Mum is blocking my 2yo’s invites to play dates

At that age it’s not about the kids, it’s about parental friendships. A and B are perfectly entitled to want to distance themselves from you. It’s bitchy to block you from bigger meet ups, but if they are like that, then you don’t want to be friends with them anyway.
Be pleased you’ve found a good friend in C and continue to forge your own friendships with others. Maybe smaller group gatherings, with people that C gets on well with from the main group?

YANBU to be annoyed by it and you’re right, it’s not fair on your son, but at that age play dates are more about which parents get on well than which children. So as opposed to them arranging play dates for the children, they’re arranging to meet each other as friends and the kids will play while they have a catch up. If A doesn’t like you (for whatever reason), she’s not going to invite you for a catch up.

But not everyone in life is your friend .
You must have people you dislike for whatever reason.
Is he your only child?

Well, I guess playground behavior comes largely from the parents. They are excluding other parents and so the kids just continue that behavior amongst themselves.

I don't think C is automatically a stirrer, depends on the context of her telling you A is doing this. She sounds more loyal to me, it sounds like you've clocked what's going on and she has confirmed it as she prefers you, although I would still be careful what you say to her if she has a foot in both camps so to speak.

A is a playground queen bee. Pathetic. B seems weak willed, which is even more pathetic. They're obviously allowed to dislike you and choose their own friends but it's the way they're doing so. Ironically if I wasn't overly keen on someone I'd be inviting them in a big group where I could possibly avoid them socially without being obviously exclusionary. The fact she's not bothered belies the playground attitude.

Fwiw, I'd avoid B and A. Don't hide, just don't stroll up for a chat. Be busy, chat to someone else, use that time to listen to a podcast or regularly call your mum. Nod, smile, say hi, be polite if you do see them - just don't stop and try to engage beyond a remark about the weather. If you're never anything but gracious, it's hard for them be anything other than polite back without looking bad.

What I might do though is get C to send you screenshots if you think she won't then tell everyone. This way if unpleasantness does start to to spill over to the kids themselves, keep a log of anything said or done amongst the dc and present it to the nursery school as so awkward, you must say something for little Timmys sake. You can say it looks like little A and B are just following their mums leads and say you've been informed in the course of everything that has been going on that bitchface and shit head don't like you and are vocal and proactive about it. Reinforce that you don't know why, you try not to get involved as a friendly, polite adult who has grown beyond puerile playground games, but you have been informed of this and you've been shown screenshots of messages proving it, and you feel you should mention it as it is clearly now affecting the children.

I've been disliked by someone in a group of 5. I killed with politeness. I never assumed the 3 in the middle were stirrers if they acknowledged it - they weren't blind so it would be weird if they didn't. Fair enough she didn't like me but I decided being extremely polite would show her up if she was stupid enough to be rude in public when we were thrown together; it looked indefensible. My only issue with her was that she had one with me and I obviously didn't like the way she treated me as a result!

If you "bowl over there" I don't think that will help. For 2 year olds the play dates are more about who the parents like in my experience. I am more likely to arrange play dates with parents I enjoy talking to and there are some mums who I haven't clicked with and wouldn't want to invite out with us as we don't have much to talk about. It doesn't mean I don't like them. If you had play dates with C before can't you just do that?

It's not nice but if it is down to A not wanting to invite you, you can't do anything about that, and if B is willing to go along with what B says either because A and B are close or because B also doesn't want to spend time with you then you can't really do much about that either.

A is judgemental or insecure. That's fine. We don't have to like everybody. That's more her problem though. It's probably easier for B to appease A than you, so just goes along with it. C may or may not be a stirrer. If you like B, then arrange a playdate with them on your own. Also arrange separate playdates with C.

No I didn't, because she kept changing her description of how many children had been invited to the soft play to make it sound worse, as I pointed out in a previous comment.

Tell you what, I'll make a deal with you: you learn to use capital letters and full stops, and I'll 'bore off'.

Was coming on to say the same. It’s interesting that now she’s fallen out with A, that you’re hearing stuff apparently said about you.

