To ask if school mum cliques upset you, or how do you deal with cliques?

[facefit]

I'm new to school, my child is in reception. I've noticed that there are cliques forming.

How do you deal with it? Or just completely ignore?

I’ve never formed friendships at my kids’ schools. Never noticed any cliques. Never been in the slightest bit interested in talking to randoms at the school gates. These threads always mystify me.

I think some people use the word clique to mean a friendship group they are not part of.

they feel that if the smile and say hi then they should be approached and invited to join, but this is not how social interaction works. No one runs around the school gates inviting everyone standing alone to join them. If you wish to join a group then you need to say more than hi and approach them

and if they don’t want you as core part of the group this still doesn’t mean it’s a clique they just might find you’ve little in common and they don’t enjoy conversing with you. Not everyone is liked by everyone.and that’s ok. They may even like you perfectly much but have little in common with you.

Totally agree with CaronPoivre

I met my four closest girlfriends at the school gates 15 years ago now. I was always pleasant and friendly with everyone (and continued to be) but I just really bonded with these 4. So as time went on I guess someone paranoid could call us a clique?

Frankly, it's not mine (or anyone else's) job to ensure that every parent in the playground is spoken to and feel included. I certainly never expected anyone to work that hard on my behalf - I knew it was absolutely down to me if I wanted to make friends.

Frankly, it's not mine (or anyone else's) job to ensure that every parent in the playground is spoken to and feel included. I certainly never expected anyone to work that hard on my behalf - I knew it was absolutely down to me if I wanted to make friends.

Exactly this. There's a massive sense of entitlement in a lot of these posts about "bitchy, cliquey school mums". It's as if some people think they are actually going back to primary school themselves and expect to be spoon fed friendships among the mum network.

Then when these people see adult women making their own friends they see it as a judgement on their own social abilities. It's pretty childish.

People will always seek out like-minded folk. It's like that in all walks of life. No one should be deliberately unpleasant or exclude others just for fun but they are entitled to pick and choose the people who they want to be friends with. Just because your kids are at school together you don't have an automatic first right of refusal on these other mums. They are sentient adults and can please themselves.

@NerrSnerr

My daughter does 4 drop offs and pick ups out of 10. I do the rest.

If there is someone walking to school at exactly the same time she is - she will walk with them. She's not unfriendly or standoffish. As opposed to clique bitch who parks on her friend's drive so that they both wait for a further half dozen people before setting off en mass in order to claim their clique spot - because they stand in the same place day in day out.

Similarly, I will talk to whoever I'm queuing with at the school and I'm now 'on nodding terms' with many people. I don't go for coffees or to anyone's house with the people I speak to. Neither does my daughter. The different people we speak to are also the ones who probably work different days each week. We can go weeks without seeing the same person twice. We probably have spoken to far more people than the others have who are stuck in their little cliques.

So therefore more sociable after all.

What are the chances that some random women who you barely know actually wanted to hurt you or had the time or energy to do so? What possible purpose would that serve? Chances are they don't even know each other that well so they won't have had time to get together and say: "ooh, you know the mum of that girl in 4b, lets all gang up on her?" Human beings just aren't usually that organised.

I feel sure you yourself would not behave like this. I'm glad you've never come across it. But sometimes as an adult it's OK to acknowledge that actually it's not you misconstruing or missing cues or whatever, it is actually just people being absolute shits. There are reasons, of course - usually they have nothing to do with the target but are about the group itself and the way it works (i.e. as a clique). As it happened I was feeling just fine when this happened to me and was able to shake it off - bear in mind this was just one concrete example of a bigger pattern of behaviour towards me and others - but had I been feeling vulnerable I would have felt bloody awful. And of course in response I'm not about to make an effort with that group of people again.

@Mardyface

Maybe I'm being naive and I'm sure it happens from time to time. And you seem to have sufficient self-confidence to have shrugged it off which is absolutely the correct response.

But TBH I am convinced that in 95% of these "bitchy school gate mum" scenarios nothing of the sort ever happened, it was some massively over-reading something.

This

As opposed to clique bitch who parks on her friend's drive so that they both wait for a further half dozen people before setting off en mass in order to claim their clique spot - because they stand in the same place day in day out.

This is just horrible. You sound like the sort of person I would cross the road to avoid. What is bitchy about parking on a friend's drive? What is bitchy about having a group of friends and standing together talking? What makes it acceptable to use misogynistic name calling as a tactic?

@CaronPoivre

Clique bitch made a remark which really hurt my daughter and at which the rest of the clique laughed at. She makes remarks about others - she doesn't just single my daughter out. She is bitchy - that's a simple fact. Don't say it doesn't happen - that would be ridiculous and also untrue

MyOtherCarIsAPorsche I think name calling is best left to primary aged children and even then should be stopped by a responsible adult.

@MyOtherCarIsAPorsche no one should be unkind, of course that's true and this woman clearly isn't nice. That doesn't mean every single person who has a group of friends at the school gate is a bitch.

I don't want to speak to loads of different people on the school run. That's my choice. Doesn't make me a bitch. If people choose to walk together and stand together that's also fine. People are different.

@Thepeopleversuswork honestly I might have completely agreed with you before that incident.

What does shun mean? In what other situation would you expect a group of friends to just let you, a total stranger, join in their conversations and activities?

