Clique school mums

[ernie23]

what is a cliquey mum group?
how would you describe them ? Do you believe that term , have you ever been involved ?

This is no hate, just genuinely what to know what people think of that term or their experiences on why would you call them like that .

Agree
Its almost like some people make being a victim of others their whole personality ...

A group of 6/7 close friends that you are aware of doing things together.

You have NO idea how their days unfold and who else they spend time with

You mean people who have friends, busy lives and no time or interest in getting into petty school gate drama by people who have far too much time on their hands 😂

Life doesn't start when you have kids, it gets busier, why do these people seem to wait until kids to want to have friends groups? What the heck did they do BEFORE the children?

You’re ALLOWED to just not like someone, you know. Doing the same sport or working in the same field has never made me warm to someone I wouldn’t have liked anyway.

Mn should have ITS NOT OBLIGATORY TO LIKE EVERYONE across the top of threads.

around the school, yes it is!

In every other aspect of your life, it's normal to have closer friends or no friends at all with the people you are with at bus stops/ in the office/ neighbours/ sports clubs/ reading club etc..

On the school playground? If not everyone picks you at their bestie, they must be in a clique! 😂

Or there are people who are not projecting issues and realise people have more in life than school dramas made up in theit head?

I haven’t been too involved with DS first year of school due to my job. Granny has done a lot of the school drop-offs / pick-ups. I’ve been to a few of the birthday parties. But I’ve kept my distance a bit from the mums.

What I’ve observed is that some of the mums want to be friends with the good-looking, popular sort of cool mums. Much like in secondary school, it all feels a bit teenage angst. When I’m there, I admire those mums too.

So, I can see how the regular mums get caught up in the popularity contest, clique thing. Same with the kids, you can see the pairing-off of these mum’s children happening as well. I suppose it’s human nature, really.

I went for coffee with a few of the mums at the end of term & noticed that the cool ones didn’t overshare. But the pick-me ones disclosed every aspect of their home lives, including things to do with the children.

I’ll be at the school more next year, but I’ve seen enough to know that I don’t want to be a part of this particular dance. Will they talk about me? They probably have zero interest. I get on well with everyone, as does DS.

How do none of these clique-defending mums realise that it it both possible for a person to NOT want to be part of a gossipy clique, sorry " school playground friendship group", and also at the same time feel a bit rejected/excluded because the clique does not want them?

Some people don't seem to see that it should be different in the school playground as parents than how it was when they were students.

Especially since the day to day mini dramas indirectly impact their own children.

Exactly

although imagine the threads from the OP’s starting threads about being sidelined by “cliques” whinging

We aren’t “clique defending mums” 🙄

We just don’t think they exist. And instead… groups of friends. And the person who regards them as a clique rather than a group of friends… simply isn’t one of them

What, in a ‘Groucho Marx not wanting to join the kind of club that would accept him as a member’ way? 😃

I’d suggest that person has a long think about who, if anyone, they actually like in any particular setting, and signalling an openness to getting to know that person/those people better, if that’s what they would like to do. Obviously, the person they like may turn them down, which is just life, but it’s a damn sight healthier than developing some kind of giant complex about a group you don’t actually like not being interested in befriending you.

Or, of course, they can continue to standing seething on the sidelines, eyes riveted on every flicker of the body language of the ‘clique’ they long so desperately to join purely because it’s ‘excluding’ them. Just do that. On your deathbed you get a little pie chart that will get you the exact breakdown of what proportion of your life you’ve spent obsessing about ‘exclusion’.

This is absolutely ridiculous

So many assumptions

and people are different!! Some don’t share personal stuff. Others do.

Fair enough. That may well be the case.

I find that the parents who complain the most about cliques and the PTA mums etc. are usually the ones who rarely invite other children to their house and host play dates or volunteer to help out with a PTA event, unless they think there’s something in it for them.

Quid pro quo.

They just expect the other mums to do all the hard work and then moan when they’re not automatically included.

