Mom Cliques. I had no idea.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The worst part is OP its making it unnecessarily hard for her kid(s) to socialize. And even if your kids are prefectly nice, one wants to engage with the Red Flag Mama [/quote]

Red Flag Mamas are a hard no for me. Their kids can be really nice but I only let my kids play with them at school because I don't want to have to coordinate a playdate with RFM.[/quote]

Nice projection, Red Flag “Mama”!

p.s.: Mama? Really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you made unnecessarily awkward. People are allowed to meet up without you. If you had just been friendly and not made an issue of it, you might have been invited to the next one.

See I’m not hearing that at all. sounds like the knew they were being exclusionary and it was obvious. If anything cracking a joke about it diffuses the awareness.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you made unnecessarily awkward. People are allowed to meet up without you. If you had just been friendly and not made an issue of it, you might have been invited to the next one.

See I’m not hearing that at all. sounds like the knew they were being exclusionary and it was obvious. If anything cracking a joke about it diffuses the awareness.

+1

She could have just let it roll off her back and been as unbothered as she claims.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really just trying to understand. What makes a friend group "cliquey"? It seems like by definition any friend group would not include everyone. It also seems expected that some people in any friend group will (one hopes) have friends outside the friend group. So if you have a friend who is in a different friend group than you, and doesn't invite you when that friend group gets together, is that automatically "cliquey"?

I think clique status depends a little bit on how people conduct themselves within the broader group. If you have a setting with a large group of people (an office, a school community, etc.), of course some people are going to form friendships within the bigger group and will sometimes get together with those friends without inviting others. I don't think that's cliquey by itself. But how that group conducts itself when they are with the rest of the community could be cliquey. Things like:

- A group of friends in an office who talk about their weekend or evening outings in front of others, or who only ever want to work with people in their friend group

- A group of moms on the PTA who don't invite other parents to volunteer and just do all the events with just one another. Or, in OP's case, if the women who get together for these Friday outings often talk about them in front of her without inviting her (unclear if that happens)

I also think that if a friend group encompasses almost everyone in the broader community except a few people, it's cliquey not to just invite those few people. You might not like it because there might be reasons you find those people annoying or not as fun. But then form a smaller group. If there are 20 moms in the neighborhood who all send their kids to the same school, getting together with 15 of them but not inviting the other 5 is cliquey even if you have a reason not to want to invite them. People still do it, but don't be surprised when it the people who were excluded then dislike you or feel hurt because duh.

The only information we have is they all have kids at the same school. This doesn’t sound like everyone on her street but her, all the other girl moms in the class, all the team moms but her, all the PTA moms but one, etc. 15 moms from one school means a whole lot of people were excluded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you made unnecessarily awkward. People are allowed to meet up without you. If you had just been friendly and not made an issue of it, you might have been invited to the next one.

See I’m not hearing that at all. sounds like the knew they were being exclusionary and it was obvious. If anything cracking a joke about it diffuses the awareness.

+1

She could have just let it roll off her back and been as unbothered as she claims.

She could’ve done a backflip with corks in her ears too, but this is irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

Everyone’s being a little hard on OP. I can imagine scenarios where it would be clearly clique-y - what if half of that group is at the OPs bus stop or some other type of group, where they all planned something together & saw OP that morning but did not extend the invite? We don’t know the details, if OP feels there was an awkwardness about it, I believe her.

No, you don’t have to invite everyone to everything. But there are people who can be clique-ish, & this may be one of those situations. It can be tricky navigating adult friendship groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really just trying to understand. What makes a friend group "cliquey"? It seems like by definition any friend group would not include everyone. It also seems expected that some people in any friend group will (one hopes) have friends outside the friend group. So if you have a friend who is in a different friend group than you, and doesn't invite you when that friend group gets together, is that automatically "cliquey"?

