, it tended to be at keep fit sessions / cross fit etc. Or if a couple of mums grew particularly close and were BFFs (this is rarer though)

In my opinion private schooling is fundamentally inequitable, and I struggle to maintain friendships with people whose moral compass doesn’t align with this. I’m lucky I could afford to send dd to private school, or use tutors, but it’s so unfair that so early on children to give them such a broad advantage or disadvantage based on an accident of birth

So if he’s six now, where was he for Reception year OP? Did you try the local primary and it didn’t work out? Or are you not in the UK?

If the other mums are deliberately excluding you because of your school choice that seems a bit mean, but it could be circumstances have pulled you different ways. Does he play with any of his old local friends at the weekend if you meet them at the park, say?

Invite the nice mum you spoke to over for a playdate and build a friendship with her. Look out for a couple more too and do the same.

Some people (way too many of them) are very envious and snobbish, proud of their working class backgrounds and make huge fuss out of it. I'm also all FOR private education, but don't consider it lucky - it's hard work.

Respect yourself and ignore those who don't share your education views with you in private life. And try to find a group of friends by interest/hobby (say in Women's Institute or tennis club, or some local swimming pool?).

If they are friends largely through your kids, they won't stay friends long-term if the kids are at different schools, you need to find friends elsewhere.

We are still friends with nursery mums whose kids are at different schools. I don't understand the friend making etiquette. One minute they say don't worry about the school gate mums that's not where friends are made. Then they say oh they aren't you're friend because your kids at another school.

Pretty confused!

If they are deliberately excluding you specifically because your DS is at a private school and theirs are at state then that's mean, but I suspect it is not quite like that. It may well also have happened if you'd selected a different state school. As others have said, the key thing is that you no longer share the main common factor that binds the group together. It happens throughout life after all. We have different friends at different stages of our lives but those groups often break up once the commonality is lost. I had a lovely group of friends who were Mums of other pupils at the dance school my DD went to. When she left for full time dance school I was no longer part of that group. I could have viewed it as jealousy or inverted snobbery because my DD had moved on but it really wasn't, it was simply that I no longer had that bond with them. We're still Facebook friends but actually now our children are grown up we have little in common and if we ever do see each other conversation is more or less restricted to reminiscences. It's just the natural progression of life. Same with school mum friends. I am still friends with a few but only those with whom I share other interests.
Unfortunately this is a risk that you take if you send your child to a different school to everyone else. In an area where children go to a wide variety of schools it will be less noticeable but when you are the only one who is different it will be more marked, for you and your DS I'm afraid. School is a big part of life for children, and particularly in primary school, their parents so that's where friendships naturally form.There are other places to make friends of course so I would suggest that you try to join in some activities and make friends in your own right, and also to enrol your son in some extra curricular activities to try to ensure he has local friends. But you can't expect to be part of the school mums group because you aren't a school mum any more.

With that attitude I'm not surprised that this was your experience.

I have a full time job, I have plenty of hobbies.
I was never in a school Mum gang (whatever that even is), but I have made some very good friends through my children. My oldest son is 25. We are still in the village and I am very close to one or two of the friends I made through taking him to school, as well on friendly terms with the ones who are still around.

My youngest is 15 and I've made a whole new set of friends though him.

I feel really upset and now really wish we had stuck with the local school and DS still had his friends from nursery.

Can't you move him to the state primary?

IME (village school, 2 kids) so much of their social life revolves around the children in their class. They all go to the park after school, know each other in Beavers or sports clubs, see each other at village events, and in the couple of years before they move to secondary and have some independence to go around the village as a little group.

Well, that's a little rose-tinted in fact as I always felt a little on the outside due to working full time, but I think they would have felt quite isolated being the only child in the village to go to a different school, especially if you're going to struggle to make friends in the private school.

What are your other reasons for choosing that school?

It's horrible feeling excluded I'm sorry.

Does your son do activities like Beavers locally o keep a connection?

Unfortunately, I don't think they are wronf not to include you are no longer part of their day-to-day life the way you were before if you see what i mean?

You'll find more friends, and hopefully rekindle some of the previous friendships too in time.

If I were you, I would have a bbq or something similar and have an open invitation to your old friends 🧡

I'm finding this hard to believe. Children start reception in September not January. Children in reception are 4 turning 5 before the end of September. Your child is 6 so would be in year 1 or 2. So surely it's been a long time since your kid was in nursery with this kids. Why would be mums keep in contact after all this time if there not in the same school?

No "school mum" has to be friends with any other mum just because they live in the same village.

Currently these school mums also have their children being in the same class in common, they might not have anything else at all in common with OP.

OP doesn't want to make friends with the other day parents in her child's class because they don't live close enough but you're not calling her out for that.