It would be exactly the same as going up to a table of friends in your local pub and expecting to just sit down with them, be included in their conversations,and invited to join them at as bbq next week!!

So bizarre that people expect complete strangers to make friends with them for no reason at all...

@CallTheMobWife

What does shun mean? In what other situation would you expect a group of friends to just let you, a total stranger, join in their conversations and activities?

Exactly.

This is what it comes down to most of the time. People have this weird expectation that other school mums owe you their friendship just because your kids are at school together. School mums are people too.

Maybe this is me…

As I’ve two DC in school it means I’ve known some of the parents in youngest’s class for a few years now due to older siblings and with some, I’ve become genuine friends. Others I’m not sure I’d say I’m friends with but we’ve sat through about 40 birthday parties together and we’ve been to each other’s houses for play dates so I’ve obviously got a decent amount to say to them.

I suppose the newer parents might think we’re cliquey..? Actually I’d expect to be in the same place with half of them in a few years time though as we’ll inevitably meet at the playground and bring the DC to play at each other’s houses.

But I think the exclusionary behaviour does sometimes happen at the school gate - even tv shows like Motherland pick up on it

No one can stop people calling other people names - have you tried telling adults 'stop name calling'? Come to my granddaughter's primary and try it.

If clique bitch had kept her opinions to herself and not shared them with all and sundry in the playground in order to to be a nasty piece of work and a little mean girl towards my daughter - she would still be anonymous.

I have always called out bad behaviour immediately. Sometimes it makes people think twice before speaking - however those without ....

I have two daughters and I have told them to call out this sort of behaviour every time and within ear shot of others.

One daughter does and has no problem with office politics. My other daughter won't and is miserable at work because of bitchy behaviour (toward her and others) which she daren't report.

If I am describing someone for the purposes of illuminating clique behaviour and bitch remarks on the playground then the perpetrator is going to become clique bitch for illustrative purposes. I don't call her that to anyone in real life. That would be facile.

"Exclusionary behaviour" happens everywhere. In the work place, at university, in the pub, in families, you name it.

Exclusionary behaviour is just people's right to prefer some people to others. Sometimes it feels unfair and sometimes it sucks. But it's their right and there's nothing you can do to change it.

For some reason though women (it is usually women) with children at school seem to feel that other women with children in their school need to have an "open to all comers and all must have prizes" approach to meeting other women. It's completely unrealistic. It's lovely to make friends with other women who have children at your children's school. But it isn't an entitlement.

The question we need to ask is why women seem to feel that other women owe them this weird sense of extra loyalty just because of the school thing. I suspect its partly because having small children is quite socially isolating and a lot of women lose some of their friend networks when they are in the thick of raising small children and become less socially able (hence the Motherland point).

But the solution to this isn't for women to become paranoid and believe everyone who doesn't want to play with them automatically has it in for them. We are our own worst enemies with this sort of thing.

I’m with the ‘too-busy-to-notice’ crowd.

Hmmm, I suspect I can see the root of the problem here. Training your DD's to immediately and always call out anything they perceive as 'bad behaviour' isn't going to make them likeable and socially adept. Instead it makes them appear judgemental and abrasive (I expect it's no coincidence this is also how you're coming across on this thread) - not surprisingly people simply do not warm towards that behaviour.

Far, far better for you to have taught your DDs how to behave and interact in a way that encourages other people to like them and enjoy being with them.

This is the point that people are missing and are being deliberately disingenuous and obtuse with comments like ‘not everyone can be friends’ etc. Of course nobody owes anyone a friendship - I don’t think anyone has said that.

The whole reason I actively avoid groups of women is because they often do make nasty comments about other people and when I’ve observed them doing it, I end up feeling irritated and uncomfortable by it. I then end up having to call it out because it’s nasty. The bigger the group, the more likely it is to happen.

It’s often people within a group who end up on the receiving end of unpleasant behaviour. But since the OP hasn’t come back we don’t know the details in her case.

And you may think that it’s misogynistic to assign this type of behaviour to women, specifically. But if you’ve read the book ‘Queen Bees and Wannabe’s’, it is an issue which is created by wider societal expectations of women. Women are expected to be nice all the time so they find more sneaky ways to vent their frustrations.

I could do without it, so I avoid it. And it’s no good pretending it doesn’t happen when it does.

Just get involved and chat to people, invite people out or round for tea or a drink or any other social engagement and you will soon find some friends (if you want to). We moved areas during lockdown and I swallowed any natural nerves and started booking tables here and there when allowed and seeing if I could fill them with new friends! TBH most people really enjoyed doing something different and meeting different people. Now I have a group of friends at the school. Maybe someone from outside would think it was a clique. But all cliques are are people creating friendship groups and being comfortable with each other. If they don't include you then create your own group of friends.

I haven't experienced cliques. There were definitely parental friendship groups who saw each other outside of school, and I definitely wasn't in them, but these parents were polite and pleasant in the playground.

Most importantly, my not being in with a gang never stopped either of my kids from picking up plenty of playdate and party invitations, which is all I was bothered about.

The clique in my dds class was not just a group of friends imo because their behaviour impacted other children. They'd only invite each others children round for playdates and parties regardless of whether the children got on or not. They would also not even acknowledge other parents or indulge in the most basic of greetings with others. Unless you have experienced this, I don't think you can understand how toxic it can be. Although by year six a couple of the more gobby members had fallen out with each other...