Reply to Trying to decide whether we should stay at private or go back to public

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here.  A big part of the reason why we decided to go with private school this year was because of the warm, welcoming community that the school advertises.  Well unfortunately we have not "found our people" this past year.  We did not know anyone at the school prior to going, we have attended every school-sponsored social activity, and while the other moms are pleasant at these activities, they clearly are not interested in being friends with me or being family friends.

I only have two friends outside of school, we are new to the area (moved here 5 years ago) and we have no local family.  I was really hoping that this school would be the place where we would finally "find our people" and make long-lasting friendships for both my child and us as a family.  I've invited many kids over for playdates, and these have not been reciprocated.  We hosted a few parties at our house for the class/parents, and nothing reciprocated there either.  My child was invited to one birthday party this year, and that was it--no playdates or anything.  I feel like how is my child going to build strong friendships if these friendships are only school-based?  My child is always complaining that there's not enough recess time to have fun with his friends.

When I was growing up, I also went to private school.  Every weekend a friend would be over at my house or I would be at theirs.  We made family friends at school who we did things with, even though most of these friends lived 20-30 minutes from me.  We ended up spending holidays with these families too.  Distance didn't seem to be as big of an issue back then for maintaining friendships outside of school.  Similar to my son's grade, my grade was also very small (I had 35 kids in my class).

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I think in general- private school or not- people in the DC area just aren't that big on playdates. It's incredibly frustrating because my daughter is constantly asking for friends to play with, but I think most people in this area either have too many kids to deal with playdates or they're just so overbooked with extracurricular activities that they don't have time to plan or execute playdates. The only playdates my daughter has on a consistent basis are with neighborhood friends, and any other playdates with have I host without any expectation that they will be reciprocated. I used to get so annoyed with making the effort to invite all of these kids over and never get a return invite, but now I'm just resigned to the fact that that's the way people are around here. [/quote]

This is likely true. Parents don’t have time to spend with their kids during the weekdays so they force “family time” on their kids during the weekends. [/quote]

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