Ostracised for staying at private school

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Please be kind. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. We are in the VERY fortunate position where we can send our son to private school which is a few minutes drive from our home. We are the only people in the village to do this, the rest use the (very lovely) state primary. Since DS started in January, people who went to the same nursery as him have completely cut me off! At first I thought it was coincidence but last week I eventually confided in a woman at the park and she bluntly said that perhaps it was my decision to separate DS from their kids. She was trying to be understanding as far as I could tell and I asked if she would invite me to the next lunch, she said she would. But today I’ve seen a few of the mums all waking round the village together so again I’ve been excluded. I don’t get it? I feel really alone as I am a SAHP and DP works long hours, often not back until gone 8pm. I love having girlfriends, I can’t seem to meet any at DS’s school as the vast majority board there. I feel really upset and now really wish we had stuck with the local school and DS still had his friends from nursery. Has anyone navigated this before? I don’t know what to go but can’t go on feeling like the odd one out in such a small place.

Well I’m nowhere near close to being able to send my children to private school and I’m very much in the lower income bracket, and I think excluding you on the basis that your child has gone to private school is really mean spirited. There’s enough room for you and your child to stay in a friendship group.

One of my DS’s friends is going to private secondary school after primary school, and my Ds is going to the local state school - should I ghost his mum for it? 🤦🏼‍♀️

Have you started making contact with some of the parents at your DS’s school? Has he started making new friendships over the school year?

No my child doesn’t board and yes boarding starts at 7. Ds is 6.

Nasty witches
School mums can be like that ,they exclude people for all kinds of reasons.
That's just what they do
What a horrible post!

It’s not bullying at all. It’s just Op isn’t part of the group. It’s same as asking a colleague if you want to grab lunch they are there and you ask it wouldn’t dawn on me to message Janet in accounts who I’m only on nodding terms with too.
The difference with others posting they were fine is they did state primary first and then moved, Op hasn’t.

Ds friend went private and the friendship just drifted with the mum. I never saw her anymore, the kids had different friends. It was not nasty but just a natural falling away as we lost the school as common ground.

Are they bullying? Are they "nasty witches"? Or has she just kind of fallen out of their orbit?

I was friendly with many school mums in primary, since our children moved up to high schools, we just don't hang out. They were what Laura Tremaine calls "daily duty friends", people you see in your day and don't stay in touch with if that ends. It's like work friends. I have loved some of the people I worked with and considered them friends but then after leaving we don't stay in touch. It's normal.

What you're deciding about these women is uncalled for based on what we've seen.

OP don’t rely on your child as a means to make friends. School mum gangs are notoriously false, cliquey and pretty boring tbh.
Find a job, and some hobbies.

If I went out with reception mums from my kid's school, I'd be surprised to see a parent there from a different school.

Life goes on. I stopped being invited on work nights out when I changed job. I still had friends there that I did see but my old colleagues went out without me.

School mums is a messy game sometimes but excluding a parent because their child does not attend the school is not bullying.

Exactly what others have said. Don't take it to heart, you are no longer "handy" which is unfortunately the basis of most mum friendships.

Wow, what a horrible way to describe a group of women who also happen to be mums. I have 'school mum friends' and I don't consider us to be false or boring. We chat about our children, our jobs, our hobbies, our hopes and dreams (we're just normal people believe it or not).

School mums can be like that ,they exclude people for all kinds of reasons.
That's just what they do

"School mums" aren't some sort of weird sub-species of human. They're just women who have children at school. They aren't any nastier, or any nicer, than any other random group of people.

Why has this thread turned into a bashing of women who happen to have children in school. Isn't that the majority of women on mumsnet? Apparently we are boring, cliquey, false and even 'witches'!

Are you sure it's some sort of private school issue? Or do you think they just don't see the friendship lasting now you no longer have that common ground?

Similar thing happened to me when I moved 10 mins down the road to a new school area, no private school or area rivalry issues. I had a lovely group of mum friends, it was nothing personal I'm sure, it's just what happens. Mum friends (much like work friends, hobby friends) are often friendships of convenience/circumstance. It doesn't mean they dislike you or are annoyed at you, they just have assumed the friendship will likely end here.

A couple of my original group of mum friends kept in touch, but these were the ones who I'd really connected with on a personal level and who I suspect will now be long term friends. But the others have totally drifted - no hard feelings, that's just life.

I've made some of my best friends through having children.

Do you think that all women with kids are false and boring?

