Schools friends decided by parent cliques!!!

[southerngirl10]

I'm an older mum. I remember when I was in Primary School and mum would hardly attend school - and I WOULD CHOOSE MY OWN FRIENDS!

These days, sadly, seem to be gone. Now it's all parent cliques. Parents bond in the playground or get to know each other in or outside of school and their children become friends.

This is how I see it. Am I wrong? I hope I am.

I would like to hear from other parents who think of their children first and ask them who their friends are in school and who THEY would like to play with or be friends with.

I see parents who think another parent is cool and they want to be friends with that parent at school so they get the children together.

SHOULDN'T THE CHILDREN DECIDE. SHOULDN'T THE PARENTS STAY OUT OF IT!

When will it all end? Do parents step back a little in High School? Or do we have the parents with the biggest family group, the most money or the best job, dictating the popularity stakes in our school classes!

Get lost pickle.

I never said it never happened. Of course it does. Sometimes . I said it wasn't the norm/general/didn't always happen, which is what some people had implied. That it was standard. Which isn't not.

I wasn’t rude to you, you don’t need to speak to me like a piece of shit.

So only your experience is the norm. Ok then.

Christ. You are hard work!

Where did I say My experience is the norm?

Nope. Didn't.

Im not just referring to me, my friends experiences, the 100's and 100's of threads I've read on mn.

I stand by what I said. OP's experience is not unheard of, does happen, but is not the norm.

Not right. Not as it should be.

Stop nit-picking!!

Yes.

Ok.

Your

Writing voice

Makes

Complete and

Angry

Sense

When read In a

Very manic and

Agressive

Tone!!!

I get

It now!!!

Happy new year and have a glass of bubbly, it might calm you down

There are cliques. I think people are lucky if there are not! I can see exactly where you are coming from OP and PickleRick.

My DDs didn’t go to the right nursery or attend church and they were certainly not included by the parents of some children. Neither was I.

My elder DD was positively excluded in fact. This left fewer children to play with and it was very difficult when parties came around and she wasn’t invited. One year she was invited to two parties in a year of 66 children. 20 came to her party. She knew she was excluded as she wasn’t stupid. She was pretty intelligent and that’s actually how the parents split - those who “knew”
their DC would pass the 11 plus and those with good university degree level jobs - and churchgoers plus a few wannabes. It didn’t get any better until y6. My DD got higher 11 plus marks than all the clique children but we all wanted to escape by then and DD went to boarding school where parents were surprisingly clique free and normal!

By about the point they're moving between infants and juniors it all seems to level out a bit - it's that age range where things like Beavers and Brownies start to kick in and move friendships a bit away from the classroom door and it's that point where personalities of the children assert themselves over those of their parents somewhat. DD1 is naturally less socially adept than her younger sister and it's happening now that the kids are calling the friendship shots themselves, whereas DD2's age group are very much still at the "oh you really want to go to X's for tea don't you darling... I need to have a chat and catchup with my mate"

Hoping the barriers break down with DD2's cohort sooner rather than later though cos there are a fair few kids where friendships are starting to emerge and being foiled by the parental clique (and yes we've done the whole suggesting playdates lark but they want to keep socialising to their little group of mums).

Sometimes you just get a really crappy combination of parents on the school playground for a particular year though as well (sometimes you get the combination of personalities from hell inside the classroom as well for a particular year!) and then it's just a case of grit teeth, smile, drop and run.

Takes time as well though - it's taken a year and a half for me to fully work into the parent crowd for one of my kids' year groups and, like I say, we still have a lot of issues with the other year group - and that's despite me doing a lot around school to get to know people.

I think children will make their own friends regardless of parents. Parents influence who their child mixes with socially outside of school but these may not be the children their child chooses to play with at school or in activity groups.

it happens in infants, changes in juniors, kids choose their own then.

The major three players at our school had children who all went to the same university! They never separated! They don’t work together but the clique ran deep!

There was another defining element I forgot earlier. The parents were all living in detached houses, all the husbands were not at the top of their careers and needed to make one last move up to the top rung. None were self employed. They all thought they would be soon be very high earners and were special and, that their children were very intelligent and equally special. Basically they were wannabes and snobs.

We had plenty of money, other parents had way less than us, but the children could still be friends. These others separated themselves out. They couldn’t even accept being beaten in the school quiz! Apparently they all had degrees so how was it they didn’t win? They actually said this within earshot of our table. Utterly entitled!

In the end I really couldn’t waste my time or energy trying to be part of this. It’s ugly and unfriendly. If it has taken s year, was it worth it?

Definately not from year 2 onwards

It was like that for my cousin in her kids school. It was a small class and of the 8 girls 6 of their mums were in a big clique so two of them were completely left out. There is an element of it in my dc's school but lessening over time. Mainly two mums who are good friends and determined their kids will be best friends (buy 'best friends' cards for each other even though they both play more with other kids). I'm hoping it will continue to tone down over time.

Sadly it is a thing at some schools. We were unfortunate to experience it all through junior school. If you wanted to be in on a clique you needed to accept the pecking order and the queen bees that ran it. Whilst I would have rolled my eyes what really bothered me was how it played out (toxic) amongst the children and I didn't feel it was a good message to send to my children about making friends. So we opted out.

Luckily it wasn't so obvious at secondary so the children had more autonomy although some parent groups did travel up from juniors into secondary together. Fortunately there were so many more children at secondary that their influence was diluted.

I do see it with some in my children’s class but it’s certainly not anything I enforce. I let my children decide who to play with and who to spend time with. My youngest is in a class with a close friend of mine but whilst they play together well when we meet up they don’t play together at school as they have different groups of friends. I don’t push it at all as they have their own minds.

I lived in a very clique area - children made their own friends but we could never arrange anything outside school for most of their friends.

I was glad we'd had children close together so they had playmates and later they did clubs and classes.

I was pleased when we moved to get away from DS year’s clique – they weren’t nice at all – being nasty about other children and excluding one or two at class parties. It wasn't such a problem for my other two children - was just a very bad year group with him.

I'm finding it a bit the same as the OP. There's a big friendship group in my daughters class and their mums seem to be friends... I don't know if the mums /children knew each other previously. We are new to the area we're in now and like the OP am an older mum and we went to primary school on the bus, our parents had no involvement with the school at all save the occasional school fair and parent evening.

My mum used to try and force me to be friends with other children based on the parents, or not friends with if she wasn’t keen on their parents. I wasn’t allowed to go to a birthday party once as she didn’t like the Mum. Felt like I was never allowed to make my own decisions and friends and I ended up being a complete loner because the people I got on most with my mum stopped me from seeing. Yes, I know that sounds terrible, I have actually turned out a very nice person.

When I started year 7, I met this nice girl but she was in foster care due to various reasons. We got on really well but my mother said I shouldn’t be friends with her.
Luckily DS’s school isn’t overly cliquey and everyone is lovely.

DD is at pre school and I find the children are friends with based on who the mums are friends with and who meets up with who but I guess at that age it’s a bit different! But I don’t know many of the mums, DD also has mild additional needs but I feel like she’s left out of everything already! There is only 1 or 2 that have included us and I am forever grateful!

I'd say it's parents making friends with other parents/working at the same.place to be honest. The kids make friends with other kids but because the work life culture line is so varied it's just not possible for parents to sometimes agree a play date etc.