I'm not a school mum that gets involved in the politics or cliques. My life is too hectic, and it seems pretty b**chy at my child's school, so I am happy to be on the outside of it all.
An exception to this recently, however, has got me badly burned. I won't go into details about it, as that's not what I'm here to discuss - but simply put, I reached out to a particular mum as knew she had an interest in something. I wanted to be friendly and help her out, and the result was frankly bizarre. She turned out to be quite horrid for no apparent reason.
I won't go into details because it's outting, but for context it's very similar to the following scenario..
My child swims at a private club with waiting list. I knew she wanted her child in said club. I had a contact on the board and knew there was an opening soon. I reached out to her to ask if she wanted me to put in a word to have her child prioritized. She said yes and seemed super happy and was very kind to me. I put in good word and asked her child be given the place. Child was given place.
Then first week her child attends said club. I discover she has been saying horrible things about me to club manager, and tried to have my child removed from the club. Telling them a huge amount a strange, untrue crap... such as that I slag off the swim club, hate the people, the facilities are below par..
Resulting in my board contact challenging me and threatening to take my child out of the club if that is how I feel about it. They really were upset / offended and had got their back up by the lies she had told them - understandably so.
I felt like the whole situation was mental to be honest. I have never been unkind to this woman dnd thought I was doing a nice thing / good deed. I've certainly never slagged off the swim club, my child loves it.
Luckily the board contact did believe me when I reassured them it wasn't true. And they actually went back to her and have since asked her to not come with her child again - I didn't ask them to do this.
This happened last week and I was expecting some sort of confrontation with her at the school gate - but to be honest my working hours and child being in after school club etc meant I haven't seen her. I've since found out from other mums that is a cow and renowned sh*t stirrer (I never had this impression before) genuinely thought she seemed.nice!
My question - do I rise above and just ignore her? I've been told she loves a screaming match and don't want to resort to anything of the kind. But if she ever makes a snarky remark or speaks to me again I'm not sure how I would respond with dignity? Can you ladies advise?
I'm not going to lie, I am so busy that this situation isn't much of a priority to me and I've not really thought about her much beyond when this initially happened. However I would like some ideas how to approach this when I do inevitably run into her.
I'm not afraid of confrontation, I'm pretty open. But I almost feel she's not worth the effort as I feel like she will be looking for drama and I don't want to play into her hands...