Ostracised for staying at private school

[LessorMore]

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.

Invite the nice mum you spoke to over for a playdate and build a friendship with her. Look out for a couple more too and do the same.

So if he’s six now, where was he for Reception year OP? Did you try the local primary and it didn’t work out? Or are you not in the UK?

If the other mums are deliberately excluding you because of your school choice that seems a bit mean, but it could be circumstances have pulled you different ways. Does he play with any of his old local friends at the weekend if you meet them at the park, say?

In my opinion private schooling is fundamentally inequitable, and I struggle to maintain friendships with people whose moral compass doesn’t align with this. I’m lucky I could afford to send dd to private school, or use tutors, but it’s so unfair that so early on children to give them such a broad advantage or disadvantage based on an accident of birth

I live in a village, my 2DC went to the village schools. Over the years, parents have taken their DC out and sent them to local private schools. When they leave the WhatsApp group tends to be the time we stop seeing them.
Nothing malicious. It's just what happens.

If I did see the mums about after that, it tended to be at keep fit sessions / cross fit etc. Or if a couple of mums grew particularly close and were BFFs (this is rarer though)

So are you not in the UK?

What??? Do you honestly believe that a parent's decision on where they educate their child is a reflection of a superiority complex? Wow!!

I think you need to take the initiative here and invite them over. They are in a local school community bubble and will be seeing each other every day so get -togethers will be spontaneous and much of what they talk about will most likely be school based, so you need to be proactive if you want to see them. But you also need to establish contacts at your son's school. Are you sure most of the Reception children are boarders, or are they being dropped at school early by working parents? Ask your son's teacher if there is a parents' contact list so you can set up some playdates for your son and meet other mums that way. The friendships you make when your child/firstborn starts school are friends you keep for years and you will make them, but they may not be the nursery crowd from the village.

Yes, actions have consequences. I'm surprised you couldn't foresee this.

As someone who moved to a village and spend 12 utterly miserable years there I can confirm, if you don’t do exactly what everyone else does you are pretty much ostracised.
I don’t drink and am not Christian and working in the local town I was called a dirty southerner (Geography wasn’t their strong point as going further than 5 miles from the local town was unheard of)

The only thing I can recommend is ignore these people and delete them off any SM block their numbers and move house. Don’t ask to be invited out again as they will take great pleasure in ignoring your request

We eventually sold up and moved and I couldn’t have been happier.

Small villages can mean small minds. Tell everyone to get out more.

I think sometimes with schools its perceived as a criticism of their choices more than anything.

100%

A lot of parents are funny and rather sad like that. We moved our children to a different state primary school after a lot of issues arose at the local primary school where the school was failing in many ways and we felt it was letting our children down in a number of ways. While our children went on to thrive at the other school, I was dropped instantly by people I'd thought were my friends that I'd hung out with for years. Quite eye-opening, in fact. It was like a door slammed shut, and the multiple weekly get togethers with the other mums were over. I never received another invitation except from 1 mum who also privately acknowledged she didn't agree with me no longer being invited to the events but wouldn't speak up against it because 'she had to live with them' essentially. Said more about all of them than me, though.

I live in a village with two state primary schools. Most mum night out things are for parents whose kids go to the same school. It’s just the way it is. Some of us are friends with a few of the other parents but the social groups when kids are little are largely restricted by which school they go to.

It changes later when they all start playing for the locals sports teams or going to the dance school. You do have to make a big effort though.

School is for your child to make friends, it’s not a social opportunity for you. If you want friends, find them somewhere else. For your child, be friendly with parents but know that these aren’t friends, they’re people you interact with for the sake of your kid. Once your child has no link to their child, there’s no link to you.

So many people need this up! You are separate to your child. If you want people who want to hang out with you, you need to meet them without the child link.

The mums who ostracise you aren’t all besties. They just hang together because at the moment their kids have something in common. Once the kids fall out or something happens, they’ll drop each other and relationships will change. Everyone is only loyal to their own family.

There not really your friends, they are just the parents of children your son was friends with. He doesn’t go to the same school as them now, I’m guessing he’s no longer in touch with them if you are not so they are not his friends.

The parents may not have been looking to find friends of their own. Unfortunately from their POV they don’t have any reason to keep in contact.

It was mean of them to exclude you after you asked to be included, are these really people you would want as your friends anyway?

I think the best thing to do is try and be friendly with the parents at the private school as your son is going to be friends with their children.

So people in large cities are all open minded?

I don’t really know, is it a particularly cliquey area? My son was the only one going to private school but none of my primary school mums held it against me (or him).

Leaving aside boarding and the ideological question of private schooling, I get where the mums are coming from. Their DC will all be in school together and know each other for years so they're invested in the friendships.

My youngest is right on the cut off for school age. A lot of her nursery friends will start school in September and have moved to the out of school club childcare provision, but she's still at nursery. I'm not particularly invested in maintaining those friendships as she will make new friends at nursery school, primary school and her own cohort in childcare and they'll be the people she knows until secondary.

I think losing the community feel of using the local school was always going to be a downside of choosing a different school.

So ridiculous and just a perfect example of the constant politics of envy in the U.K.

Freezing her out because she's made a different choice for her child?!

Imagine if this was reversed and private school mums did the same when a school mum switched to state, the comments on this thread would be so different!

This happened to us. 75% of our DC’s preschool friends went to our nearest (religious) primary school. My advice is that kids make new friends at their own pace, you presumably have friends already, so other parents are the equivalent of colleagues: you do the same job. Make some playdates if you can, many kids do flexiboarding and go home for weekends. Don’t fixate on the situation, this is unhelpful and will fuel negative self talk.

Why not change back, especially as the village school is so great, is the private one really worth it?

I don’t really have time/need for local friends- I have my university friends and my friends from my young flat sharing days and I meet up with at least one of them once or twice a month. Many live in my city but not particularly local, but we are old friends so we make the effort to travel across town. I also chat to those friends on WhatsApp either one to one or in chat groups so I don’t feel lonely if I haven’t seen them in person for a while.

Do you have those sorts of friendships OP?

My other source of social interaction is at work- not so much socialising with colleagues but the friendly chat you have when working together. Could you look at getting a job? It sounds like you might be a bit bored during the day.

I do chat to school Mums but after 3 years those friendships are still superficial and that’s fine by me. However what is very important is that my son gets to form bonds with their children, who are genuinely his friends. It’s really that which you need to work on OP, not finding friends for yourself. Can the school facilitate him spending time with the boarding kids outside lessons? Do none of the day pupil families ever suggest play dates?

Oh god this sounds like horrendous small village life! I’d get out and about and try to meet other parents including from weekend clubs. There have got to be other mums you can get in touch with from your school, even if it takes 45 mins to see them.

Are there any of the old schools mums who are nicer do you think?

I don’t think they should pull their child out of a good school because some of the school mums are bitchy! They’ll probably still be funny if he returned.

They’re not friends op.

They're not friends, but I don't think they're bitchy either.

OP essentially removed herself from the group by choosing a different school.

There's loads of mums I'm friendly with through my DC and I'll happily have a coffee with them on a play date or at a party, but only one has become an actual friend that I text or meet up with away from the kids.

The state is ''Brilliant''...But not brilliant enough for your child.

That is how the other mothers will have seen it.

Making out the local state is ''So lovely and really quite brilliant'' is over -egging the pudding.

They will know at a fundamental level that you don't want your child mixing with all comers.

Private schools can filter out children they don't want.