To be sad the preschool gates are like reliving my own school days?

[meangirlsforever]

Maybe I'm naive (sadly I'm no longer young so can't blame that), so please be kind! I was bullied in secondary school but went on to have nice friends at uni and during my career, which was in journalism, so we were generally on the arty/geeky side. Now I'm a SAHM and made good friends at the baby groups. BUT! LO has just started preschool and I feel like I'm back to school myself. Most of the mums are so shiny and put together, and despite my efforts, aren't interested in including me in their chats at all. It feels like Mean Girls, and I caught myself racking my brains how to get 'in' with them - then I stopped and logged in here. How do you navigate this? How do I make friends with them? I never figured it out the first time do have no clue now :( (Name change as this is a bit sad). Thank you!

I am actually incredulous at the way some adult people (mainly women) do behave. I have had people pretty much look straight through me and blank me, or pretend they don't see me! But I have lots of friends and I am a confident person so I don't even care. It just makes me laugh that I would never want to be friends with that type of person anyway. But I would never, never ignore someone I know. I always smile or say hello, at least.

To add I think the 'cliquey' accusation is so incredibly childish that anyone who said that word to me in real life would be put on my list as not having come out of teenagerhood yet and to be avoided. People have friends and they talk to them, that has nothing to do with you. If you think it does then you're incredibly self absorbed. Plus, if you reckon they're not very nice, then why be friends with them??

What really bugs me is when people say 'I'm shy/anxious etc' and so feel they should be excused from making any effort on that basis but then they expect everybody else to be super friendly and welcoming at all times. If someone ignores you you can safely assume they either 1) didn't hear you 2) are not very nice and therefore not worth knowing 3) had a brain fart because they're so fucking tired and just couldn't respond fast enough 4) are just as shy as you are. Whatever the cause you need to have some maturity and get over it. And if you expect everyone else to be super friendly then you should be super friendly yourself.

School run is a bit of a rush for many, so yes there are days when you will get blanked by someone who is mentally elsewhere. I blanked someone the other day. It didn't register that she had spoken to me until I'd walked past. Felt awful but haven't seen her to apologise to yet.

Thesparrow well put!

I get rather lathered up over this issue because when I ran a toddler group the people complaining about 'cliques' were invariably the people who never ever struck up a single conversation themselves - they expected everybody to come to them and practically beg them to join their existing conversations. I've also been in the position myself where people seem to expect me to be super smiley, friendly, welcoming etc etc at all times but they themselves to do whatever they like, including ignoring me, because they're 'shy.' Eh fuck that.

Making friends takes effort. So make the bloody effort!

Fuck 'em*

*not literally perhaps.

What I don't understand is how so many people seem to think that they themselves are super lovely people who are just shy and need a chance, while everyone else is an horrid evil person who is in a clique deliberately ignoring them??

Unless you need more local friends desperately then don’t push it. You’ll get to know some of them over the years and maybe gell with a few but just because you have kids the same age doesn’t mean you need to be in each other’s pockets.

I mostly drop and run. There are a few parents I get on well with (year 3 now) but we stop at small talk in the playground. I hang out socially with people I know through shared interests elsewhere.

@TheSparrowhawk I don't think I'm shy or super lovely, and I don't think they're evil. They are very black and white terms and what we're discussing is a bit subtler than that. I do think you're right in that they're not setting out to be cliquey or exclude, but it just feels hard to become part of this group. I've two years of toddler groups under my belt and help run one myself, but not come across this level of Mean Girls before.

Does the pre-school have "stay and play" days? Offer to help on trips or at fund raising events, you will meet other parents at things like this. My dc are 22, 20 and 11. I have one friend I made when ds1 started school and a friend with a child in ds3's class, that's it but I was dropping and running to work. However, since I stopped work 3 years ago I am on the parent council and fundraising committee, I volunteer in the school and with trips out so most of the parents now know who I am and there's always someone who wants to chat. I think it's just about being visible and they will come to you.

If they are 'Mean Girls' then why bother? You don't like them so just avoid them.

BTW I think you're making a lot of assumptions about them based on your own experiences (which is understandable to an extent). They may be shiny and put together etc but they may also struggle to talk to people they don't know so cling to people they do know in a way that makes them seem rude. If you've already decided they're mean then they don't really stand much chance with you do they?

