Moms role in social engineering in Middle School

[Anonymous]

Re: parent's role - by high school the kids are finding their own friends and not listening to parents. I'd say the social engineering is over. If it isn't, then those kids are pretty weak and not good friend material anyway. Now parents may pressure their HS kid into certain sports/activities for the social-glory of the parent. But I think even then, within the group high schoolers are choosing their own real friends. In high school, I'd say kids assign status to others without parental interference. This was our experience in public. If it were a small private where parents and teachers mingled and if teachers promoted certain students above others, that would be different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was not popular in high school. I guess you may have considered me one of the outcasts. But it turns out that I was a late bloomer.

These kids who blossom in middle and high school can fizzle out pretty early in life. A perfect example was at age 30 I wondered into a diner. By this time I am gainfully employed in my dream job and recently married to a doctor. We sat down and who comes over to wait on us but the queen bee in high school, Patti Miller. Yes, the homecoming queen was serving me my bacon and eggs. Gotta love it.

There is no pride to be taken in becoming a late bloomer, if all that means is that you act like a Queen Bee in your 30s, rather than in your pre-teens. You sound mean now.

Agree and THAT is why these moms are way too involved in their kids social lives. They act like middle schoolers all over again themselves. Even right down to the clothes, purses, make-up etc...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:mom of single DD here. Like all generalizations I think this one has a kernel of truth, much as it kills me to admit it. Must be why almost all my mom friends are the mothers of boys only, much to DD's chagrin. "Why do all your friends have boys?" in my experience, they are more relaxed and they have less time for bs politics, which I like.

the one conflict that's come up with another mother was with a mother of 2 girls. She was a total social engineer as described previously - trying to fight her kid's battles etc. I'll go further though and say in my experience, it's mainly SAHMs of girls who social engineer and create cliques - the rest of us are too busy for that kind of bullshit.

*waits for the screams of outrage*

SAHM here. Not outraged, just kind of amused since work status doesn't seem to define the social engineer moms at our school. WOHMs, SAHMs... doesn't seem to matter. The Queen Bee factor doesn't seem to discriminate, at least not based on work status.

Mom of all boys here whose family is heavily involved in an industry that is almost exclusively girl customers.

That poster is dead wrong. This behavior by moms is VERY equally distributed between working moms and stay at home moms.

It is also equally distributed between moms of all girls and moms of mostly sons, particularly in cases where there is more than one son and only one daughter, and the girl is mom's bff and favorite.

It is equally distributed between girly girls and jock type girls. It starts around third grade, sometimes in second with the girls who are more "grown up" or worldly than their peers.

The moms least likely to do this behavior actually are moms of more than three kids. THOSE moms are the ones who are truly too busy to engage in such nonsense.

Don't kid yourself that this is a stay at home vs working mom issue

It clewrly is not.

Are you responding to me (the immediate PP) or the PP before me? Because I believe I said exactly the same thing you did - that Queen Bee moms can be either SAHMs or WOHMs.

I am agreeing with you and expanding on what you said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very sad. I teach middle school in MoCo (sick today) and it is rampant at my "W" feeder. Parents request schedule schedule changes to keep cliques together and all the Queen Bees in one class. Then I have to split up "the Squad" whenever we have group work or nothing gets accomplished except idle chatter and mean gossip. As a result, I get emails saying "Larla, Larlina, and Larlette are really upset that you won't let the work together. They have been BFFs since they were in pre-school and over the years have developed a very special way of working together. Having to adjust to other group members' learning styles cost all three girls a lot of valuable work time today."

Oh wow. This just makes me sick. I wonder if this is going on in our elementary school too, because I notice the same Queen Bee girls in the same classes, year after year. I hope that you shut down those parents somehow. How arrogant. Those girls should be paired up with other girls they've never spoken to before. And the school should stop arranging schedule requests for cliques.

What dumb parents for not realizing that kids usually learn better when separated from friends. I've never made a scheduling request because 1) it's an obnoxious thing to do and 2) I trust DD's teachers to separate her from friends if they learn better apart. DD is at a W feeder school and I've heard such engineering happens. But I've never experienced it firsthand because we just don't bother with parents who engage in that kind of behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very sad. I teach middle school in MoCo (sick today) and it is rampant at my "W" feeder. Parents request schedule schedule changes to keep cliques together and all the Queen Bees in one class. Then I have to split up "the Squad" whenever we have group work or nothing gets accomplished except idle chatter and mean gossip. As a result, I get emails saying "Larla, Larlina, and Larlette are really upset that you won't let the work together. They have been BFFs since they were in pre-school and over the years have developed a very special way of working together. Having to adjust to other group members' learning styles cost all three girls a lot of valuable work time today."

OMG, the world has gone insane and some one should put a pillow over the head of these mothers

[Anonymous]

There is definitely a contingent of moms that engineer the social scene at Williamsburg. The girls mostly play a travel sport and the moms enjoy their daughters successes vicariously. My DD is in this group loosely and I do everything I can to support her less convenient friendships outside of this small elitist group since I don't think it is the making life long friendships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The class/caste system is alive and well in America. Its so un-American too. We fought to do away with this, didn't we?

Given that we enshrined the owning of people in the US Constitution, I would say that no, we didn't.

