Anonymous wrote:You're the one creating the problem. Stop saying you were busy with work. Talk about how you are reading a great book or made heart-shaped cookies with your kids last night, or you're looking forward to seeing family this weekend.

+1

Add something fresh to the convo. This can change the course of the conversation. I’ve done this many times when people harped on certain topics.

Anonymous wrote:I am a SAHM of three, homsechooling. My days are not full of shopping and spas, we are broke. You have rich envy, not SAH envy. I have rich envy too. :-*

This! And it reads you have no desire to make actual friends with any pickup parents. So, pick up your kid while listening to podcast so you don’t hear or talk to anyone and then go home and interact with your co-workers and other working friends.

I would like to add a comment on affluent neighborhoods, since I moved to one recently. Rich people are not nice and open. They feel very guarded. I have still not figured out the right script to say, and I venture to say that I never will. Working makes it worse on a social scale because these moms have so much money and there is definitely a pecking order you’d have to get into. OP, I would honestly just not give a damn and find some other friends. Ironically, not caring will be the only way these moms will even become remotely interested.

Do they not respond by asking about your job?

In that past 12 years I've been a sahm and also a working mom. I can honestly say I only encountered a handful of women I absolutely could not relate to, and most were military wives (we are not military but live in a city near a base).

Most people know how to keep up their end of small talk. It goes for you too! You can engage in conversation about all of the things you mentioned (lunch, spa etc) can't you?