I think clique status depends a little bit on how people conduct themselves within the broader group. If you have a setting with a large group of people (an office, a school community, etc.), of course some people are going to form friendships within the bigger group and will sometimes get together with those friends without inviting others. I don't think that's cliquey by itself. But how that group conducts itself when they are with the rest of the community could be cliquey. Things like:

- A group of friends in an office who talk about their weekend or evening outings in front of others, or who only ever want to work with people in their friend group

- A group of moms on the PTA who don't invite other parents to volunteer and just do all the events with just one another. Or, in OP's case, if the women who get together for these Friday outings often talk about them in front of her without inviting her (unclear if that happens)

I also think that if a friend group encompasses almost everyone in the broader community except a few people, it's cliquey not to just invite those few people. You might not like it because there might be reasons you find those people annoying or not as fun. But then form a smaller group. If there are 20 moms in the neighborhood who all send their kids to the same school, getting together with 15 of them but not inviting the other 5 is cliquey even if you have a reason not to want to invite them. People still do it, but don't be surprised when it the people who were excluded then dislike you or feel hurt because duh.

The only information we have is they all have kids at the same school. This doesn’t sound like everyone on her street but her, all the other girl moms in the class, all the team moms but her, all the PTA moms but one, etc. 15 moms from one school means a whole lot of people were excluded.

DP. It very much sounds like something similar.

[Anonymous]

I’ve gotten to the point in my life and self acceptance that I honestly don’t care if my kids’ friends’ moms are hanging out without me. I’d rather not anyway. As long as my kid is included. That’s the part that sucks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone’s being a little hard on OP. I can imagine scenarios where it would be clearly clique-y - what if half of that group is at the OPs bus stop or some other type of group, where they all planned something together & saw OP that morning but did not extend the invite? We don’t know the details, if OP feels there was an awkwardness about it, I believe her.

No, you don’t have to invite everyone to everything. But there are people who can be clique-ish, & this may be one of those situations. It can be tricky navigating adult friendship groups.

+1 Except that she has people on her side too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really just trying to understand. What makes a friend group "cliquey"? It seems like by definition any friend group would not include everyone. It also seems expected that some people in any friend group will (one hopes) have friends outside the friend group. So if you have a friend who is in a different friend group than you, and doesn't invite you when that friend group gets together, is that automatically "cliquey"?

I think clique status depends a little bit on how people conduct themselves within the broader group. If you have a setting with a large group of people (an office, a school community, etc.), of course some people are going to form friendships within the bigger group and will sometimes get together with those friends without inviting others. I don't think that's cliquey by itself. But how that group conducts itself when they are with the rest of the community could be cliquey. Things like:

- A group of friends in an office who talk about their weekend or evening outings in front of others, or who only ever want to work with people in their friend group

- A group of moms on the PTA who don't invite other parents to volunteer and just do all the events with just one another. Or, in OP's case, if the women who get together for these Friday outings often talk about them in front of her without inviting her (unclear if that happens)

I also think that if a friend group encompasses almost everyone in the broader community except a few people, it's cliquey not to just invite those few people. You might not like it because there might be reasons you find those people annoying or not as fun. But then form a smaller group. If there are 20 moms in the neighborhood who all send their kids to the same school, getting together with 15 of them but not inviting the other 5 is cliquey even if you have a reason not to want to invite them. People still do it, but don't be surprised when it the people who were excluded then dislike you or feel hurt because duh.

The only information we have is they all have kids at the same school. This doesn’t sound like everyone on her street but her, all the other girl moms in the class, all the team moms but her, all the PTA moms but one, etc. 15 moms from one school means a whole lot of people were excluded.

+1

OP, you need to arrange you own group, and stop worrying so much about who is doing what without you, OP. Chances are, you are not missing anything at all. If you think you are, arrange your own group for coffee, tea, drinks, dinner, whatever. Why is that so difficult? You are an adult - time to adult!

As long as your intent is good and not devious, sneaky, underhanded, manipulative, etc.

