Reply to Anxiety over parent “social engineering”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I find and the "this doesn't happen" or "this is all in your head" posters interesting. It definitely does. I'm from a UMC/wealthy part of NoVa and there's always been a touch of this there, and it can be better or worse depending on the school, neighborhood, or cohort. My own parents absolutely sometimes used my brother's and my school cohorts for networking at times, andy mom was pretty open with us about who she thought we should be friends with (and it was never the kids whose dads' jobs were unknown or unimpressive).

It's just part of the culture some places. For most people in these communities, it's a feature not a bug. It's why many people choose certain neighborhoods or schools.

I don't get the posters convinced OP made it up. The bigger question for me is how OP wound up at a school like this if this culture is stressful to her. They must have stretched for a big name school without understanding the culture. It can be tough to be on the bottom rung at some of these places.[/quote]

We live in McLean. When my kids were young, sure, we hung out with parents we liked. Now they are in middle and high school and we have no influence on who they hang out with. My 7th grader especially does not care which moms I like or we have history with.[/quote]

That's fine, it may not be everyone's experience. Your children didn't go to every school or interact with every cohort of kids, nor did you interact with every cohort of parents. There *are* some schools where this behavior is prevalent and it can be stressful, especially if you are new to the community and want to see your children fitting in. That can exacerbate the impact of a dynamic where some (or many, depending on the school/cohort) families put a lot of emphasis on who the parents are when arranging the social lives of young kids.

[b]Sometimes all it takes is one or two families who are aggressive about this behavior to make it really unpleasant for others. [/b]And it can depend on the kids, too. There's a lot of dynamics at play.[/quote]

It’s not really which kids are popular or not - that’s just regular kid social dynamics. It’s the parents organizing activities, trips, get together as based on who they want their kids/families to be friends with. 
[/quote]

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