Why aren't any of the school mums ' normal ' ??

Would you like to Google "casing point" and "case in point" and then have a little think about which is the correct phrase?

i see lots of people suggesting just dropping your kids off and not making friends. However there’s always threads where posters are told to make a community to support them raise their children and be there when you have an emergency. No wonder people don’t know what to do.

I also didn’t make friends with primary mums. At DDs primary most of the mums didn’t work, had never worked. They thought the mums like me were odd. The few I got along with always treated me like free childcare with nothing in return. All I wanted with someone friendly enough to chat to at parties/events and would reciprocate with play dates, even that seemed impossible.

I made really good friends with a woman at work, about 15 years ago. We are still friends now, go away together same hobbies, children similar age, went to same school etc.

I got talking to another woman whilst doing the school run, seemed lovely. The children I do the school run for aren't mine and I was explaining the situation to her. We eventually decided to go for a coffee and she was like a different person!! Not so subtle racist comments, people's appearances, how the children look etc

Yet my friend and her get on like a house on fire and are also really close and I can work out how so now I avoid them

People are just weird at times

I remember making friends with a lady when our kids started school and it turned out that she was the most uptight, controlling, snobbish woman ever. She had a baby and gave it to her parents to raise Monday to Friday in Wales. (She went to have a third too…) Once we arranged to meet at a baby class and she saw me on the way but pretended that she didn’t so that she wouldn’t walk in, having to acknowledge publicly that we were friends. We weren’t after that 😂 Another seemed pleasant and I offered to take her daughter to school every day because she was in tears over being unable to due to her job. Nearly a year later, I found out that her partner was at home in the mornings and just didn’t want to drop his own child off to school 😬

Quite apart from the internalised misogyny of your post, this makes no sense.

Women are generally smaller and weaker than men, sure — but they’re not generally smaller and weaker than other women, so there is absolutely no biological reason why women shouldn’t knock seven bells out of one another on a regular basis.

What is it in your life that has hurt you into seeing other women as titanic agents of ‘character assassination and reputation destruction’?

Mom is used in the UK. It's used in Birmingham and Black Country (and other areas).

Just UK dialect.

I am not sure wlbut it feels when children start going to school the parents act as the same maturity level

You are all there because your children are, you may make friends or may not

But it seems to bring out neurosis or something just be yourself and move on

If you think everyone around you is abnormal the chances are the problem is with you, not them.

I need to ask OP @ohmyine Why do you use the spelling of mum as mom. Are you American? I only ask because I’ve seen it so often on here and I didn’t think there were that many American posters so genuinely wonder if it’s creeped into some English/British/Irish users?

You can't fight biology. We, women are smaller and weaker than men, and therefore are not likely to engage in open physical fight. Therefore character assassination and reputation destruction, bitching has been women's mode of behaviour for women. With feminisation of men for the past 30 years or so, we begin to notice that men are beginning to get engaged in similar behaviour, but not so much, naturally.

Why do you feel you have to be friends with them? Don't you have proper, real friends of long standing?

I would be giving it a thought if they were horrid to children - like singling out a child and not inviting him to birthday parties, etc. But adults? Bugger the lot of them.

@SienaInItaly

It's probably a good idea if you took your own advice 😉

What does this even mean?

I am not the one posting complaints about “school mums” (whatever they are) not being “normal”. Whatever this means).

So much ill thought out paranoia on here. If you boil this down it’s basically people going “waaaah, why don’t all the other mums want to be my friend?”.

Because they are all different people with different needs and personalities? Because they are busy? Because they have things going on in their lives that you don’t know about? Because they don’t want to be your friend?

Who knows. You’ll never know. What I do know is that:

a) there’s nothing specific to “school mums”. This is just “people.” Theres no obligation on people to be your friend because your kids are at school together
b) you can’t control it so why tie yourself up in knots about it?
c) you are far more likely to make lasting friendships with people if you don’t push them to fit your own mental narrative about what they ought to be like
d) you will drive yourself mad worrying about it

I think there must be an element of that because where so school gate Dad's fit in all this? My youngest is no longer at Junior school but my experience a couple of years ago was that at our school gates there were many Dad's including my DH sometimes. We had a variety as well so ultra confident Dad, on the phones Dad's sorting working, one Dad that was something in TV (back stage) and his large donations to a PTA event were proclaimed at the event so we often course were all very grateful....

Honestly, I think some posters are projecting their bad memories of their own schooldays onto their children’s. All the language about ‘cliques’, ‘exclusions’, ‘mean girls’ and ‘alpha mums’ strongly suggests it, anyway.

It's probably a good idea if you took your own advice 😉

School gate friends are like expat friends- you’re thrown together with people who ordinarily you’d never meet or in fact would potentially cross the road to avoid.

you’re LUCKY if you come across someone who’s cool and becomes a friend

I’m VERY careful making friends nowadays, most of the women I’ve met have turned out to be disappointing in terms of loyalty and it hurts.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever taken is "Don't rush to make school friendships and be wary of the ones that rush to meet you".

I have lots of friends from when my children were at school, but they aren't the mum's of the children my kids played with, oddly.

You will find your tribe, but it takes time.

Noone is normal

Honestly, everyone has flaws and quirks. Some just hide it better than others.

You are not wrong. There are a lot of crazies out there. It's eye opening.

Really? And all of them are “school mums”? What a remarkable coincidence. Or, maybe, it’s all in your heads and you need to calm down, stop overthinking and overinvesting in these relationships and just relax about it.

My kids are now 12 and it's interesting to see how the appetite for all that stuff has really disappeared. Our PTA reps just got reelected unopposed for the second time. Slowly it dawns on people that bossing the playground popularity contest brings your kids nothing, if they want to do well in school there's no really no substitute for going in and actually working.

A lot of ours are “self employed business owners living their best lives hun” aka arbonne reps. They are clones of each other.

And those other mums are probably thinking "ohmyine used to be really friendly and chatty and now she just says hello and pretty much ignores me" - and have also classed you as "not normal".

Friendships take time. The odds are that you won't find one in a school playground. Of course some people do, but most likely you will find some people that you can chat to about the weather and what your child is wearing for "wear something random day" and who you can call upon if you need someone to pick your child up in an emergency. Be content with the latter, and be pleasantly surprised if you do find a real friend.

Maybe calm down a bit and stop thinking of them as people you’ve “connected” with and more as acquaintances.

A lot of the people who are especially friendly are the ones who've burned through all their other acquaintances and they're looking for fresh meat, I think that's a lot of the problem.

They sound small minded, I’d imagine no other hobbies/ interests/ friends or life outside their kids. I usually always ask what the person works as and try and identify some hobbies/ passions early on and see if there’s common ground.

You are not wrong. There are a lot of crazies out there. It's eye opening.