Thanks for the ignorant statement of the day.

I agree. PP, where is that in the Constitution?

[Anonymous]

"1000. They are bat shit crazy. I wish they could see how ridiculous they are. It sucks that you're still finding it in MS, OP. It will stop sometime - these parents can't arrange their kids' college experience to be just so.

The point of the article is be the parent who encourages your kid to be inclusive, which is a great message. Also, when your child is left out, teach them strategies to cope. The kids of the social engineers are not going to have any idea how to live as adults in a society in which mom doesn't make things happen for them. Your child will."

Bingo... Bat Shit Crazy.... It amazes me how oblivious some are to this.... Also, how did this thread get twisted into a slavery discussion and the founding fathers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The class/caste system is alive and well in America. Its so un-American too. We fought to do away with this, didn't we?

Given that we enshrined the owning of people in the US Constitution, I would say that no, we didn't.

Thanks for the ignorant statement of the day.

I agree. PP, where is that in the Constitution?

Three fifths clause? Though I wouldn't say that the clause enshrines the owning of people. Recognizes that it was a fact of life at the time yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The class/caste system is alive and well in America. Its so un-American too. We fought to do away with this, didn't we?

Given that we enshrined the owning of people in the US Constitution, I would say that no, we didn't.

Thanks for the ignorant statement of the day.

I agree. PP, where is that in the Constitution?

Three-fifths clause: http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/6/three-fifths-clause
Slave trade clause: http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/60/slave-trade
Fugitive slave clause: http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/4/essays/124/fugitive-slave-clause
Prohibition on amendment about slave trade: http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/5/essays/130/prohibition-on-amendment-slave-trade

[Anonymous]

Very sad thing is when the public school allows and encourages social engineering. In my town of Oradell NJ the " cool" moms and their "cool" children were able to set up the class and choose their teacher every year from kindergarten through sixth grade. The principal was a weak and sorry man who denied this was happening, but it was happening beyond any doubt! My sons were never in that group and that was fine with me, they did very well, and I was not interested in being part of such a group of women. . The fact that the school ran that way wais so ugly, and it was ugly. The students who had working parents or patents that were not involved got onto the " worst" class with the "worst " teacher.

[Anonymous]

Very sad thing is when the public school allows and encourages social engineering. In my town of Oradell NJ the " cool" moms and their "cool" children were able to set up the class and choose their teacher every year from kindergarten through sixth grade. The principal was a weak and sorry man who denied this was happening, but it was happening beyond any doubt! My sons were never in that group and that was fine with me, they did very well, and I was not interested in being part of such a group of women. . The fact that the school ran that way was beyond wrong and it was ugly. The students who had working parents or parents that were not involved got onto the " worst" class with the "worst " teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was not popular in high school. I guess you may have considered me one of the outcasts. But it turns out that I was a late bloomer.

These kids who blossom in middle and high school can fizzle out pretty early in life. A perfect example was at age 30 I wondered into a diner. By this time I am gainfully employed in my dream job and recently married to a doctor. We sat down and who comes over to wait on us but the queen bee in high school, Patti Miller. Yes, the homecoming queen was serving me my bacon and eggs. Gotta love it.

Not always. My experience has been that those girls I knew who were pretty and popular in middle and high school were still pretty in their 30's and went on to have successful careers. I wasn't popular but wasn't an outcast more just an afterthought and I have run into some girls from high school over the years. They turned out to be nice, normal, pretty, high achieving women.

^^^Signed, Mom of a Queen Bee

NP here. I think that the "nasty" popular girls have fizzled out, but all of the outgoing and good-looking "popular" people from my high school, who weren't necessarily "mean" but definitely part of the in crowd, have been super duper successful. At least from what I can tell on LinkedIn and FB and at class reunions.

[Anonymous]

This whole thread makes me so thankful that I went to an all-girls high school with a very laid back class. We just did not do that stuff. (That's not to say it doesn't happen in single sex environments as my younger sister's class was an entirely different story.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Broad generalization, but rings true in my life; beware the mom of all girls or just one girl.

I have two girls with a boy in the middle. Somehow a DS brings some balance and sanity.

In thinking about my close "mom friends" those I've met through preschool, ES, MS and now HS, all have at least one DS.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the Queen Bee moms of all girls are the biggest social engineers - and this encompasses their own social life; are very cliquish themselves.

If gender plays into this at all I'd bet you'd see a stronger correlations with the gender of the Mom's siblings rather than their children.

I've got only girls and am about as far from a social engineer as it's possible to get. But I've also got a brother and no sisters and am a bit of a tomboy. And I think having a brother had far more to do with shaping who I am as a mother than the fact that my kids happened to be girls.

This could be. I have lots of brothers and two boys; I have no idea what these people are talking about. To me it like this thread is about a bad teen movie and not real life at all.

If you had girls, you would know that this phenomenon is, sadly, very real.

I've seen it with boys too. I think it's less prevalent with boys, but as a mom of 2 sons (and 2 daughters) I have definitely seen the stereotypical "cool kids" and their "cool moms" pulling the same sh*t as what the teacher PP talked about at her W middle school.

Especially when sports are involved, boy moms can be equally as catty and ridiculous as girl moms.