I think you're overthinking this. Honestly, I didn't even really talk to people when I picked my daughter up. Actually, she's in school now and I still don't really, except for occasional small talk when it's awkward if no one is talking. I have friends. I don't need to make any more just because our kids go to the same place during the day. I have gotten to know a few (I wouldn't say we are friends, I'd say we are acquaintances who know each others names and have exchanged texts or emails about birthday parties and such), but only because we've been stuck talking to each other at a birthday party. Like someone else said, I may look put together, but that's because I'm going to work. Even still, I don't leave the house in my pj's anyway, so I can't really imagine not looking 'put together' in some. I'm always dressed at least in jeans and a nice shirt because that's what I wear when I leave the house and some days I have make up on depending if I'm on my way to the office or not. But really if you don't know them, a pleasant hi every now and again is sufficient. I don't see anyone else doing any more than that unless they are friends otherwise and know each other.

I never really cracked it either, I only did pick up a couple of times a week if that and I'm convinced I was judged for that. DP on the other hand used to chat to them all as did DMIL (who did 75% of pick ups at primary school, gawd bless her).

Eventually I was quite friendly with a new lady who was from Lithuania and I recall seeing her sort of appear. I asked DD about her DS and he came out of the same classroom door as DD and they'd just moved here.

I'm not sure why you're dismissing a whole bunch of women as 'mean girls', when they haven't really done anything?
Maybe they're not especially friendly but I would never presume that I had a right to become part of an established friendship group.
I live in a town where many people have spent their entire lives & know everyone. It's taking me a long time to get to know people and I will never 'catch up' with the people who were born, went to school and have had their children here.
I could easily dismiss them all as being cliquey (and I have heard it said about this town) but I just think it's normal to gravitate to people you know.

It's pre-school. I don't get why you need to make friends with the mums. You say yourself that you have your own friends and that you don't need new friends, and it's quite likely that the mums who look like a clique are already friends from before pre-school.

Your child WILL make friends and then you will probably need to become acquainted with those parents and if you get on you will then have friends.

It's not a fashion show and it's not a competition about who has most friends. You really are worrying about something that is a complete non-issue.

Get there last minute, pick up last minute.

IME absolutely everybody, and I mean everybody, is trying to get through the day. The vast majority of people just want to be thought well of. Very very few people set out to hurt others, particularly others that they don't even know. You just have to give people the benefit of the doubt. If they're not super friendly there'll be some reason for that, something that really isn't anything to do with you (unless you ran over their puppy or summat).

Don't bother even trying to make friends with them. Why would you. If their social life is chatting at the school gates then they are to be pitied not envied.

You have to remember as well that if you give off an awkward, uncomfortable vibe, or you appear to want someone's approval too much then that can make them feel uncomfortable and react in an unfriendly way, even if they're not an unfriendly person. That can then become a self-perpetuating thing where they start to dislike you because you make them uncomfortable and it goes around and around. There's a mum at my kids' school, for example, who I know gets very wound up about people not saying hello to her. I just avoid her like to plague because I can't be doing with that - sometimes I'm tired and in a rush and won't say hello. I want friends who understand that, not ones who freak out every time I'm not perfect.

Don't really understand why some parents feel like this but I can imagine.

I just drop off and pick up DS and smile to any familiar faces. Though I was very very busy, which sort of helped, I was studying and didn't have the time to chat to people at the school gates.

Though what helped me become more closely aquatinted with the parents is that I threw class parties for DS. Made good friends with a similar aged parent and was able to participate in social chit chat with other parents.

Plus... do you really want to become part of a clique ? What happens if things go wrong between the group of you ? What happens if they start gossiping about you to others. I get the sense of wanting to belong to something but ... I don't know it just primary school all over again. I like keeping my own company and doing my own thing, so everyone is different. I did make lifelong friends whilst I was at secondary school and University.

Ties to Friday I look like I'm going to a funeral (court work) on Mondays I walk the dog so I'm dressed like a farmer.
I don't care about the play ground cliques what a bunch of saddos. They went through a phase of wearing their gash active wear all the time at least that has calmed down.

As PP pointed out, some of these mums look 'put together' because they are off to work after school drop off.

I suspect I look like one of those women and there is a bunch of us who all chat. We are not cliquey though, we only know each other because our DC have invited each other for playdates and we have had to be brave and meet each other

I was also one of the bullied kids at school and I agree it is terrifying to go back to school, even as a parent

The birthday parties are where I speak to other parents - I don't do pick up and drop off is literally drop and run as I have to get to work.

Just to clarify, I feel bad for calling them Mean Girls now, but it was just shorthand really fit 'the popular girls' who are a bit aloof