What's the most barking thing you've witnessed at a mum's group?

DS2 has a nut allergy and can't have anything with nuts or nut traces so the lovely old ladies who run the group always ok his snack with me first this often means he ends up with fruit and cheese when the others have fruit and a biscuit or cake and DS's snack has his name on so there is no mix ups.
One week a little girl (really spoiled won't share with anyone, the Mum doesn't intervene and will hold toys for her DD even though she might not play with them again the whole session) kept saying to her Mum
"I want that snack, I like cheese, I want that special one" over and over again,the Mum marched over and said
"what's the deal with the special snack?"
I explained about the nut allergy and was about to offer some of DS's cheese when she yelled to the ladies in the kitchen
"excuse me DD has allergies, she will require a special snack from now on, she will need cheese, fruit and cake"
When the leader asked what she was allergic to the mum said "I don't want to go into details but she needs cheese"

Me either Floot

I've never seen anything mental.

The police came and arrested a mum at a class I was running!

Just to say, this little girl has no immune issues, her mother just has some serious social ones.......

Ooh, Summer, that's reminded me. I used to run a few english classes and play sessions for German pre-schoolers. One little girl was a bit hitty. Normally I'd not tell the mother if a child as a one-off thing was a bit rough with another. I'd handle it myself and that would be that. But after the third session it was obvious that this girl really was not aware of the rules as far as hitting/scratching etc were concerned, so I took her mother to one side and told her about it. Her response was to laugh and say 'Oh that? Don't worry about that, she does it at kindergarten too.'

Oh. That's ok then

Ponderingonaquandry
"Wips they'll be childminders, they always do that sort of thing round here too. Winds me up something rotten!"

Funny that because it is the mums who gossip at song time in our playgroup and it winds us childminders up. Oh and the mums sit there ignoring their DC while the childminders end up supervising the lot, and the mums never help to tidy up.

I was at a meetup for another parenting site once. One of the other mothers spent half an hour barraging 19 month old dd with questions

What colour is that
What's this (holding up spoon/cup/toy)
How old are you
How old is your brother
What's your favourite book
What animal is this

She just kept going and going.

Dd could speak very well at th at age bit had selective mutism until she was 5 and just stared at her like she had two heads the whole time whilst I tried not to suffocate bfing ds1 in my attempts to contain my laughter.

I didn't bother going back to that group

I was once told in a laughing voice by a mother of a child who'd attacked ds2 (3 years younger than her child) that 'she's so wild, at home she drags her baby sister around by the hair'

well ok then, as long as she's beating up her own family too I guess it doesn't matter that my child is bleeding

I know! She probably thought I should have grovelled at her feet and thanked her for my pennies (wot I spend on Heat magazine and takeaways)

Unexpected. What a bitch!

At a playgroup, i was explaining to a mum how unwell my baby had been, and how at the tip of what i could cope with i had made the difficult decision to give my baby medication to stop to 8 times a day vomiting. The mediation was pretty harmless and my baby needed it as he was losing weight rapidly. The other mum shook her head, tutted, gave me that judgmental look that some do so well and said "yes but its medication isn't it". With how worried i was i could have slapped her.

Repunzel. shouting Mum says "well she gets child benefit and I pay a higher rate of tax so I AM PAYING HER BENEFIT and she should give something back".

. . . That doesn't even make sense!

SkiBumMum...really?! Are we going there? Ooh will there be a bunfight now?!

Lottapianos

No - she wasn't mortified at all. She just said "well, I didn't know" and carried on.

She generally behaved normally except when it came to breastfeeding.

She advocated that formula should only be available on prescription for women who were medically incapable of BF.

This morning at (school) nursery drop off a mother unhoicked a sling thing off her back to let the pupil free. He shouted, stamped, screamed. She then sat on the sandpit lid and bf to calm him down. He's in the second intake so may still only be 3.5 I guess but seriously there's a time and a place.

Probably the woman who spent the entire two hour session on her knees holding her almost-but-not-quite-walking baby up by the arms so it could 'walk' to whatever took its fancy. Was torn between and but mostly

I was humbled, berts, truely.

the leader of a group I went to used to smack her daughter hard and talk to her in the most awful, nasty way, loudly in front of us. Made me so uncomfortable.

At another group, run by midwives when dd2 was a baby, one of the midwives took dd away from me and disappeared down the corridor with her, repeating that she 'needed to be fed'. She had been fed, repeatedly on and off all day long. She had colic...grrr.. I suspect the midwife thought I was a stupid young Mum (was 27) and now I'm middle aged wouldn't get the same patronising treatment. I ran after her down the corridor, took dd and left quickly.

foreversunny I'm crying here picturing the carseat tortoise

Most fascinating thing I ever saw was a real example of how children copy their parents.

The group is affiliated to the NCT and every now and then one of the NCT committee would come and check everything was ok. One committee member would bring her 3 year old daughter. The committee member always made a point of going round every parent in the group, chatting to them until she found something she could criticise, tell them they were wrong and then walk off to talk to the next person. Not nice. The fascinating thing was watching the 3 year old girl who would go round to every child in the group, play with them for a minute, then push or shove them before walking off to the next child.

The behaviour was so clearly the same as that of her Mum, just physical rather than verbal.

RapunzelLetDownYourHair - no - different country, and years ago, and wrongly or rightly, I never told either the mothers involved!

breastfeeding 3 month old dd1 at a baby group, another Mum said
'you're not still doing that are you?
and with the same dd1, at a toddler group when 2 years old. She bit a little boy. He ran off screaming. His childminder came over with him, to show me the bite. It was horrendous: massive red teeth marks, she'd actually drawn blood. I was horrified and very apologetic.
I didn't go back. The group leader phoned me that night to see how I was- horrified is the word!(and dd1 is now a very lovely, polite non bitey 12 year old)

There was loads of Playgroup Politics, glad I sacked it in.

Psammead "'mine doesn't cry any more. She finds it embarrassing.'" - ha ha ha ha.