Some moms are just social, and accustomed to being around big groups of low-drama people. OTOH, some (other) moms want to be included to align their kids up with certain other kids, or maybe slide their kid in where someone else's kid might be (to the other kid's detriment). Or sometimes they let someone else be invited/slide in that would not get along with an original invitee, and cause unnecessary drama, because they like drama, whether or not they admit it.

I have seen both, and the moms that do (the latter) inevitably feign oblivious, but tend to fault others for imaginary slights or grievances. THAT would be really low, OP. As long as that is not your intention, as long as your intentions are good (and not looking for drama), go ahead and socialize to your heart's desire!

You have to control your own life, no one else is going to arrange your social calendar for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, if I had any connection to these women, I would have been a little upset, too. These cliques, groups, friendships, what have you, are largely of convenience because the only thing you have in common is your kids. My real friends are those I’ve had for years and through work and other interests. I can’t tell you how many “mom friends” can’t muster up a simple hello once the kids have grown.

I agree, but I find this fascinating, truly. What is this about, exactly? Are people so socially stunted in this area?? Because it strikes me as particularly odd. I don't need anything from a MLM mom, just saying hi, that's it, nothing more. You know, like normal humans do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you made unnecessarily awkward. People are allowed to meet up without you. If you had just been friendly and not made an issue of it, you might have been invited to the next one.

See I’m not hearing that at all. sounds like the knew they were being exclusionary and it was obvious. If anything cracking a joke about it diffuses the awareness.

How many people have to be invited to not be exclusionary? The whole class? Entire grade? All school? What is the rule here you seem to be applying?

Calm down, Sheila.

Wow, why did you choose that name? it sounds like you have a personal target and personal vendetta.

Fascinating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like you made unnecessarily awkward. People are allowed to meet up without you. If you had just been friendly and not made an issue of it, you might have been invited to the next one.

See I’m not hearing that at all. sounds like the knew they were being exclusionary and it was obvious. If anything cracking a joke about it diffuses the awareness.

How many people have to be invited to not be exclusionary? The whole class? Entire grade? All school? What is the rule here you seem to be applying?

Calm down, Sheila.

Wow, why did you choose that name? it sounds like you have a personal target and personal vendetta.

Fascinating.

Or they're Australian

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a great mom clique story. Gather round.

When my DD was in 1st grade, she moved to a new school. This is in DC, where school starts at PK, so by 1st, there are a lot of established family relationships at school. This was also a neighborhood school, and we got in out of bounds via lottery, so were "outsiders."

There was a pretty tight clique of women on the PTA. Normally I would avoid something like that, but the core five women all had kids in my child's grade, including three who had daughters in my child's class. Of course my DD became friends with their DDs. So I was going to be interacting with them no matter what.

I sucked it up, joined the PTA, and decided to kill them with kindness. I volunteered for things, was always friendly. They made it as hard as possible. Or, some of them did. One of them was actually nice and welcoming. But two were absolute jerks. One simply refused to learn my name or my kid's name for that whole first year. This was someone we saw DAILY and our kids were friends. Another one was not that extreme, but would just look right through me all the time, or would come up while I was talking to another parent and start a conversation with them with her back turned to me. Just major rudeness. The message was clear -- you are not one of us.

Then towards the end of that first year, they were doing the annual fundraising auction for the school. They were putting out requests for people to get local businesses to donate to the auction. Well, since none of these women had bothered to get to know me at all, they didn't know that I sit on the board of a local business association and have a ton of contacts with local restaurants and retailers, including some pretty big, popular names. I was able to put together about 20 auction packages to very popular local businesses in like three days, worth close to 20k. These wound up being some of the hottest items at the auction, and the event wound up raising over twice what it had raised the year before.

Suddenly all those women were my best friends. Or thought they were. For my DD's sake, I played nice but always kept them at arms length. We did playdates and I continued to help out with the PTA, volunteer for classroom stuff, etc. But I didn't socialize with them beyond small talk at school stuff, and when they started inviting me to moms nights out and other social events (things I'd mysteriously never been invited to before) I politely declined. They also tried to get me to run for an open role on the PTA, and I politely turned that down too -- I was happy to help out the school as a volunteer but I wanted to maintain the ability to no participate in things.

