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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have had the experience of parents who really want my child to be friends with their child.  However, it doesn't really work.  When they have playdates, they don't "play" with each other.

I have also discouraged my daughter from friendships with girls who display for mean girl behavior, and so will try to sidestep those parents.  And sometimes there are parents who do not understand boundaries or have done something off putting (consistently).

What appears to be gate-keeping may just be parents who get along better and have kids with more similar interests.[/quote]

Maybe. But sometimes it's not that. We moved mid-elementary and it was hard for DD to cultivate friends because the families had their set groups and weren't interested in their kids playing with someone new. And no this was not a case of me trying to force friendships, I don't do that. This was DD meeting girls at school or via activities, having mutual interest, but then the kids are never available to get together outside of school because the families are getting together. Another thing that happened a lot was that the moms would set up camps and activities for their kids together, and since I wasn't friends with them, DD wouldn't be a part of it and it would lead to her being on the outside of stuff. Like a big group of girls from her 3rd grade class all signed up for the same sequence of camps the following summer because their moms coordinated. DD wound up in the same camps, but not at the same time. In the fall, all the girls were like "hey how come you didn't do camp with us? we didn't see you all summer." But we just didn't know.

Sure, most of this is unintentional. The other moms weren't trying to exclude my kid or our family. But if there hadn't been such a tight family clique in that cohort, things might have been more casual which would have made it easier for DD to develop friendships outside school. Instead she spent 3rd-5th mostly only having friends at school and then occasionally hanging out with friends from other settings. It was only in middle school when the kids have more control over their lives outside school that she became friends with those girls and now has actual school-based friendships. And even then, the moms were kind of standoffish. There's one mom who still talks about my DD like she is "new" to the friend group -- DD and her daughter have known each other for 5 years. It's just a closed off mentality, even if it's not on purpose.[/quote]

Why didn’t you reach out to a few of DD’s friends to see what camps they were doing? Most people don’t want to coordinate camps for 20 kids.  Be proactive next time.[/quote]

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