To feel sad after rejection from school Mum

OP: " I've passed her a few times on school drop off and she usually avoids eye contact, we were recently at a kids sports event our kids were attending and she walked round behind the pitch to sit on the opposite side from me, no hello or acknowledgement."

Did she? Maybe she did as she fixed her eyes to the heavens to avoid the eyes of Medusa.

The other Mum did say hello!

I was laughing when I said I'd only said that to keep her out 🤣

YABU, whilst you want playdates and days out etc she obviously doesn't, some people don't like to have kids in their house and that kind of socialising with children all the time.

I don't know why this is concerning you, the children see eachother every day at school! They are friends and will continue to be friends regardless of any extra time together. If they are long term friends when they are older they can make their own arrangements for hanging out but I think your micro managing has really peed this woman off as it would me.

She is avoiding you obviously because you keep beating a dead horse and now she's gone off you entirely and can't even be friendly with you as you keep pestering her about playdates and meet ups.

Some people don't want the responsibility, don't have the time, have other commitments or just aren't comfortable with having kids in their house or their kids at others houses and that's fine.

Leave her be, she obviously doesn't feel comfortable explaining to you what the issue is nor does she have to.

Because I didn’t want to encourage her. In my case though my DS wasn’t keen on her son either.

If a person cannot muster enough decency to acknowledge another by saying hello, all because said person committed – what seems to be for some – the crime of inviting them and their child to a playdate at a time that was not convenient for them, then I don’t think it’s the OP who is ‘self-absorbed’. That description is very much misplaced.

For those that say the OP is needy or came on too strong, I don't agree. I think that as an adult, this other mum should be able to wave and smile or exchange a bit of light conversation with the intention of just being pleasant, nothing more. It's common courtesy

This would be absolutely exhausting!
The school run
hello/hi/morning x 30
Just in case someone is offended?
Seriously?
Most women are dashing in and off to work

This woman and the Op haven't had any text contact for 11 months and the Op is accusing her of ignoring her as if this woman is an old friend.
She watches her reaction on the school run and watches her at events
You know you arrive at the fete, spot your friends and pop over to sit with them- completely normal stuff
Meanwhile the Op is once again watching ...

I've encountered people like the mum you are describing. Currently, my new next door neighbours behave this way. It makes it awkward to walk my dogs past their house if the woman is outside! I spoke to her the first day she was there, just pleasantries and a welcome, then they did some renovations and didn't move in for six months. They've now been there for a year and so it's been 1.5 years since that brief welcome chat, and if we ever cross paths she tries to pretend not to see me even if she is at the base of her front yard gardening! I told my husband, I am not looking to be friend, just friendly, and really, it is NOT normal in my opinion for this woman to try to pretend not to see me walk by with my dogs rather than give a simple wave, which is all I planned to do. And considering my dogs are usually barking, she fully well knows I'm right there!

I think the best way to feel better about this situation with your son's friend's mum is to remind yourself that this is really about her, not you. She is choosing to not be friendly for whatever reason, and you shouldn't take it personally.

For those that say the OP is needy or came on too strong, I don't agree. I think that as an adult, this other mum should be able to wave and smile or exchange a bit of light conversation with the intention of just being pleasant, nothing more. It's common courtesy.

I get it OP, it's hurtful and rude. I honestly don't know how anyone can justify that sort of behaviour. There is never any good excuse to blank somebody or ignore them. For those of you who think this is ' just ', please think again. If you have low self esteem, a background of trauma, or mental ill health, being ostracized/dismissed/ignored/blanked for utterly no reason, can be soul destroying. You never know what's going on in someone else's head or how they're trying to keep it together by a thread, and this type of behaviour can be the straw that broke the camels back. None of us ' owe' anyone our friendship, but we do owe others common decency and respect.

Gloriia, you seem fixated on the idea that the avoider is exclusively at fault, the one with the problem.
What about the idea that an unwanted friendship is unpleasant for the avoider, perhaps more unpleasant than a brief rejection for the avoidee?

I always gravitated more to mum friends who's children I'd met either through toddler groups, hobby groups or their kids were in different years than mine at the school. I have a big thing about not wanting all eggs in one basket - like I wouldn't want to have a super close relationship with a neighbour or workmate because it's awkward if you fall out. Same if your kids fall out but you the mum's are still friends or vice versa.
All my best friends when I was young were kids I met independently of my mum. My mum used to invite her friends over with their (random to us) kids - and usually us kids would have little in common, sometimes there'd be fights - but the mum's would have a lovely time nattering over coffee, obliviously. My mum still waxes lyrical sometimes about how beautifully we all played on those times (?!) but that's because those playdates suited her! 😆
Just let your son find his own way and maybe look to make friends at a hobby group instead? Some of parents of classmates can be weirdly competitive. I may not have got on with some of my mum friend's if their kids had been in the same class as mine!

The mum likely has no idea whatsoever that she comes across as rude as OP probably isn’t on her radar (I don’t mean this unkindly).

OP says she walked around the other side of a pitch to sit with her friends..why is that rude? There is an assumption that she was ignoring OP when it seems she was just going to sit with her friends.

OP said hello to her, the mum politely responded with a hello.

On another occasion the mum spoke to a group of people sitting close to OP but didn’t include her in the conversation. Again, why should she?

