Reply to Anxiety over parent “social engineering”

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[quote=Anonymous]Our school is like this. Each grade’s cohort differs a bit into how many parents play this game, but no grade seems to be immune to it and since it’s a prek-8 it reverberates through middle school.

I stay out of it. My DD went through all of last year with just 1 play date at her request, and has hosted and joined 3 this year. There are 3-4 moms who are running constant playdates or big group events. When they are big group events, my DD is always invited but chooses to attend less than half the time. She is secure and confident in her friendships now, but we both felt overwhelmed in K-2nd grade. I don’t like my entire social life being wrapped up in school parents and she struggled to balance her neighborhood and activity friendships with the school social FOMO.

Eventually I realized that a lot of these people don’t actually like each other but have decided that because of their various attributes (specific streets they live on, vacation destinations, grandparents’ social status, careers) that they “should” be friends. Both DD and I are relieved to just hang out with who we want when we want. The consequences so far have been more for me than for her- I don’t get invited to adult cocktail and dinner parties, but DD has plenty of social opportunities regardless of whether I play along. We’re content.[/quote]

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