If you are a mass attending RC and your dc are not attending a faith school...

[Doraandflora]

do your dc feel included and have friends, for example during children's liturgy or holy communion classes?

We have a local catholic primary but dd will attend a non faith school for various reasons. I want dds to attend mass and get involved with the local catholic community but worry that they will be the odd one out if they doesn't attend the catholic primary.

Am I being ridiculous or do local catholic communities tend to be quite 'cliquey'? We are just outside London by the way, if that makes a difference.

In my experience it makes no difference as there were always plenty of children not at the Catholic school coming to Mass and events at the parish. I think it is natural that children who know each other (through school or other groups) will gravitate together (just like adults) but if you make sure your child is involved in plenty of community activities (such as Brownies/Guides, local sports, parish groups) she is bound to bump into other Mass going Catholic kids in the community.

I don t think any of the children at our Catholic church go to faith schools. They all go to different ones, and they are all great buddies !
I have also never known any cliqueyness (if that's a word !) in catholic communities. Following Pope Francis's example we are reaching out to everyone and are trying to be the opposite of cliquey (uncliquey?!).

Only a quarter of our parish go to the RC school but as there is no 8+ provision it is hard for them to make friends etc when they only see them in Mass. We are v happy with their school though and wouldn't change it. They do know some children there but generally it is because we know their parents.

I wouldn't worry about it. In our parish,we have about 40 kids per year on the first communion programme and only about half of them attend the parish school. Make sure they go to parish clubs, groups etc and make sure you join in too!

Many of the most frequent attenders at mass are children who don't go to the parish schools. This is great for the kids who get a much wider social network as a result.