I don’t know what I’m missing. How does any of this mean the mum is rejecting, freezing out or excluding the OP when they were never friends to begin with.

As far as I can see she has been polite.
Op son is in Year 1
She last contacted the other mum at the end of reception -almost a year ago!

Op is sad that someone she last contacted 11 months ago isn't saying hi to her everyday or sitting with her with her at events.
It's very self absorbed tbh and Op seems to have escalated into a relationship that isn't there
If Op is always watching this woman she probably avoids eye contact for a reason

Let's just pretend this woman is nasty
Why then are you sad Op?
Surely if she's horrible then you have dodged a bullet?
This is always a bit of a giveaway on these threads that Op is needy

Doesn’t the original OP state that she has got the message in her reply (if I’ve read it correctly) and had stopped asking the previous year. But the woman actively avoids her, excludes her at events, and happily chats to other mums?

While I agree with some of the posters on here that we can’t be friends with everyone, some of you showing that you are precisely the worst people at the gate.

Even if I didn’t like someone at the school, I would never not be pleasant, or say hello. It’s mean girl behaviour and should not be excused. You can actually be firm and say I don’t have time for x,y and z and still be a decent human being, it is possible.

Why didnt you suggest she dropped her ds over to play but make it clear you'd drop him home later? Avoiding someone seems a bit unpleasant tbh.

School aged kids do not need their parents present when they play with their friends.

I was this other mum back when my son was in primary school. Another boy’s mum always seemed to make a beeline for me and I was always polite and friendly but I just didn’t want to be friends with her. I’m not big on friendships in general but this particular woman was not someone I would want to spend any more time with than I had to.

She started inviting me and DS to various things and in the end I just started avoiding her.

I understand why you feel sad about it OP, but to echo what others have said I think you just need to accept that she doesn’t want to have more of a relationship with you than perhaps you would like - no excuse for rudeness though.

to give a different perspective, I like to think I get on well with most of the school mums and am friendly and approachable however have started to be a little less friendly with people I don’t know (obviously still acknowledge / say hello etc). Reason being is that one school mum who is clearly quite lonely started contacting me constantly after a few play dates, would guilt trip me for not having seen her, telling me she wanted me to go round and see her in the evenings, send several messages when i was working with follow up messages asking if i was okay if i didn’t reply within a few hours and call me in the evenings. It was exhausting to be honest and it’s made me more wary of any new friendships that might occur with other parents. Could possibly be something similar with this mum and she just doesn’t want to entertain any new friendships?

Does that mean they can't be polite?

I agree. I AM socially inept (AuDHD, PTSD and generally a bit useless) but I wouldn’t ever knowingly freeze someone out unless they had actively done something to hurt me. I am more likely to notice someone on their own looking lost, because that’s been me so often. It’s not about having these legendary advanced social skills MN prizes so highly, it’s about basic human decency and not being an arsehole.

This comment and others I’ve read on the thread makes me so sad, I’m sorry you’ve felt like this. Someone else up thread said it’s like being back at school and I agree, it’s awful 😢
my son starts school in sept but I’ve actually already experienced some similar things e.g. I realised the other day that it’s only ever me who reaches out to other parents for play dates - we’re never contacted first 😔I’m an older mum and my son is an only child so I so want him to have friends and experiences with other children outside of nursery but, like you @Pandersmum i feel like I don’t fit in 😔

Well in fairness to you every morning is quite an imposition and does go far beyond normal civility so I think you have a point there.

But I am seeing a lot of “ why should I?” behaviour in circumstances where I think it is eroding basic standards of human kindness .

There was a thread a couple of weeks back where the mum of a young boy who had ( only) two good friends organised his party well in advance with the mum of one of those friends, even changing the activity to one that woman’s DD preferred. Shortly before the party, the girl got an invitation for a different party so just chose that instead. There were a handful of posters saying “ of course she can just do what she wants.Why should she go to his party if she doesn’t want to now?”

I do think the “ why should I have to?” attitude is a horse that has bolted a bit too wild and free with some people. It reminds me of the type of children growing up who used to be totally unreasonable when playing eg running off with the ball and refusing to share etc then saying: ”can’t make me.”

This is very true op.

Not everyone is going to click with us or like us.

Life is hard; there’s so little time for working parents to juggle kids and jobs and hobbies and domestic stuff and family and everything else in between. It is very hard to fit in socialising with actual friends, let alone play dates. Someone can be perfectly nice and friendly and just not have the band width to cultivate a new friendship; it can then feel socially awkward if having to bat off several advances when the desire to connect isn’t reciprocated. It doesn’t need to feel personal or unpleasant.

It may well be that their child has said they don’t want to play, you have no idea. But I think it’s a reach to expect the parent to behave in a certain way. She doesn’t have to be actively friendly, she doesn’t owe you anything. Who knows what is going on for her. Making assumptions about what can of person she is or being offended by it is on you.

The one thing I learnt when children were small is that there are some awfully weird people in the world and school is where you meet them and it is hard to avoid them.

I went out of my way to meet and help a new mum joining the school. We got on on well at school gates but over time she just started to blank me and and eventually I felt like she was saying nasty things about me to other mums. I barely knew her. Our sons got on but not best friends but I was always friendly to them all. To this day, many years later and kids have long since left, I still don’t know why she went from being friendly to not.

sometimes you just have to shrug these things off and stick to the people you do get on with. I always found the playground dynamics hard.