An old friend did this to me after she fell out with someone. Apparently the mutual person had never liked me. ‘Friend’ was clearly cool with this until she also fell out with mutual. I never trusted her again.

Mum C is your biggest issue here.

Yeah. I watched enough friendship groups in school and college and as a new mum to know that when you are friends with a couple of people and someone comes along, and for no apparent reason the others suddenly withdraw from you and the new person starts giving you their support and telling you that the others hate you, slag you off, don't want anything to do with you and new friend tells you how they valiantly defended you while the others were saying all these horrible things...
And the only evidence you have is what this person is claiming the others said - they haven't said it to you, you haven't overheard them, all of a sudden they go from friendly to ice cold and bam there's C telling you why...

there's a very high probability C is involved.

Upside of being a Johnny no mates as a kid. You get to watch it all play out. watching from the periphery you get to hear that person saying to one group that X doesn't like them and when X was saying x, y, z they intervened then going to Xand saying all the same stuff.

Kill them with kindness, that's what I'd do. Ensures everyone knows you're the better person and makes her look bad for hating you!

And this is why I just don't bother with school mums tbh. I have two school mum friends and only do one on one play dates. If my child wants to invite then I ask. I don't bother myself with school run politics as I can,'t stand the pettyness and cliques that school mum adults seem to want to play. You will eventually find a couple of people you like and that will be enough. Sorry you got mixed up in this idiotic thing.

@IdgieThreadgoodeIsMyHeroine Don't be daft. You know exactly what OP meant.

oh ffs will you shut up about whether it's school or not, just bore off

I’m not quite sure why C didn’t just invite you along to the big softplay meet up. It wasn’t anyone’s party, she could have just given you the details, wouldn’t it have made sense for her to just add you on rather than arguing with A about why you had been missed off??

Anyway I think in your shoes I’d ask C to add my number now to the big WhatsApp that was set up for the softplay meet up. That way you’ll know about future meet ups organised via that channel. I know A could just set up a new WhatsApp without you, but that will look extra bitchy.

The key thing is to keep being friendly and nice yourself. Moral high ground and all that.

And pretty much guarantee that D E F et al will avoid you as well!

In my experience the mums who are still mean girls when they have children of their own are the ones who don't have much else going on in their lives.

If you have a high powered career you don't have time for this sort of petty shit. Not at the school gates anyway.

At age 2 they don't have friends.

If they were 5/6+ I could understand.

But this is a group you've formed for you.

Are there any other mums you could meet up with?

I do understand how you feel and we go crazy when it comes to our kids.

Could you text mum B and ask if everything is ok?

I don't think this is ok.
Mum C shouldn't be sending you screenshots of conversations she's having with other people.
This whole situation seems to have gotten toxic.

Mean girls don't just disappear, I'm afraid.

It's very depressing but some people just have to play power games long after they've left school, and if the only arena for them is the school gate then that's where you'll feel it. I'm old, but I remember observing this kind of thing and that's why I think the sitcom 'Motherland' is a work of genius.

I had some great mum friends when my children were young - but I was happy not to be part of the cool gang. My lovely reliable non-bitchy mates were definitely not the alpha mums and we still see each other now!

Organise your own things and invite everyone. Ignore her.

I would make a real point of reaching out to others - even if you don't know them now, MAKE yourself know them.

Set up a little group to go to the park with them or whatever and then last minute ask mum A and B, so they either have to accept your invitation (which is a bit of a climbdown) or refuse and let their children miss out.

I'm 3 kids down and although i haven't had exactly this sort of thing, it goes on (and gets better as you'll find your tribe - and more importantly, so will your child).

Is the fact your child will go to preprep and maybe you are more affluent than Mum A part of the issue? Ie jealousy?

Are there other activities you can do when DS is not in nursery where you can meet other mums? RugbyTots and Playball were great fun for both my kids when they were 2/3y as they are all about socialising (sharing, following instructions, turn taking) whilst running off some energy. At that age the mum often take part or watch from the sidelines and if the setting is at a local gym they often get together for coffee afterwards in the cafe?