Mother's 'forcing' friendships for their kids

[Genie321]

At school, I see a number of parents seeming to encourage their kids to have friendships with certain children, usually kids of 'popular' mums or the perceived 'clique'. For background, my son is 5 so parents around that age. Other kids are excluded from playdates, parties etc seemingly because of who the parents are.

I am interested to know if you too see the same?

More interestingly, from parents with older kids, how did this play out in the long term? Did these more encouraged friendships work out as the kids grew older? If so, what became of the 'popular'parents or the relationships between the 'clique'.

I saw a mum today who is in a clique that i find quite bitchy tbh, shoving her daughter with a son of a friend in the clique. I couldn't quite fathom if the kids played together in school time or if this was a thing that only the parents were putting effort into.

I am so intrigued!

no, never seen this.

I think that it’s fairly usual to want your child to be friends with your own friend’s children. It makes the adults’ social lives much simpler; I’d certainly rather facilitate a play date with a friend in my kitchen for three hours instead of a stranger.

When my DD was 3, she went to nursery and I met a group (clique?) of the mother mums. We all had a younger child at home, and started meeting for coffee etc. The girls are 17 now. DD still BFs with one of them, and us mums are all very close still.

Yes, there was someone very like this at the primary my DC went to.

I already knew the parent from elsewhere and there was a concerted effort to target certain people, they even talked about it with me. I gave them a wide berth as my approach was to leave the kids to make their own friends, so I declined invitations.

The thing you realise after your eldest goes to secondary is primary school absolutely does not matter, so long as your kid is having a decent time when they are there. Once they go to secondary they make so many new friends.

So I would say steer clear.

I wouldn’t say we have that at my children’s school.

We do have groups of mums who are friends and they arrange play dates or meet ups at the park/farm shop etc. so this means their children spend time with each other as a by product of the mothers being friends.

However all the children make friends with who they want at school. I don’t think you can force children's friendships. I spent ages with one mum and have met her at soft play etc loads. Our children still aren’t bothered by each other.