+1

None. Most parent relationships in private schools are transactional and shallow.

Some of the best parent friends I've made have been at the worst schools my kids have attended. My kids are all are at great schools now (for them at least) and while we're friendly with the parents we meet at socials, we don't feel the need to be friends with them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We're absolutely prioritizing the best fit for our kiddos. So please don't worry about that.

But many schools would seem to fit the bill. So now, we're looking for the best place for our family.

Anybody who refers to their children as kiddos and also cares enough about making friends with other parents to post this is doubly pathetic and no one will want to be your friend so you’re going to have to look really hard.

good point. you can say you are prioritizing your son/daughter all you like, but the fact that you are asking this question means that you are using the school as a means to advance your own social life, which seems a bit off. The school choice should be entirely about the students, and then the parents do their best to navigate the social scene once you get there.

This is the exact opposite of how many people here function. They have their friends, create cliques, and then circle the wagons. They protect this at all costs by telling everyone else to make their own friends and nobody has to invite everybody to everything. These seats are taken.

Anonymous wrote:OP: Please share the school names if you found the parent communities welcoming & generally interested in being friends with each other.

OP, you really can’t gauge how friendly a parent community will be in advance because it depends on the mix of each group of parents. I say this with decades of experience in private schools.

The best thing for your mental health and for your child’s well being is to go into a school community with open to friendships but not depending on them to happen.

The best school for your child may be one that has an obnoxious parent community.

Anonymous wrote:If you kids are just starting school, I recommend a school that has a pre-k program. That way you can meet people that will be around until 8th grade or even high school.

Doesn’t matter if your pre- K program is full of snobby people. Our kids started Beauvoir in pre-K and were stuck with the same snobby groups of parents for 18+ years.

OP: Please share the school names if you found the parent communities welcoming & generally interested in being friends with each other.

I am shocked to this day how great the families were in my child’s class. Kind, loyal, willing to give the shirts of their back with both time and their resources. Moms and dads. My kid has an extended family for life now and I could not be happier. Had zero expectations but even had I imagined a great outcome reality still exceeded it!

My experience from several private schools is that people are polite but the relationships between parents are mostly shallow. So while you can make friends have low expectations, and you might be positively surprised.

If you kids are just starting school, I recommend a school that has a pre-k program. That way you can meet people that will be around until 8th grade or even high school.

Staff and handfuls of parents at Visi have been wonderful. Some definite mom cliques that are carried through into the student body. Not to say that these people would ever be rude to your face, they just don't seem extremely open to new people. Gonzaga=almost uniformly wonderful and welcoming parents, to the point that we talk about it and find it a little startling.

Anonymous wrote:Any of them with an elementary school. That's where/when the connections happen.

By middle school, parents have their people and are tired of spending tons of time at school volunteering. And forget about HS.

This.

I have been extremely surprised by how nice the parent community is at Bullis. I was nervous that it would be mostly social climbing snobs. Sure, there are a few of them, but I have made so many wonderful friends and really enjoy the parent community.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We're absolutely prioritizing the best fit for our kiddos. So please don't worry about that.

But many schools would seem to fit the bill. So now, we're looking for the best place for our family.

Anybody who refers to their children as kiddos and also cares enough about making friends with other parents to post this is doubly pathetic and no one will want to be your friend so you’re going to have to look really hard.

good point. you can say you are prioritizing your son/daughter all you like, but the fact that you are asking this question means that you are using the school as a means to advance your own social life, which seems a bit off. The school choice should be entirely about the students, and then the parents do their best to navigate the social scene once you get there.

Norwood! We've made a lot of friends in both of our kid's grades (and in other grades too) because the parents tend to be kind, interesting, involved people. It's been a huge benefit to our family to have this community.

And to PP above, I do consider these "real" friends. If we had met some other way, we'd be friends!