School friendships (primary)

[Edemummy]

Many of you here are giving amazing advice and I was hoping to see what you'd think about our situation which is probably not that uncommon!
DD has a bunch of friends at primary school, who she loves and spend all time playing with.
Unfortunately, I have been struggling with a family situation the last couple of years and hasn't been very bubbly and outgoing so didn't seem to have made a good impression on dd's friends mums, I was always polite, just quite obviously sad and down - also the issue isn't something I can easily share so people have no idea why I am this way.
Current situation is that there are 2 pairs of mums that get on amazingly, go out for drinks, go to each other's houses, husbands have become friends, as a result the kids spend a lot of time together in their free time and we are completely outside of it all. We also have a little boy where's every one of dd's friends has an older sibling - so we don't fit in as well.
I have been trying to do more for dd lately and have suggested things to mums, but with little success. I think it is starting to affect my daughter now, she had started to notice this, where is before she didn't seem to care as they play at school every day. Now there are other mums at school, a couple, who are very happy to meet up with us outside of school and do things together and I have definitely been up for that, but my daughter just doesn't enjoy playing with them as much as her "best" friends and doesn't seem at all excited to be meeting them.
I guess I am wondering what I can do to make sure daughter is happy and not feeling left out in her close circle. But also selfishly, I've always had a vision of a community, where families get on well and meet up, do barbecues together etc.
Part of me worries if it's anything to do with wealth as they all seem very well off and we are sort of average. That's because it seems that grown ups more often "network" with newly met people rather than making actual friends.
I could be wrong though. Just trying to understand the situation better and improve it. Thanks for reading x

I sympathise greatly with you. May I suggest a two pronged approach where you recognise that you’re playing catch up and need to make a much higher level of effort than what you may consider fair, so offer to pick up and take one of her friends to soft play after school every week. Not many people turn down free childcare and fun for their child. It will help your DD become more popular within her group. The other simultaneous approach are the meet ups with the people who are friendly even if your DD doesn’t like the children as much because from my experience she will like them more and more after spending time with them. My DD was fine doing play dates with my choice of children if she also got to do play dates with her choice too.

Im sort of in the same situation (albeit a much younger child in nursery setting). They’ve all been there since babies, working their way through the rooms, but for the past 2 years have been having bday parties. This sadly coincided with me caring for and ultimately losing my only surviving parent, my DH works weekends so my DC hasn’t been able to attend these parties (maybe 2/20). There is a self crowned Queen Bee of the group who has made some very passive aggressive comments about how our DC hasn’t attended any parties 🙄 in turn this makes me so uncomfortable now to try and begin to take him to the parties, I know they’ve all formed bonds and do things outside of these events…

You can’t win in these situations, but you have to try and maybe, if you’re able to explain why you haven’t been as sociable as you’d have liked theyll allow you into ‘the coven’. Think about it from their perspective, they feel they’ve tried and you’ve not been receptive, so now need to explain and set the level of contact you’re happy with