Ds's wealthy friends!

[user1483390742]

My son (Y8) goes to a grammar school with many wealthy kids there.
We are a comfortable 2 income graduate family and earn well. Live in a fab 4 bed Victorian house.
My son has made friends with some incredibly wealthy boys at school ( think swimming pools, 2 x range rovers in the drive, 3x foreign holidays per year) and has never brought any of them them home as i know he is ashamed of our home! He has been to their houses many times for sleepovers/afternoons in the pool, but won't return the invite. He says there's nothing to do here! I have tried to explain to him that money/houses/cars shouldn't be important if they are real friends, but he just gives me 'a look'!
It makes me so sad that he is ashamed of our lovely home! I'm sure the other parents must be thinking it's odd that we have never invited their children over!

OP, if it makes you feel any better I went through a phase like that. I was a scholarship girl, was being teased a bit and was just so desperate to fit in. I think my accent even changed in an act of unconscious self preservation! It wore off though. Is he feeling a bit uncertain? Xx

Several of our neighbours have swimming pools. A few of our friends in the village have tennis courts. Almost all the children in our village go to the village primary and then on to the local comprehensive.

I'm sure ds's much richer friends from school come to our house partly because of its proximity to the rec where they play football for hours, then come back to ours for pizza.

I think he's at the age when you are desperate to be just like your friends and nothing else will do. I remember being the opposite of your son and being embarrassed that my parents had done multiple extensions on our house and it looked too "posh" which in hindsight they had worked very hard to pay for

I was more embarrassed by the fact that my mums house was really messy than I was. G the fact that we didn't have range rovers.

I remember visiting my husbands house (we met as teens) and being blown away fancy cars, pools multiple overseas holidays.

We can barely afford our two very old secound hand cars so our kids will
Not be raised like he was. He thinks it's great - I would like the holidays!!

From my own grammar days we tended to just muddle through. One of my friends only ever had one friend to stay at a time because she had 5 siblings in a 4 bed house so there wasn't the room.
I had plenty of room for sleepovers in a variety of rooms but we tended to go elsewhere for the open plan spaces and with parents who had less strict rules on smoking and drinking!
We had three regular hosts covering the full financial range at our grammars (separate boys and girls). All had a large open plan space where we could all 'sleep' together. Two were in the middle of nowhere, one was a normal suburban house.
This isn't a grammar problem it's a teenager problem.
For what it's worth as a teacher married to a policeman, I'm not sure I'll be hosting a huge number of visitors!

A couple of my kids' friends never invite them to their houses as there is 'nothing to do' or 'too small' - they always come here or meet out instead. This totally comes from them & not us, we certainly don't live in a big house - I'd call it a decent-sized 3-bed with small garden.

And as a teen my house was the party house, sleepovers etc in a 3-bed semi. I think it was cos my mum was pretty lenient and we were essentially good kids.