AIBU to worry that my strangeness and mistakes are rubbing off on the children and making them unpopular?

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I have never really fit in with most people i know. I have always been happy as i am but i know that people do think i am a little odd. I don't do anything very out of the ordinary but its little things like the fact I don't drink alcohol or the fact i spend alot of time reading, I don;t really watch that much tv. I dont wear much or any makeup etc. In general I just get on with my own thing and not bother about other people but I have been told many times that i'm weird .

I keep making stupid mistakes - today for example there is a party at the school which was called a halloween party. So I let my 6 year old wear a witches dress (she saw it in the shop and wanted to get it to wear). When we got there no other children were dressed up they were just in jeans.

I have a large family of 6 children and up until this point I have never worried about that rubbing off on them and they are all healthy, happy children. Last year my son started getting badly bullied at school for being weird they started to call the whole family the weird "family name".

My dd just started secondary school and she is getting on ok but has been made fun of recently because they recently had a talent show and as she didnt know any popular songs she just made one up to sing. This was clearly the wrong thing to do. She apparently also answers too many questions in the lessons.

My son is now home educated as it got so bad - of course this just adds to the weird label but his anxiety had gone so high that we had no real choice. He is very happy now and thriving. My 3 next children still go to that school and my 7 year old is now getting upset because people are making fun of her for watching my little pony and barbie.

My 6 year old has no friends - this was actually an issue raised by her teacher who said there wasnt much they could do.

Someone recently said to me "wow you turned them into tiny versions of you".

I am just horrified and feel like i have ruined them!

Is it really possible that all my strangeness has rubbed off on them?
I know this sounds like a really silly thread but I am actually really upset.

splintery i was wondering that as well - as well as telling your children that its alright to be different it is also ok to conform- at times- to go along with the flow to fit in/compromise.
re your six year old- i find that a bit hard to explain - I have a DS who's 6 and although parties vary in how selective they are (e.g. some children invite everyone, others just their friends , others their friends of same gender etc) -I don't think he'd ever not want to go to a party whoever it was?

You sound like me and the people I know.

I think the thing to do is to claim your difference and be happy in it.We are,currently I can see 13 outside with his friend D's is wearing a white fedora ,with a cane ! and is sitting on the shed roof dancing. He is really popular at school,he really doesn't give a damn.
You aren't defined by others parameters but by yours,you sound like a lovely Mum,don't let people make you feel less and small,that's so much more about them than you.

I am an Aspie- no makeup or booze but lots of TV for me

My children are all very popular despite me not being popular at all. (The kid's friends like me though). My 10 year old would LOVE to have seen the spoon whittling.

I am not interested in music but they know the latest songs thanks to YouTube etc.

Personally it sounds like you are very down on yourself for being weird. My image of you is of Molly Weasley from Harry Potter- different to the rest of the families we see in the series but very warm and happy.

Is there a Wildlife Watch group near you? www.wildlifewatch.org.uk because I can think of at least 5 families that attend our group that could be yours.
We have a lot of home ed children and being different is just accepted, there is also the shared wildlife interest to help conversations along.
If you can, I'd definitely recommend giving it a go.

OP you sound like me. Never one to follow the herd. My kids are the ones not supposed to be in assembly because I withdrew them from worship. We celebrate solstices and equinoxes while everyone else does easter and christmas...
I prefer reading to tv, don't do makeup nor drink alcohol...
In short, I suspect we're the weird family.

I have a 6 year old, a soon to be 4 year old (birthday on halloween), and a 1 year old.

If you want to set up my 6 year old to send messages to yours I'd positively encourage it. PM me if you want to.

Listen to me: you have absolutely NOT ruined your children!

School is like a strange hothouse. There's an intense pressure to conform that is very rare in adult society. Anything and anyone who stands out in any way is liable to be ridiculed. I bet the majority of kids have some experience of being unpleasantly teased or bullied, because just about everyone has something about them that is unusual. Even the "cool kids". For some of those who are more sensitive, or who fall victim to a particularly sustained campaign, it can be an awful few years.

But it gets better. Kids sometimes become more accepting around the mid teens, and start appreciating diversity a bit more. As adult life kicks in, it quickly becomes clear that different skills to those required to maintain popularity in school are valued in professions and wider society. And decent kids start to be a bit more appreciative of diversity.

I don't think that your children are suffering by having a mother who likes reading instead of watching TV - not in the long run.

I think I get it. There is nothing "weird" about me really I just was unpopular at school and even though I have some really close friends now struggle to make friends in a larger group setting. I hope my baby grows up to fit in slightly more than I did just because it wasn't fun being the one who didn't fit in at school.
I think some of it for me was just that I don't like crowds and can only really open up with a group of about 3-4 or less. But also I had very conservative (small c) parents and we never went to the same places the other kids at school did and I didn't have the same point of references which I do think are important.. so I'll be making sure that my child(ren) go to sporting events, listen to chart music, watch the popular TV shows at least a little bit so that they have something to relate to others about. I didn't do that growing up.

I was weird at school and it was really tough.

But from uni onwards I realised that my weirdness made me cool and dealing the attitudes of the school bullies who felt threatened by me made me tougher.

Now I'm proud of my families instinct to go left when everyone else goes right. Usually left is more exciting

Your family sounds awesome.

FYI I'm in my 30s, I absolutely love Halloween (more than Xmas) and still occasionally watch My Little Pony on Netflix (and I don't have kids btw).

And to your kids who are being bullied - please get them to watch this video of Wil Wheaton at Denver Comic Con 2013 a few years back:

Just going back to your 1st post, Op, you say that you're not that bothered about other people.

