I wouldn’t call Girl Scouts or swim team “cliques”. They are just activities where you may or may not make long term friends. If anything, it’s a very good way to expose your daughter to new friends and girls, who she may not normally befriend in a classroom or neighborhood setting. Just like with any other life experience, there may or may not be cliques within these groups, but these groups in and of themselves are not cliques.

Lead not load

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summer swim team cliques are a thing in May and September at our school. Very few kids in our area do summer swimming because of long wait lists by us, save for a group of local parents who have inherited sponsored country club memberships. That group gets really excited about themselves in K-3rd grade but it wears off quickly.

As for Girl Scouts, it’s the opposite of a clique. We have a troop at our school that is multiage and always begging for new members. It’s a fun activity that people just aren’t into in our school community. But at some schools it becomes a big mom-led clique, because troops are completely led by volunteers. Sometimes those volunteers use adult:child ratios and other bureaucratic hurdles that officially exist for safety reasons but twist them for their own purposes. They to will “close” a troop to newcomers so they don’t have to lead difficult girls, girls their daughters aren’t friends with, or girls whose parents they don’t like.

OP here. We are members of a country club but none of the kids at our school are members. If we did swim team, we would join the local neighborhood pool team.

I would like to join Girl Scouts but there isn’t a troop for kindergarten. In the upper grades, I often see large groups of Girl Scouts hanging out together.

You can ask the leaders if they’d be willing to make the troop multi-level if you load the Daisies, or coordinate a “sister troop” with a Daisy troop you start. I bet some of the Brownies have younger siblings that would join a Daisy troop.

I love swim team - we're in Reston so we have the community pools and we have the best time in the summer. The coaches and older kids are so awesome with the younger ones, I love that there is such an age variance and the little kids are just as much a part of the team as the teenagers. It gets my kids up and exercising every day - we can bike to our pool together and I also get to socialize with my mom friends at the daily 8am practices.

It's definitely the most "social" of the sports teams that we're involved in (and we've tried quite a few sports!). We do have family friends that play with my kids on other teams, but swim is by far the most social and fun.

We aren't involved in scouts.

100 percent Girl Scouts is non existent after elementary school and my daughter loved being a Girl Scout in elementary and had great friends in her troop but many other friends who weren’t interested and did not participate in scouts. Don’t worry about Girl Scouts and swim team and just sign her up for an activity with other kids in her grade. All you have to do is ask fellow parents of the kids in her grades what programs they are doing and sign your child up. Right now it’s more about social interaction and giving your child the opportunity to see what they enjoy outside of school academics. These groups or cliques go away and come back each year but eventually the kids realize who they are the closest to by 5th and 4th grade which are hard times for many who were forced by their parents to join so and so team or troop just to make sure their child is with the “cool” kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summer swim team cliques are a thing in May and September at our school. Very few kids in our area do summer swimming because of long wait lists by us, save for a group of local parents who have inherited sponsored country club memberships. That group gets really excited about themselves in K-3rd grade but it wears off quickly.

As for Girl Scouts, it’s the opposite of a clique. We have a troop at our school that is multiage and always begging for new members. It’s a fun activity that people just aren’t into in our school community. But at some schools it becomes a big mom-led clique, because troops are completely led by volunteers. Sometimes those volunteers use adult:child ratios and other bureaucratic hurdles that officially exist for safety reasons but twist them for their own purposes. They to will “close” a troop to newcomers so they don’t have to lead difficult girls, girls their daughters aren’t friends with, or girls whose parents they don’t like.

OP here. We are members of a country club but none of the kids at our school are members. If we did swim team, we would join the local neighborhood pool team.

I would like to join Girl Scouts but there isn’t a troop for kindergarten. In the upper grades, I often see large groups of Girl Scouts hanging out together.

You might not like this option, but usually the only way to get a troop is to start one. Each troop is a standalone unit, unlike scouts for boys, so there isn’t any ongoing structure that can just pop a troop up for a grade of newly interested girls.

If you do decide to start a troop, the Reddit subreddit for Girl Scouts is helpful and your local Service Unit probably runs a very helpful FB group, too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summer swim team cliques are a thing in May and September at our school. Very few kids in our area do summer swimming because of long wait lists by us, save for a group of local parents who have inherited sponsored country club memberships. That group gets really excited about themselves in K-3rd grade but it wears off quickly.