It all turned out fine in the end. My DD did not maintain friendships with those girls past elementary, largely because we lived in a different neighborhood and then DD went to a different middle school. It was easier to navigate the school once the ice broke with that group. But I never forgot that first year and how unpleasant most of those women were towards me, nor how quickly they changed their tune when they realized I was connected and could be useful to them.

A bit off topic, but I am very interested in interpretation and frequency at which people see the bolded when interacting with the grown ups. I grew up outside of the United States and have never seen a grown up enter the conversation of a group of adults and start a new topic with their back turned to another person and then continue to ignore that person. There was plenty of other rude behavior where I come from , just never observed this one and never heard anyone else mention it until I saw PP’s post.

The thing is, this has been happening to our family by a single family of neighbors ever since we moved in a long time ago. They seem nice and friendly enough one-on-one, but the moment another neighbor enters, they turn their back and exclude us as if we are not present. Even after so many years, the behavior continues. I find the behavior shockingly rude and don’t get why someone would this.

Please don’t take my next question wrong, plenty of rudeness (and nothing too peachy either) from the place where I was born. I am just genuinely curious whether this is something that has a bigger message in United States or is this a simple case of people showing they don’t like you in a rude manner. Like I said, I’ve never seen or experienced or even heard about this before until I read PP’s comment (yes, as one off, but not as a habitual treatment).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a great mom clique story. Gather round.

When my DD was in 1st grade, she moved to a new school. This is in DC, where school starts at PK, so by 1st, there are a lot of established family relationships at school. This was also a neighborhood school, and we got in out of bounds via lottery, so were "outsiders."

There was a pretty tight clique of women on the PTA. Normally I would avoid something like that, but the core five women all had kids in my child's grade, including three who had daughters in my child's class. Of course my DD became friends with their DDs. So I was going to be interacting with them no matter what.

I sucked it up, joined the PTA, and decided to kill them with kindness. I volunteered for things, was always friendly. They made it as hard as possible. Or, some of them did. One of them was actually nice and welcoming. But two were absolute jerks. One simply refused to learn my name or my kid's name for that whole first year. This was someone we saw DAILY and our kids were friends. Another one was not that extreme, but would just look right through me all the time, or would come up while I was talking to another parent and start a conversation with them with her back turned to me. Just major rudeness. The message was clear -- you are not one of us.

Then towards the end of that first year, they were doing the annual fundraising auction for the school. They were putting out requests for people to get local businesses to donate to the auction. Well, since none of these women had bothered to get to know me at all, they didn't know that I sit on the board of a local business association and have a ton of contacts with local restaurants and retailers, including some pretty big, popular names. I was able to put together about 20 auction packages to very popular local businesses in like three days, worth close to 20k. These wound up being some of the hottest items at the auction, and the event wound up raising over twice what it had raised the year before.

Suddenly all those women were my best friends. Or thought they were. For my DD's sake, I played nice but always kept them at arms length. We did playdates and I continued to help out with the PTA, volunteer for classroom stuff, etc. But I didn't socialize with them beyond small talk at school stuff, and when they started inviting me to moms nights out and other social events (things I'd mysteriously never been invited to before) I politely declined. They also tried to get me to run for an open role on the PTA, and I politely turned that down too -- I was happy to help out the school as a volunteer but I wanted to maintain the ability to no participate in things.

It all turned out fine in the end. My DD did not maintain friendships with those girls past elementary, largely because we lived in a different neighborhood and then DD went to a different middle school. It was easier to navigate the school once the ice broke with that group. But I never forgot that first year and how unpleasant most of those women were towards me, nor how quickly they changed their tune when they realized I was connected and could be useful to them.

I don’t get it. You joined pta, you and your kid were included in most things. You feel one woman was rude. What’s with there to see?