Kids friends religions?

[Anonymous]

Do your kids' best friends share your religion? We are a religious minority and I find my kids' friends are all over the map. However, I have a friend (more of an acquaintance really) tell me that her kids' friends are primarily from her (Protestant Christian) religion. If I had such a preference, my children would have friends. Just wondering how common religious segregation is in this area.

[Anonymous]

We're Jewish. Kids go to day school and Jewish summer camp. By virtue of location to the school, many families in our neighborhood are Jewish. We attend shul in Sat so I seek out sports teams that practice or have games on Sunday. They tend to be made up of Jewish kids. So yes, my kids best friends are Jewish.

[Anonymous]

My daughter's two best friends last year were both Muslim, one family from Pakistan and one from Iraq. This year she is at a new school and I don't know what, if any, religion her friends' families follow. Her current best friend's last name is one I assume comes from a Jewish background.

I am atheist from a practicing Catholic family and DH is Methodist, although he hasn't been to a service in years.

[Anonymous]

My son is Muslim. He has two Muslim classmates, one Jewish classmate, two evangelical Christian classmates, one mainline Protestant classmate, one catholic classmate, one Hindu classmate. (Small private school)

In the neighborhood I'd say half his friends are Muslim. One Christian. Several secular.

[Anonymous]

Why is this important?

I was raised to not care and had a small group of friends from almost all the major religions, just because we "clicked" as personalities.

I'm Hindu (an adult now), and growing up my close friends were Catholic, Muslim, Sikh and Jain.

[Anonymous]

No. We're Jewish. We just got DD's best friend an Easter basket.

[Anonymous]

We are Jewish in a non Jewish area and our kids have very few Jewish kids at school (a few mixed marriages).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are Jewish in a non Jewish area and our kids have very few Jewish kids at school (a few mixed marriages).

Same here. DS would have virtually no friends if we were a "Jewish friends only" family. His friends are mostly of Christian denominations. We do belong to a small synagogue, so we have lots of interactions with people of our culture, but we don't seek out people just because of their religion.

I grew up in Baltimore and lived in DC for almost 20 years before moving to the Midwest. It's interesting to me that my culture has become much more a part of my identity here than it was when I lived in a place with a large Jewish population. But most of my friends, too, aren't Jews.

[Anonymous]

We are Hindu . We live in jersey . Our next door neighbors are Jewish on one side , Christian the other side and have Muslim neighbors across the street . All of them have 4 kids each so my kids have a lot of friends from different backgrounds . All his friends at school are coincidentally Jewish . Their only religion right now is Minecraft

[Anonymous]

No, they are actually a mix- Jewish, Mainline Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic.....

[Anonymous]

My DD, 15, has maybe 1 Jewish friend (I say maybe, because I am not sure if they are friends anymore).

Her friends are Hindu, Buddhist, catholic, and Muslim (Sunni), and atheist. We really don't care about labels.

The only problem she has run into is with an evangelical christian mean girl. The problem is more a result of the mean girl approach.

[Anonymous]

My son has very few Jewish friends. He used to have more when we did more things as a family. Since many of my friends are from shul, many of my friends are Jewish.

If I'd wanted his life to be more Jewish, we would have taken steps like living near more Jews, sending him to Jewish camp, etc.

[Anonymous]

We sometimes joke that my kids seem to have unconsciously gone through some kind of diversity checklist when making friends over the years, because between the two of them they seem to have just about every option covered. That said, they go to Jewish overnight camp and we are very active at shul, so they both have lots of Jewish friends.

But in the category of best friends, my son's is Christian and my daughter's is Hindu. There has been lots of tagging along to religious celebrations over the years, which I think has made all of their lives richer. It helps, though, that I have become close to the parents of these friends, so it creates a sense of trust that we will all be respectful of each other when we bring our kids to these types of things.

[Anonymous]

We live in NOVA and there are a handful of other Jewish kids at our elementary school. Most kids at school and our neighborhood are Catholic or various Christian denominations. We join a synagogue and my kids attend religious school so they have some Jewish friends too.

[Anonymous]

We are in Arlington and are practicing Catholics. DD's friends are everything from Catholic to Jewish to Protestant to generally spiritual to nothing at all.