Have him join Village beavers group or similar and try connect that way
Ultimately parent friends tend to be linked to school and they do not always last beyond primary
Or do something for you join a community project choir book group

Having local parent friends is something that does tend to come with others who send their children to the same school. My kids go to our village school and I really like that they and I have local friends. If I knew of a child that lived round here that went to a private school I'd feel sorry for them because they are missing out on what is a lovely community. Private schooling is a different world entirely, I went to private school and all but one of my friends were a 30+ min drive away, something I don't think my parents realised would happen! It sounds like your friendships were situational, like someone said above, it's like working with people who you get on with but once you leave you don't have much in common so you don't keep in touch. Only a few friendships last longer than that.

No "school mum" has to be friends with any other mum just because they live in the same village.

Currently these school mums also have their children being in the same class in common, they might not have anything else at all in common with OP.

OP doesn't want to make friends with the other day parents in her child's class because they don't live close enough but you're not calling her out for that.

I'm finding this hard to believe. Children start reception in September not January. Children in reception are 4 turning 5 before the end of September. Your child is 6 so would be in year 1 or 2. So surely it's been a long time since your kid was in nursery with this kids. Why would be mums keep in contact after all this time if there not in the same school?

It's horrible feeling excluded I'm sorry.

Does your son do activities like Beavers locally o keep a connection?

Unfortunately, I don't think they are wronf not to include you are no longer part of their day-to-day life the way you were before if you see what i mean?

You'll find more friends, and hopefully rekindle some of the previous friendships too in time.

If I were you, I would have a bbq or something similar and have an open invitation to your old friends 🧡

I feel really upset and now really wish we had stuck with the local school and DS still had his friends from nursery.

Can't you move him to the state primary?

IME (village school, 2 kids) so much of their social life revolves around the children in their class. They all go to the park after school, know each other in Beavers or sports clubs, see each other at village events, and in the couple of years before they move to secondary and have some independence to go around the village as a little group.

Well, that's a little rose-tinted in fact as I always felt a little on the outside due to working full time, but I think they would have felt quite isolated being the only child in the village to go to a different school, especially if you're going to struggle to make friends in the private school.

What are your other reasons for choosing that school?

With that attitude I'm not surprised that this was your experience.

I have a full time job, I have plenty of hobbies.
I was never in a school Mum gang (whatever that even is), but I have made some very good friends through my children. My oldest son is 25. We are still in the village and I am very close to one or two of the friends I made through taking him to school, as well on friendly terms with the ones who are still around.

My youngest is 15 and I've made a whole new set of friends though him.

If they are deliberately excluding you specifically because your DS is at a private school and theirs are at state then that's mean, but I suspect it is not quite like that. It may well also have happened if you'd selected a different state school. As others have said, the key thing is that you no longer share the main common factor that binds the group together. It happens throughout life after all. We have different friends at different stages of our lives but those groups often break up once the commonality is lost. I had a lovely group of friends who were Mums of other pupils at the dance school my DD went to. When she left for full time dance school I was no longer part of that group. I could have viewed it as jealousy or inverted snobbery because my DD had moved on but it really wasn't, it was simply that I no longer had that bond with them. We're still Facebook friends but actually now our children are grown up we have little in common and if we ever do see each other conversation is more or less restricted to reminiscences. It's just the natural progression of life. Same with school mum friends. I am still friends with a few but only those with whom I share other interests.
Unfortunately this is a risk that you take if you send your child to a different school to everyone else. In an area where children go to a wide variety of schools it will be less noticeable but when you are the only one who is different it will be more marked, for you and your DS I'm afraid. School is a big part of life for children, and particularly in primary school, their parents so that's where friendships naturally form.There are other places to make friends of course so I would suggest that you try to join in some activities and make friends in your own right, and also to enrol your son in some extra curricular activities to try to ensure he has local friends. But you can't expect to be part of the school mums group because you aren't a school mum any more.

We are still friends with nursery mums whose kids are at different schools. I don't understand the friend making etiquette. One minute they say don't worry about the school gate mums that's not where friends are made. Then they say oh they aren't you're friend because your kids at another school.

Pretty confused!

If they are friends largely through your kids, they won't stay friends long-term if the kids are at different schools, you need to find friends elsewhere.

Some people (way too many of them) are very envious and snobbish, proud of their working class backgrounds and make huge fuss out of it. I'm also all FOR private education, but don't consider it lucky - it's hard work.

Respect yourself and ignore those who don't share your education views with you in private life. And try to find a group of friends by interest/hobby (say in Women's Institute or tennis club, or some local swimming pool?).