to hate 'making friends' in the playground?

[debs40]

Well, I'm not a miserable person honestly. I always enjoyed mixing and making friends whilst working (I'm self-employed now and work from home), but does anyone else find 'making friends' in the playground a chore/stress?

My son is in Y1 and changed schools in October. I have quite some good friends locally and I made a few of those through ds' attendance at the old school.

But I always used to find the daily pick up a chore as you tried to make superficial banter with people you didn't know. I admit I largely did this for the sake of ds when he wanted to invite people back for tea etc.

Anyway, I was sort of grateful to start again at a new school as the playground chat at the old one often became a real pain. There was always someone getting upset that so and so hadn't said hello or had ignored them or had not invited little dd/ds to their child's party etc etc. I was glad to take a back seat and be the new person no one knew.

Now, having been here a few months,a bit of PTA'ing and saying hello I have again ended having to do the banter, make the effort etc etc. It always seems like a competition for friends though and people seem to be ruder than they would in 'normal life'. It's like being back at school

For example, one mum I have had a coffee with a few times is also new and knew no one. However, she now has the most annoying habit of coming over and saying hello and then drifting off from you when you are mid-sentence if someone else she's trying to make friends with comes past that she wants to talk to. I'm sure she wouldn't do it in the real world

I know, I know, it is so infantile and petty and I hate myself for getting annoyed about it but then that is why I hate the playground!

I didn't socialise much at school entrance, neither did my exhusband and my kids got invited to places and had friends. In early primary school they told us who their favourite friends were and we made a point of phoning the relevent parents about kids coming for tea etc. In late primary school our kids used to just phone the kids themselves when they got home having discussed meeting up during the day. I never saw whether or not you chatted to other parents at the school gates as being in any way related to whether or not your child had friends.
When small their best friends tended to be the kids who lived nearest anyway so they'd just be walking down the road to see them.
I've moved quite alot as an adult and have always made friends through joining various clubs. None of my friends are parents of my kids friends, although I say hello to them when I see them.
When I was a kid my parents friends weren't the parents of my friends, they were adults who either lived near my parents or who they'd met through clubs and organisations.

YANBU
I hate it too. I deliberately try to get there last minute and leave as soon as my kids appear. Obviously, I try to avoid being rude, will smile and acknowledge people, just do not go out of my way to initiate girly chatter! Too stressful and hate the way it usually seems to end up bitching about something/the school/life/another mum. Just don?t need to hear it, so duck out as much as possible without looking like a total miserable cow (hard to balance it so that you don?t look beyond aloof and appear rude)

this is hysterical... with a great big dollop of paranoia thrown in!
I'm positive I do all the things you moan about, the wandering eyes, interrupting etc.
But I certainly don't mean to be rude, it's because I run my own business, have 2 dc's that have after school activties galore and am chair of the PTA.
If I don't try and squeeze everything I have to organise into that 15 mins at pick up, I'll spend then entire day organising where ds1's latest football match is, who's helping with Quiz night etc and that would leave me no time to mumsnet!

Seriously? Is it really this awful at school gates up and down the land?

In ten years of preschool and school gates no-one has been rude to me. I don't hang about. Just in, kiss (dc that is!). bye and off smiling and a bit of small talk all the way.

I've made a few nice friends but not people I see much socially. For no other reason than that's just how it works out, as most people are busy with family life and long term friends out of school.

I never expected any more than that from it. This subject comes up regularly on mn and puzzles the life out of me.

I think it is like anything in lefe - it is what you make of it, but I know exactly what OP means, I feel it too, some days, other days I'm either too busy to care or notice, or I am able to make conversation with people.

It's horrible and I think every one hates it (with the possible exception on TsarChasm!).

I was being constantly terrified by stories our friends told us (had dd late, and they'd all been there) about the judginess, competitiveness of the 'Other Mums' who would decide whether you were the right sort, before they would let your kids play with theirs etc etc.

I suspect that when we each start the school run thing, we are all so stressed that it is almost impossible to behave normally.

Ah, I'm so pleased I found this thread! I feel more human and less of an oddity now.

I've been mulling this over for a while. My initial gut feeling was that there seemed to be a clique of overbearing, sometimes frosty mums at DS's small village school (and therefore in our village). And then instead of trusting that intuition, I spent months talking myself out of it and convincing myself there must be something wrong with me, which would explain the looks-down-noses, the ignoring, the odd evil look, the occasional I-don't-want-to-be-seen-with-you reluctant response to my polite hello. They seem nice enough after all - at least, one-to-one, chatting is mostly OK. I had started to convince myself I have socialising issues! Maybe I don't.

I wonder if it's (a) more of a village school thing, where mums tend to socialise and reinforce friendships at non-school community events, and (b) a large groups of people thing: all of us - men, teenage boys and girls, women - can behave differently, and in a more hostile way, with the back-up and belonging of a group behind us.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get over ourselves, though, and grow up. School/village politics do remind me of some of the worst aspects of playground socialising as child. It's comforting to know I'm possibly not imagining that.