Maybe your kids are the same & seem unfriendly?

In our house, weird is a compliment!

I have a sister who delights in pointing out how odd I am, and a 6 year old DS with no friends. And we live in the North West. So you're not that weird.

"It's the live fish that swims against the stream."

That's what my GP said to me when I voiced almost exactly these same worries regarding my daughter.

I know I am considered a"one off" - strange, solitary, really weird sense of humour, a fount of useless information (well - useful if you were on QI or something). I never could get the hang of being like other people, no matter how I tried. As I grew up and got older, I stopped trying (it was hard work and it caused me all sorts of problems) and I found I was a lot happier, and although I am "odd", I am not disliked. I get on with most people, have a few who really like me, and have a few who don't.

My daughter is the same. I'm not going to ramble on and hijack your thread - I just want to say, really, that my own experience was that my life was made miserable largely because my family were embarrassed by me being "strange". With my daughter, I have tried my very best not to criticise her or force her into activities she doesn't enjoy.

I admit, I would be happier (for her) if she was very very popular and was always out an about everywhere - I would just feel she was getting more out of life. But she is content and enjoys her quiet life.

I'm sorry about your son, but I think that he has been made the subject of bullying more because he is gentle and unlikely to fight back - they would have found some other excuse if they had wanted, too.

If you have "made" her "strange" (I've put them in inverted commas because I don't think she is strange - just original) it is via genetics - your originality has rubbed off! you are a rare gem. Value yourself and your lovely children.

And you are not alone . . .
metro.co.uk/2016/06/04/little-girl-turns-up-to-princess-day-as-a-hot-dog-inspires-us-all-5923243/

From one weirdo (who is very comfortable in her weirdo skin) to another:

You and your family sound awesome!

Pay the naysayers no mind. I bet they're all a little envious, actually.

You remind me a lot of my family. Honestly it's probably not really the books or lack of make up that make people think you're weird. You're probably just a bit geeky, you have slightly different mannerisms, perhaps you're more introverted, less interested in small talk, more interested in chatting with people who share you're interests etc. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this.

Your kids are probably like you because of a combination of genetics and learned behaviour. I think kids like that can struggle more in school, especially if the culture at their particular school isn't particularly welcoming to less mainstream, extroverted kids. I think it gets much easier after school. AT university or in the workplace they'll hopefully be able to meet others who share their interests and actually have stuff in common with.

Doesn't sound like a very welcoming school at all though. How horrible for your daughter that no one showed up - that's really just cruel.

We live in the north west in a small but very poor area. I'm not sure how much that will change things we have lived here a long time

Before I read this post I was already going to ask if you had live in the area for a long time. I don't think you sound weird at all, but since you describe yourself that way I'm wondering if you received treatment similar to what your children are experiencing when you were in school.

Is it possibly that the "weird family" thing could have come from a child hearing it from a parent (that you grew up with and didn't get on with) or an older sibling that knew your other children? I can see a child picking on another classmate, but calling the whole family weird (especially when they don't know the whole family) seems like something they may have picked up from someone else.

Not read the whole thread yet, but what screams out at me from your posts is that it's a shit school. I was a bit of an oddball at school and in retrospect, it was because they were small town schools with a small town mentality - no tall poppies, that kind of thing.

Can you see if you can get them into another school better suited to them?

I grew up in the weird family. There were 2 reasons it was difficult to make and keep friends: 1)my parents aren't that social and don't have close friendships which does rub off but isn't that bad, and 2)my parents innate belief that we were somehow better than everyone else, that our weird way was the right and in fact only way. This was the damaging thing--weirdness is easily tolerated if the weirdo tolerates others as well. It took me a while to learn this. My parents still haven't and it makes it very difficult to be around them for too long.

Im not saying that you feel this way--just another perspective on life in the weird family. (Am still weird, can't help myself, but somehow manage to have some excellent friends anyway!)

Just to add, when I went to another school, with a totally different culture and waaaay less pressure to conform, I made loads of friends from all sorts of backgrounds and had a whale of a time.

Some schools can be hothouses for bullying of anyone who doesn't fit in, for whatever reason.

It feels worse the smaller your community. If you are in a one class primary and you don't fit in, it's hard. Go to a bigger secondary with 6 feeder schools, loads of geeks nerds and weirdos and if you have ASD traits, easier. Go off to uni and most are nerdy geeks, you fit right in!!

Sometimes you need to tone down your weirdness, and sometimes you need to celebrate your freaky'ness. It's that getting the balance right that is tricky.

all 8 of us crowded out the garden in the rain around a wooden spoon.

We would do that.

I see your wooden spoon and I raise you our bats . . .

We used to get bats around our home on an evening. DS loved them and I used to buy mealworms (live ones) which he would catapult into the air to feed them.

A bit of tv is normal. Or the latest songs. Even rubbish like X factor in the beginning with all the strange and unusual acts will atkeast keep them in with other kids when they talk about 'Friday night' or 'Honey G'. These little things can help.

Your poor dd. The no one turning up at birthday party is truly sad. Awful people!!

I hadn't read the birthday party post (how ddI miss that?).

That is truly horrible! Be thankful that your child isn't like those little toads.

I think we would all feel weird if we went along to a party dressed differently to someone else. Have you thought that you were actually the one who was right? It was a Halloween party! I reckon the other parents were texting between themselves asking what each other's child was wearing and they've all followed the crowd.
You are being you, authentic! In a world that is trying to make us all conform. Well done!