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?

Helping out at school events is a good way to get to know people better. You may find all these queen bees, bitches and witches are just the same insecure humans as everyone else. Stop thinking the worst of people.

Maleficent 7, that's a rather limited repertoire of conversation subjects, just talk about something else

And yet you come onto Mumsnet.

This I don’t really understand, either.

If Mums are all bitchy, cliquey - and we’ve now got ‘boring’ to add to the long list - witches, why hang out here?

Maybe it because underneath the one thing many of us have in common - being mothers - we’re actually also humans, who are capable of being funny, entertaining, knowledgeable, helpful, etc, etc…

It's no coincidence that those describing women as 'the bitches, the witches, the coven, the Queen Bees' and ascribing all sorts of highly negative, nasty behaviour to them.........are the ones standing alone in the playground. Funny that.

Whenever I saw groups of other women chatting in the playground I just assumed they were, you know, friends and never had a problem with that. I never once inwardly seethed and titled them bitches and witches. And whaddya know - I easily made several new friends.

Mumsnet is a massive website these days, not a community.

Yes.

The point very much still stands.

So you do consider school parents to be a community? Someone up thread called them randoms

And the really sad thing, is that all this vitriol and censure being directed at the Queen Bitches in their coven is utterly pointless - because they couldn't care less. Not in a deliberately cold, shunning way but because I expect you don't appear on their radar, anywhere. Why should you? I bet they don't expect to appear on yours either. They're just too busy getting on with their lives and stuff.

This kind of bitterness and ire is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to suffer.

Whenever I saw groups of other women chatting in the playground I just assumed they were, you know, friends and never had a problem with that. I never once inwardly seethed and titled them bitches and witches. And whaddya know - I easily made several new friends.

Why are you ignoring the experiences of posters above who report things like a school mum telling her to get out of a seat? My own experience was not school related - it was a group of all white women making racist comments. This isn’t about people chatting in the playground - nobody cares about that. It’s about bullying behaviour.

Yes, school parents are arguably a community.

I couldn’t give a flying cahoot tbh but if I did I would just kill then with kindness or blank them

This ^

I think some people think they are starting school alongside their 5 year old and project anxiety about not finding mates. Just be an adult and drop your kid off. Concentrate on them not yourself.

Omg of course there are cliques. Some parents may not see it but staff certainly do. When I stopped teaching to become a foster carer I would stand back and observe. Some are friendships , some are chatty with anyone and some are most certainly cliques!

Did the Queen Bee rudely demand that reigatecastle move seats? Or did she politely mention that she'd like to sit next to her friend, if that was okay? I suspect the latter. Or the Queen Bee had zero social skills and was very ignorant.

Same with the Queen Bee who supposedly barged into the group and totally ignored that reigatecastle was speaking and interrupted her. Quite likely, the Queen Bee hadn't even noticed that *reigatecastle" was speaking and it was an innocent gaff.

What you don't do is bluntly call them out on their rude behaviour for interrupting. That is not being socially adept and others will not warm to you for doing it.

There seems to be a correlation between those thinking parents with friendships are bitches or in cliques and children being ‘excluded’.

I do not really care about making friends with the other mums. But I do care about my DC being excluded because the parental clique extends to the children.

What is happening is reciprocal friendships. That is inclusion of the children of a friendship group, mothers supporting and helping each other and shared activities that include children. It might be an arrangement for one mother to take three children from their friendship group to the same dance class after school, thereby saving two mothers rushing around trying to fit everything in. In return one of the other mothers might take two others for tennis lessons whilst they go to the gym on a Saturday morning. That deepens the friendship for both children and adults. The more they spend time together, the stronger the connections within the group. It ends up with sleepovers, birthday treats and holidays.
Its not excluding children but reinforcing their own social circle. Many parents will want, not unreasonably to manipulate their children’s friendship’s. They want to have their values and norms accepted. They want to raise their children alongside children with similar expectations and rules for everyday life. That might be not wanting your children to go to supper where a parent smokes or where they expected to eat whatever is served at a table. It might be they don’t want their children playing in the street or eating meat. It’s a choice who they and their children socialise with. I’d go as far as to say it was a parental responsibility to manipulate/encourage friendships.

Excluding is having 29/31 children to a birthday party at a sports centre. That is unkind.

what about racism? Do you sit back and allow people to be racist as well for the sake of not appearing socially inept?

Nobody is suggesting all mums are cliquey. I have my own feelings on the excluding kids thing but I have always been very keen that my kids experience friendships with people who are not like them. Makes life more interesting.

However to say cliques at the school gates don't exist because you've never come across them or think no humans, particularly no mums, are capable of social excluding and shunning behaviour in groups is either wilfully ignorant or displays an extreme lack of imagination/attention.

I’d go as far as to say it was a parental responsibility to manipulate/encourage friendships.

I don’t agree. My children often had friendships with kids that I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen. In the same way, I was not necessarily keen on the children of the adults that my parents spent their time with. What you’re describing is helicopter parenting.

However to say cliques at the school gates don't exist because you've never come across them or think no humans, particularly no mums, are capable of social excluding and shunning behaviour in groups is either wilfully ignorant or displays an extreme lack of imagination/attention.

Exactly. Or those people behave that way themselves so it’s convenient for them to tell other people they are imagining others being unpleasant.

I'm firmly in the ignore camp. DC all grown up now, but the school gate thing never crossed my radar. It was literally 10 minutes of my day when I was doing the errand of picking my children up. It would no sooner have occurred to me that it was a social thing than it would be when catching the same train to work with the same familiar faces each day. Maybe the odd hello, but that's it. I only know it's a thing from MN. (I wonder if there are 'commuter cliques' too and I'm not in one of those either!?)

I assume this isn’t directed at me, because my point isn’t whether or not school parents, or Mumsnet, are a ‘community’.

It is - that underneath the one thing many of us have in common - being mothers - we’re actually also humans, who are capable of being funny, entertaining, knowledgeable, helpful, etc, etc…

I don’t understand why people who have such a major issue with ‘Mums’ - calling them bitchy, boring, cliquey, awful, witches, etc - would then come and hang out virtually on Mumsnet, of all places.

That you would do the latter suggests you don’t actually think ‘Mums’ are all so awful, after all.

And that’s a good thing!

Wtf is a clique?? It’s a friendship group. You deal with it by getting to know people and see who you like to hang about

Yes, surprised but not surprised the push-back is limited to 'But they're only friends'. Friendship groups are fine and I didn't want 'in' on them at all - I just wish they let their kids be free-range and it's horrible to see sorting into 'tiers' among the kids, that mirrors the parents. In our village school, many of staff are related ort friends themselves to/with old families here, so alumni are top dogs and know it.

Way back on another thread, I asked three times do the 'friendship groups' allow or encourage their children to be away-from-school friends with children outside the mum group. Never got that answer.

The OP has not been back 🧐

Here