My school is as bad as this and I've lost count of the number of times people have either wandered off mid conversation or I've overheard the most bitchy, competitive conversations that quite frankly I'm glad I'm not involved in.
There are a few really nice genuine Mums who I chat to sometimes but I'd rather ignore these horrible bitchy old hags women.
(I do make up horrible names for them all in my head though )

Why are the choices 'be super chatty' or 'stand and ignore everyone'?

This is the kind of conversation I have most of the time...

'Hello, how are you?'

'I'm fine. You?'

'Good thanks, ooh look kids are coming out'

'So they are, see you tomorrow. Bye'

Unless you positively want to make friends I can't see what's wrong with that. I suppose you could always stare fixedly ahead of you ignoring everyone on all sides, but that sounds like far too much effort to me.

Mmm ingles2, I have two children, a business, a husband who works away and I'm involved in PTA etc etc. Still don't do the rude stuff though!

I used to stand right at the edge of the playground with another similarly minded mum- the other mothers all scared us. They were all competitive, yacking about holidays in Dubai, how well little Jonny was doing in the reading scheme, their new 4x4, who would go to play at super-popular Roddy's house. My son and this lady's son were both oddballs (her son was a lovely gentle giant- about 5ft at 8, mine found it a little difficult to make friends and was often in a day-dream) and we were most definitely not flavour of the playground. In fact they were a bunch of cows to us.

I didn't actually care- I think that we had a lucky escape...

As I said Debs, I've got no intention of being rude and I don't interpret it as rudeness either.
In the playground it's, I'm busy, you're busy, as far as I'm concerned. I don't stand there wondering if other people have the time or inclination to talk about me, because I just don't have the time. That also means I don't listen to any petty fallings out, so maybe I'm just totally unaware and everyone is slagging me off behind my back.

I so agree about the 'dreaded playground'. I was really smily and friendly at the start, but it's just harder to get to know people.
Some are friendly, but I also have a bit of a paranoid feeling that everyone seems to know each other (maybe have older children at same school, or are SAHM so have plenty of time to chat in school playground rather than having to rush off to work) but then I think that it's just the ones who hang around chatting from 8.30am and arrive early for pick-ups are the ones you notice, whereas the other ones (like me) are probably the majority.
Also difficult to have a proper conversation with anyone as you know you're only going to have a couple of mins until your kid is let out at which time you have to push through the throng of people (for whom the playground is a social event) to get out.

Agree with previously suggested strategies - arrive just a little bit late (irritates my dd but saves me having to make small talk about the weather)

My poor dc are picked up by their afterschool club, but had a couple of weeks of doing the pick up last month and found it excrutiating. No one would even look me in the eye! Let alone say hello. I found playgroups hard too - perhaps different rules apply to Mum gatherings as opposed to being at work or other such places where you come up against people on a daily basis with who you don't necessarily have a common interest - but I don't know what the rules are! I wish someone would enlighten me...

-and who makes the rules?
Is it the 'Queen Bees' at the centre of the cliques, or the 'Wannabees' who are desperate to be 'in' and keep newcomers 'out?'

'This subject comes up regularly on mn and puzzles the life out of me.'

It puzzles me too, I have got past that stage but I just used to go and be pleasant-if you are pleasant people are pleasant back-I didn't get drawn into any cliques or bitchiness. It is useful to have a support system e.g people were very kind when DS3 was seriously ill.
My DCs made their own friends-it had no bearing at all on who I was friendly with.

there's just something about the playground. DH, as a SAHD was exempt from the cliquiness of the playground by virtue of being a man. He would occasionally discuss 'man' topics with other dads (technology, football, pubs etc) but had a keen eye for the playground gossipmongers. He has nicknames for the worst of them and keeps me entertained with the ins and outs of the social whirl.

If I go to pick DD up I restrict my conversation to:

Admiring babies
Admiring and entertaining toddlers
The next school trip
The weather
Public transport problems.

That and as I'm only an occasional visitor to the playground, I make sure I chat to any face I don't recognise and ask who their children are.

Apart from that I keep well away from the mad politics.

I agree that there are 'politics' in the playground and that it can feel as if you're back at school (although surely only if you care!), BUT, I must admit that the mother who interrupts could sometimes be me ! I am not in school at pickup time that often so when I am (usually on a Friday) I have a mental list which goes "must invite X to play next week"; "must check if Y's mum is happy to do ballet pickup"; "must tell Z's mum that DD can go to her party" and I usually fly round trying to get all of these message conveyed before DD2 manages to brain herself on the floor of the playground trying to play with the 8-year olds, which is normally a fairly small window!!!

no, me too Jajas

Does that mean we're in a clique?