How do you not get offended by school cliques?

[Purpleicing]

Could do with some advice to stop my confidence being more battered

4 years into school - son now year 3 - a once friendly group of mums in the class has developed into "the trendy confident ones" and "the rest of us"

The trendy ones not only invite each others children to the parties (at the exclusion of the children of the poor, the fat, the old, or the anxious), but have spend weekends on a 3 day partying spree - this weekend a bottomless brunch at a restaurant, one house party, and one day out at theme park with kids, all over social media

This in itself is just normal life I know, but what has riled me is that it doesn't stop them using the less trendy ones who don't get invited to play.

Specifically, we have a park holiday home which I have let a few people use for nothing or v little in past when everyone was more friendly across the whole class (think £20 for a long weekend) . Whole set of them asking to use it this summer already.

Other mums outside the clique I know do their fair share of help with after school pick ups and childcare

I'm also in an "approved profession" job and three times this week people have asked me for either legal advice or can you approve the passports (on my fifth lot of passport approval or 'can you sign my mortgage application' this month!)

My confidence is already battered, aibu to think jog on and find someone else to sign your bloody passports?

@Mirabai

*Aren’t the ones complaining the ones who lack empathy.

Empathy tells me that it’s normal and natural for people to gather in groups of friends. I don’t take this personally or feel that I’m being excluded or think other people have some kind of duty to include me.
*
Yes, it's normal to gather in groups of friends. It's also normal to sometimes feel on the periphery of a group, or not in a group at all 🤷‍♀️ i.e. in this case the group of women don't have a problem, so the one who needs a bit of empathy is the OP.

And to the people who don't like the way the OP has categorised the women - have you heard of unconscious and conscious bias?

It's like people think no one judges anyone - correctly or incorrectly.

Tell that to BME young men who are more likely to be stopped and searched or "Missing White Woman Syndrome".

There are so many ways in which people can be judged either disproportionately positively or negatively it astonishes me that so many think the OP is the judgey one and how dare she have this internal monologue - outwardly she has been friendly to these women.

Don't you see you're doing the same. You don't really find it "fascinating".
You're just lacking empathy.
I do find it fascinating actually, but thank you for telling me what's in my own head.

I do think it's interesting that some adults think that it's a big deal that a few other adults who happened to give birth in the same 12 months get on with each other and might socialise with each other after 3.30pm.

Is the expectation of that people don't meet with and get to know those they have things in common with just in case someone else at pick up doesn't like it? Or is the expectation that people can meet and be friends as long as they don't post on social media just in case someone doesn't like seeing that a social event for a handful of people happened? Or can only a certain type of approved parents be friends, and if you're deemed to be the wrong type of parent then you don't have friends, you have a clique?

Some posters on this thread have felt the need to qualify that yes they have a group of friends and they like to talk to their friends at pick up, but don't worry because we're (insert something that talks themselves down). They shouldn't have to feel bad because other people choose to object to parents being friends with each other.

You have literally been "talking down" the OP for having a certain view on the situation - how dare she classify people etc. etc. Hence your "fascination" coming across as disingenuous.

Literally so many assumptions in your post I don't know where to start. And you've not grasped that socialising and the feelings that come with it can be complicated sometimes and not straightforward for everyone - it's not just a case of "what does she expect"? Then reeling of a mindless list of scenarios.

It could be that the OP's feelings towards this group might be telling her something about how she is feeling about herself at the moment in time.

theeldudebros
I was replying to a poster who also made a similar observation and was speaking in general about some people's responses to other adults being friends.
It is interesting that some adults seem to view adult friendships like a school playground, and that leaves other people having to be borderline apologetic for wanting to talk to their friends at pick up or talk themselves down in case people with their own hang ups might decide they're a clique.

To move back to the OP though, other than being cheeky fuckers about the holiday home, which the OP needs to take off the table, it's not really been explained what these people have done wrong beyond having a whatsapp group for friends, socialising together and posting that they've been out together on social media.

You're right that the OP's feelings about the group might be saying something about how she feels about herself. It also says a lot about how she views all the other parents who aren't in the cool trendy group (because the rest of the parents outside the cool group are lumped as being too fat/too poor/wrong sort of children/too old etc), which isn't exactly a nice way to frame to other parents, many of whom are probably giving very little headspace to the perceived politics of pick ups and drop offs.