I have a 1 year old and a 5 year old.
My 1 year old attends a lovely playgroup twice a week. Very informal and friendly and everyone gets on fantastic. Sometimes people miss a week or two and nobody picks up or comments as to why or where that person has been? There is no intrution into private space as anyone with very young children knows it can very hard to attend every week because things have a habit of cropping up last minute, with illness or lack of sleep or tantrums etc.
One other mother suggested that I attend another playgroup that she said was very similar on a different day to the playgroup and as it was very close to home I decided to give it a go.
It is run by a much older lady that has grown up children, and she does request as it is in a church hall some prayers are said while the children play. I was not against this in principle so went along with it.
She asked me to join the WhatsApp group which I did do. It became quickly apparent that this was not the laidback group that I was told it would be. For instance the week leading up to the playgroup she would bombard the WhatsApp group for exact attendance numbers for the next date. If there was no immediate response she would then start private messaging people to ask if they were likely to attend? She also announced she would delete anyone that had not been along in the past month or so.
Last night at 10.30pm she sent me messages asking if I was coming this morning? Admittedly I did not respond, but this morning the messages started up again.
Over the past few weeks attendance numbers have dwindled, even the couple of mothers that invited me along have not been there, and I have not seen them at the regular playgroup either. I did respond this morning just politely pointing out it can be very difficult to know in advance with a 1 year old if we can make it along every week because young children can be very unpredictable, but if she was insisting on a yes or no then it was probably better I said no. I then got a response stating that she too once had young children!
That is all she said, so I am assuming she did not care much for my input, but I was actually trying to be helpful and to give a reason as to why she is not seeing the same people regularly every week without fail because she does seem very persistent. I think perhaps it is her manner that people are having trouble with and that is why she is losing Mums. I am just wondering how normal her behaviour is to other people?