Feeling left out and affecting my children

[Stressmess]

This morning I had a Zoom call with my children's teacher and their classmates. This is the first since lockdown started. I said to my dd last week "Are you looking forward to seeing all your friends again and seeing what they all have been up too?" and she said no and that she didn't have any friends which broke my heart just a little. My other dd has two good friends but one of them left the School last year so really now only has one. There seems to be a real mean girl in their class who excludes them from things and the unfortunate thing is that every activity that they do mean girl seems to be there too.

Anyway the Zoom call, the teacher went round all the pupils and asked them what they had been doing. Quite a few of them had been meeting up with other class families in the park and others had been facetiming each other. I had heard nothing about any of this. We have a class WhatsApp group but occasionally someone might post something about homework or a query but generally it is not very active so obviously had been done outside the group. I haven't heard anything from anyone since March. Why have we not been invited out or on to facetime calls?

Anyway this has happened to me my whole life being on the outside of things and being left out, through primary school, secondary school and even with a group of girls that we were meant to be good friends I always ended being left out. I just don't have that core group of good friends or people that I could call on.

I was always on the outside and left out and know how isolating and lonely that can be. It doesn't help that my dd has a disability which marks her out as being different.

I want my dd's to have friends and go to events and be social. I want that too but I have so many insecurities and am generally quite shy until you get to know me and I don't want history to repeat itself.

I guess that they can't put something on the class chat as then everyone might turn up. It would look rude though to use the class chat to just contact two or three families. Due to social distancing I am just meeting up 121 with parent and child. Where possible with just one parent one child. My dc are older so others are left at home. Trying to maintain any sort of distancing is harder when you have more dc. I have probably arranged majority of the meetings so if I had not contacted them my dc would have done nothing. Some people though are not comfortable meeting up, which is fine too. I think especially if you are on the periphery then unfortunately you need to do the running around more.

Had you tried to set anything up yourself?
Was everyone in the class involved or just a proportion?

Try reframing it as 'i wish I'd contacted jack's parents for a FaceTime chat but I didn't think of it'.

This is why children need access to school (and social outlets), because social groups are unequal with their own priorities, and people get left out to their detriment.

My children's out of school friendships are significantly affected by the fact that they went to private nurseries for childcare, so parents were already well bonded at the school gate long before I ever turned up, so there's never been any established out-of-school socialising. Normally it's not a problem due to extra curricular activities, but now it is because we have no natural social outlets (or accessible family, haven't seen any family in 4 months for various logistical reasons). I have reached out, but it's not really going anywhere and we're stuck out of the loop more lonely than we were at Easter because we don't even see people in passing any more.

My children don't have the social maturity to deal with phone calls (one has ASD). They need natural social interactions.

This is me too. I've always been incredibly shy and didn't have a close group of friends at school as I was horribly bullied. I don't have many friends now. I can see history repeating itself with my dd, she is also very quiet, shy and sensitive and struggles to make friends (I posted about this just the other day) she had one close friend who moved to a different town last year and although they keep in touch via FaceTime it's not the same. She has been at her new school for a week before lockdown so didn't have a chance to make friends. She is at school now as I am a keyworker but that has brought about issues because there are two other girls that are friends and tend to leave her out. I feel so guilty as I am a single mum and she has no siblings.

I'm sorry OP, I feel your pain. This was me growing up - my parents weren't natural socialisers, and we'd get invited to some things but I always had the feeling of being on the outside looking in.
I don't have many solutions. I overcompensated a lot as a young adult, constantly doing all the heavy lifting in friendships, being endlessly available for other people's dramas, and trying so hard to make connections.
Now my daughter just started school in September, and again she's in a small school with a village-like feel but 90% of the class is of a different (also minority) ethnic group to us, and they all are so close-knit we again feel like we're on the outside looking in. None of this is malicious, but they all go to pray together, and have events together, and we just don't fit in at all in the non-school culture. We're moving her this September to a more diverse school where everyone is starting together, and hopefully we'll have more opportunities to make those connections.

The sentence that jumps out at me from your original post is ”Why have we not been invited out or on to facetime calls?“

My children have grown up now, but we moved primary schools twice (once overseas) when they were small and so had to integrate with established groups. YOU have to make the effort. You need to organise playdates (sorry, I hate that word), Zoom calls, picnics in the park with friends. You need to chat in the playground, ask another parent if they want to go for coffee after drop-off etc.

I know it’s hard, particularly if you’re shy, but you need to do it for your children’s sake.

Oh, I’ve experienced this. I was a socially awkward kid (who am I kidding - I’m a socially awkward adult and probably autistic) and was always on the fringes of social groups. Then my first child started school and I realised things hadn’t changed one bit. A clique of mums formed, along with a secret WhatsApp group, and they all got together with their children (around one third of the class) and everyone else got the cold shoulder. Like you, I didn’t want history to repeat itself but I think it might, because my child also struggles a bit socially, also probably ASD. She has been occasionally FaceTiming one friend. The rest she hasn’t particularly been bothered about. One mum did arrange a chaotic Zoom call for anyone interested, but it was a bit too chaotic for the children to get much out of it

My advice? Try to let the feelings of exclusion roll off like water off a duck’s back. AgentProvocateur is probably right re. putting yourself out there, socialising with parents and instigating play dates. It’s my idea of hell, personally, so I understand if you don’t want to.

Why have we not been invited out or on to facetime calls?

Have you invited anyone out or to Facetime calls?

How many children actually mentioned it? If A and B are friends who meet up then both A and B will say so when asked: this means you hear about meet ups twice but only one meet up actually happened. x this by however many small friendships and it will sound like a lot but doesn’t mean the class are leaving you out.

I understand you want your DC to have good friendships though. You might need to give them more opportunities to make friends both within the class and out of it.

I think you need to me a bit more proactive here OP. I know you've said you are shy but you need to force yourself to make contact with people and suggest meeting up or zooms, whatever. You can't expect others to include you if you haven't put yourself out there as well. I do understand it's hard though, particularly if you're in that mindset from school days etc.