Rather than hanging around the school playground a hobby or a job and make friends with people you like and share interest with.

Half of my dd's class is made up of siblings from my older dd's class and the school nursery has 75% of the other siblings. It does happen!

Thats making yourself a victim of your own actions though

"I dont want to be friends but omg you are VU and a cow for excluding me"

I run a mile from these types

I made this point
but unsurprisingly @Larrythecatforpm commented that it was too much of a coincidence and speculated that they’d made a pact!

👏👏👏
This otherwise known as drama llamas/ victims of life

Happily there was quite a few parents at my children’s schools that I did like and shared interests with

"Clique" is basically a word which is coined by people who are threatened or made anxious by other people having friendship groups which they are not part of. It's a way of implying that groups of women being friends is some sort of conspiracy.

There's roughly a thread a day on here posted by someone who is made uncomfortable by other women's friendships and invariably when you break down what's actually happening there's nothing to it: its an overreaction to a perceived sleight or envy about not being part of the 'gang'. Its always suffused with subtly misogynistic language about "gossip" and "bitches" and there's almost never any actual substance to it. Nine times out of ten its either social anxiety or jealousy (or both).

I've taken my child through primary and (nearly) secondary and never seen evidence of these supposed "cliques". I've seen groups of women whose friendships predate the school and women who have formed bonds through their children and there's nothing wrong with either of those. The key is to not expect to be automatically invited into the groups in the first place and you won't be disappointed.

The question you have to ask is why are some women so threatened and upset by other women forming friendships? I don't know the answer but a lot of people seem to feel that school will provide them with the opportunity to build a friendship group which they feel they missed out on in another phase of life.

This

I was very lazy and never ever volunteered

I was SO appreciative of the parents that did step up!

I always wonder whether the people who complain about cliques and them sticking together aver think that when they too arrive to find a group of people they naturally look for the people they already know and like to go and chat to.

How many people arrive and think "oh I know A and B over there and we always have a good laugh together, but I don't know C so I'll go and chat to them..."

That's all it is really.

I went through 3 dc and various schools between them.
I made some mum friends, but would never have described me as being in their close friend circle except perhaps one, as I had friends locally outside school. Never found it a problem if I wanted to chat finding someone to chat to - and I'm not the most sociable person around. I don't think there was every a group outside school I'd have avoided because they wouldn't have talked to me if I'd gone and joined them.

In all that time I'd have perhaps described one group as a "clique" but it was basically a group of 3 cousins (there was a fourth cousin same year but they weren't really in the same friendship group) with a couple of their neighbours, and they were very close knit and always did things together after school and at the weekend.

However they'd always say hello, and by the top end of juniors ds was very friendly with one of them and has stayed friendly through seniors and leaving school. If I see any of them out now they're as happy to stop and chat as anyone.

I think the definition someone gave upthread of "A clique is a friendship group that I'm not in" is often true.

Now I don't say cliques never happen - simply that they're far less common than people think. They're in the outsiders' heads rather than really there.

Exactly! I am friendly with a few mums. We go out occasionally and have a WhatsApp group. Other people are welcome, but some don’t want friendship, which is fine. Doesn’t make us a clique.

Yes it 100% exists. They tend to only talk to each other, sometimes seeming openly hostile to other mums or at least not smiling or seeming receptive to chat. Even when other mums are always there at drop off and pick up. They probably have a group chat that, again, other people won’t be invited to join despite kids being same age same class. Or at least, other people might be on it but their posts won’t be responded to. Outsiders will have a strong sense that there is something about them that doesn’t ‘fit’. For me it was that our family doesn’t go to their church. Even worse if your kid makes friends with their kid, then you have to try to infiltrate the clique to deal with stuff like parties. Then they’ll be sat together chatting at the party, it’s obvious you are only there because your kid is friends with their kid. I have actually been in this exact situation.
It’s not the same as a friend group. Any group of women who only hang around together because their kids are at the same school, have no prior history or other shared interests , will give off clique energy.