As for Girl Scouts, it’s the opposite of a clique. We have a troop at our school that is multiage and always begging for new members. It’s a fun activity that people just aren’t into in our school community. But at some schools it becomes a big mom-led clique, because troops are completely led by volunteers. Sometimes those volunteers use adult:child ratios and other bureaucratic hurdles that officially exist for safety reasons but twist them for their own purposes. They to will “close” a troop to newcomers so they don’t have to lead difficult girls, girls their daughters aren’t friends with, or girls whose parents they don’t like.

OP here. We are members of a country club but none of the kids at our school are members. If we did swim team, we would join the local neighborhood pool team.

I would like to join Girl Scouts but there isn’t a troop for kindergarten. In the upper grades, I often see large groups of Girl Scouts hanging out together.

How do you even know they're Girl Scouts?? Are they wearing their vests or sashes around at all times?

Not OP, but I see groups of Girl Scouts and Cub scouts hanging out together at our elementary because their meeting is about to start or just let out. Other times they all wear their uniforms to school on a specific day in September when registration is open for the school year. I don’t think a group of kids who have a shared activity is a clique.
Kids who are interested in the same activities are likely to also be friends outside of those activities. Kids who participate in activities together, go to the same church, go to the same camp, or live walking distance from each other are likely to friends because they get to know each other through proximity.

If all of your daughter’s school friends are doing an activity, you can look into it. If your daughter is your oldest child it may seem like some people have set friend groups or are already registered for activities. That’s because they have older siblings. My kindergartener knew half of his soccer team on the first day because their brothers are on his older brother’s teams or Cub Scout Den.

The Girl Scout stuff peaks around 3rd grade. By upper elementary girls start dropping out for other activities and by middle school, comparatively few girls are involved in Girl Scouts.

It totally depends on how well the girls get along with each other and their parents too. Summer swim is a big deal here and an easy way to keep up with other families.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summer swim team cliques are a thing in May and September at our school. Very few kids in our area do summer swimming because of long wait lists by us, save for a group of local parents who have inherited sponsored country club memberships. That group gets really excited about themselves in K-3rd grade but it wears off quickly.

As for Girl Scouts, it’s the opposite of a clique. We have a troop at our school that is multiage and always begging for new members. It’s a fun activity that people just aren’t into in our school community. But at some schools it becomes a big mom-led clique, because troops are completely led by volunteers. Sometimes those volunteers use adult:child ratios and other bureaucratic hurdles that officially exist for safety reasons but twist them for their own purposes. They to will “close” a troop to newcomers so they don’t have to lead difficult girls, girls their daughters aren’t friends with, or girls whose parents they don’t like.

OP here. We are members of a country club but none of the kids at our school are members. If we did swim team, we would join the local neighborhood pool team.

I would like to join Girl Scouts but there isn’t a troop for kindergarten. In the upper grades, I often see large groups of Girl Scouts hanging out together.

How do you even know they're Girl Scouts?? Are they wearing their vests or sashes around at all times?

The pta presidents are all also scout moms, both Girl Scouts and cub scouts. There were Girl Scouts at a few school events and they traveled together. I have a friend with a third grade daughter and she is on both swim team and Girl Scouts. They have play dates, sleepovers, outings together. Seems like a very tight knit group. Mh daughter is too young or else I would love to join her troop.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summer swim team cliques are a thing in May and September at our school. Very few kids in our area do summer swimming because of long wait lists by us, save for a group of local parents who have inherited sponsored country club memberships. That group gets really excited about themselves in K-3rd grade but it wears off quickly.

As for Girl Scouts, it’s the opposite of a clique. We have a troop at our school that is multiage and always begging for new members. It’s a fun activity that people just aren’t into in our school community. But at some schools it becomes a big mom-led clique, because troops are completely led by volunteers. Sometimes those volunteers use adult:child ratios and other bureaucratic hurdles that officially exist for safety reasons but twist them for their own purposes. They to will “close” a troop to newcomers so they don’t have to lead difficult girls, girls their daughters aren’t friends with, or girls whose parents they don’t like.

OP here. We are members of a country club but none of the kids at our school are members. If we did swim team, we would join the local neighborhood pool team.

I would like to join Girl Scouts but there isn’t a troop for kindergarten. In the upper grades, I often see large groups of Girl Scouts hanging out together.

How do you even know they're Girl Scouts?? Are they wearing their vests or sashes around at all times?