school gate politics.....advice?

[doraismyhomegurl]

i have recently found myself timing my journey to school so that i literally turn up just as the doors are opening so i can literally 'kiss and drop' DD1 and be out of there without having to stand around and gossip/compare/bitch.

Does anyone else do this? or is it just me being an anti social? I used to arrive earlier but found the 'clique' to be very 'mean girls' and decided i didn't want to be part of it when 3 of them (whilst in the presence of their 6 year old girls) thought it funny to slate another parents shoes - behind her back.

I felt very awakward for not joining in and i could see my own DD looking at me as if to say 'mommy why are they being mean'

Anyway, am i weird for not becoming besties with the other mommys? am i missing something? what are your school gate habbits? should i engage more?

advice please?

You are missing nothing! I've stopped going on the playground at pick up time because the inane chatter and gossip drives me crazy.

ergh! glad it's not me who thinks this. I'm just concerned because i want my DD to be social and friendly and i kinda feel like im going against that by secluding myself from the other mothers.

The daily comparisons also boil my blood ....'oh, what level reading is your D on now' 'oh, DD can now tie her shoes laces, can yours' 'oh DS can now fly an aeroplane, can yours!' ergh! please bore off!

This doesn't happen at all at DD's school, the other Mums are all lovely...unless I am totally oblivious and they are talking about me?

Couldn't give a rat's ass tbh. We never compare children's achievements and levels, why would we?

I wonder where these people are?

If they were like this I would be inclined to take the piss big time.

"Oh yes, DD has just completed her Flemish/Japanese degree and is looking into neuro surgery as a career if she fails the astronaut physical".

Same buzzard. Other parents normal pleasant and friendly.

Is this at a very pushy London pre prep/prep school by any chance? Different breed of parent there! If it is just a standard state school, it is nothing like the one my children went to. Parents were friendly but were inclined to divide into groups which were impeneterable to the outsider. I realised I was an outsider but when I did talk to parents we tended to talk about lots of things, but not our own children's progress.

don't get me wrong, they are all very pleasant and friendly at face value. Maybe i've worded it wrong, they don't just fire comparison questions at each other, it's kind of dropped into the conversations in a not so subtle 'my child is better than yours' way. It's very sad tbh.

Anyway, other than the fact that we were all having sex around the same time we have very little in common and i hate the forced conversation. So have distanced myself for that reason. It's all very fake and i don't like that.

I would do the same. But you do have friends elsewhere, dont you? So does it matter? Everyone at my local school dropped off from year 3 anyway. They all went back to work!

Ha, yes i do have friends elsewhere. i'm not a total social recluse :D

and my friends only occasionally bitch about my shoes ;-)

I say hello and smile at people then stand on my own or chat if I feel like it. I am happily antisocial though.

as you so rightly say, all you know you have in common is fairly simultaneous sex. Beyond that it is all chance. So smile, wave and leave!

Our school is odd. A mix of the friendly if a bit distant, the very stand-offish and the annoying bunch who know you one day but not the next. Fortunately there is one person there who is invariably delighted to talk to me, so I just smile, nod and chat to DS.

I am absolutely desperate for a competitive parent to ask me DS's reading level but no one has.

I have found my ds's school to be the opposite when it comes to comparison about how they're doing in terms of reading level - it's treated as a totally taboo subject! I couldn't tell you what reading level any of the other children are on. Despite this, some of the mum's (particularly in ds's class - the older classes don't seem as bad!) are quite cliquey....generally I'm too busy trying to stop my 2 year old running amok to stand and chat. I wouldn't say I'm in the "inner circle" - I try and chat to whoever is around rather than beelining for the same group all the time.

Monstrous are our kids at the same school? Sounds just like ours.

ooh, maybe louise!
I'm the one in the coat that makes me look like an Easter egg trying to sort out DS's hair while he waits in line.

The only time people started talking to me with any great interest was when my DD told her "friends" she was off to boarding school. By then I really couldn't give a *^!? what they thought! Eventually it felt like penetrating a hedge of thorns. There were pretty flowers on the outside, but getting to the inside was impossible!

There are all sorts at our small London prep, and over the years I have learnt to stir away from stay at home mums who once had a career, I think they are bonkers.

OOOh! Am I bonkers? Hope not! Maybe its people who gave up high flying careers in London.......so not me then!

Anywhere where 150 or so random people are thrown together is going to have a percentage of oddballs and meanies. It's probably a very small percentage, but seems bigger due to presence and volume. You are not weird for not becoming besties with the other mommies but you are lumping in the entire population who parents a child between the ages of 4 and 11 into a homogenous clique of mean girls, and you might miss out on some real friendships if you do that.

(Northern ex-mining town - we still get the 'what reading level' questions from some parents)