Does anyone else find school group chats strangely stressful?

[IndiraDarcey]

I didn’t think much of it at first but lately the school WhatsApp group has been giving me more stress than it should. Messages come in all day, half of them not relevant, and I always feel like I’m missing something important in between. I mentioned it to another mum at pickup and she admitted she muted the group months ago and just hopes someone tells her if something actually matters. It made me feel less alone but also slightly anxious that this is how we’re all managing it.

Are they still messaging during the school holidays? Nobody does in ours but I have mine muted but still see the messages when I open WhatsApp, I ignore most of them anyway and contact the school with any important questions.

Just look at it once a day, or once a week, if it’s stressing you out that much? DS’s class WhatsApps were always perfectly nice, but I’m not sure why you think you’re going to miss something important if you don’t read every single message? They’re just other parents! Most messages were about homework, missing PE kits etc.

I've only ever been in one class whatsapp when ds was in nursery and it was completely unhinged! The woman that created it clearly had a grudge against the school and would constantly complain and make up conspiracy theories. She then suspected one of us was feeding info back to the school so went all Colleen Rooney and started removing and adding us back to the group in different combinations to catch the culprit. This was punctuated by drunk messages at 2am calling us all cunts and snitches then deleting them next morning. If anyone tried to leave the group she would march up to them in the playground and demand to know why.

She eventually moved away so the WhatsApp group disbanded. A few of us bonded in real life over the shared trauma so at least some good came of it!

Never been on a school chat never would

I'm one class Whatsapp for each of my 2 DC. DC1s is nothing but lovely, only relevant stuff and very friendly.

DC2s one has a couple of over-sharers so has a tendency to get weird - one mum wrote pages about every detail of her husband leaving her and their DC. That was in the first term of Reception when we were still trying to work out who each other were at the school gate tbh.

I'm currently in two for two different year groups and they couldn't be more different. One just normal with reminders for things or questions about stuff, the other literally all over the place with questions but also what their kid did at the weekend, photos and then asking for things like the lunch menu which has alreayd been sent 64 times and 28 replies of "no we don't have daisy's lost jumper2🙄😂

Both groups are muted though and i only generally look at them first thing in case i've missed a pe day or school trip!

I love the group chat and find it oddly entertaining. Obviously muted, but it's not that hard to skim the chat to see if people are talking about about anything important. Besides, if anything is directly related to school then the school would have sent out a message as well.

We have two group chats for my DD’s year-group. One is just for notices and is set up so nobody can post on it or comment apart from the reps - so it purely ‘don’t forget nativity at 11am tomorrow’ and ‘it’s wear blue socks on Friday’ etc. The other is for general chat and full of the usual ‘has anyone seen Thomas’s jumper’ and ‘would anyone like to come for a coffee after drop-off’. Works well because those who want to avoid the constant stream off chit-chat can just belong to group 1 and know they’re not missing out on anything actually useful.

DSs class WhatsApp was absolutely wild. The parents were a lot. The school had to send letters out regarding arguments on the group that had spread to the school gates reminding everyone to behave.

He moved school in yr4 and I avoided being added to new groups.

We were spotted on transition day at secondary school, and I was added into the new secondary school group. They've just changed the group name and are all still batshit. It is muted.

I’ve not encountered very much drama in WhatsApp groups but I have had one or two people who treated them like their own personal assistants. Which was annoying.

Having someone choose not to join one but then ask if I can let them know if anything important happens is stressful.

I deliberately never post on ours because I don't want any stress about how it might be perceived. I mute ours (actually all Whatsapp) so I just don't look at it if I'd find it stressful. I don't mind lurking on there though, it's useful for gathering information (both the official info and little giveaways like offhand comments and the background to someone's profile pic).
All of the whole class parties and some meet ups are posted on there though so my dcs would miss out if I didn't join the group.

No, it’s literally just like, is it PE kit today even though they are going to the panto? And don’t forget the cake sale on Monday.

Ours is also the whole school, not a specific year group. It’s literally just information and not constant. Other than a thank you to teachers at the end of term, I don’t think there’s really been much of anything messaged since school ended.

I have all group chats muted anyway. I only look at it if I need to ask a question. I have better things to do!

Oh yes. Come lockdown and the what’s app school group hysteria about home schooling, i immediately left all of them and never re-joined any school group chats. Life is better for it.

There was a funny BBC sounds podcast about all this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001xvdh

I’ve never joined one. I don’t even have WhatsApp.

Seconday? I only knew two phone numbers and one was from a mum whose child was in DD's primary school class. The other was the mum of a new friend who offered to take the girls out on a day trip during half term.

In the whole 7 years I only met two more mums in person.

I am not on my kids' group chats. I do not find them useful and have found it just too busy and chaotic on there, for no good reason.

We've had full on arguments with name calling of each other's children (not anything to do with me as I stayed very quiet thankfully), requests sent shortly after pick up time to the entire group asking if someone can pick up their YR child without having told the school because they cannot find a parking space, requests for warnings about traffic wardens in the area so they can park illegally.

This is a school with a great reputation in a very affluent area. A small number of the parents just seem not to know how to behave at all, and those parents also seem to be the most active people on the chats.

I have never had any useful information on there. The only thing it is remotely helpful for is for the parents association when they need more helpers for an event.

I get what you’re saying, and you’re probably right in theory. I think it’s less about the actual content and more that low-level feeling of “what if I’ve missed something” that creeps in, even though 99% of it is totally harmless.
Ours is mostly PE kits, homework reminders and the odd panic message, but it’s the constant drip of notifications that gets to me rather than anything dramatic. I do try not to read everything now – still a work in progress though.

I have locked and muted mine so I don’t get notifications. I just go in every week or so to check I haven’t missed any birthday invites etc. I hate WhatsApp groups and really resent the fact that people feel they can’t leave in case it looks bad.

I don’t like the hectoring about school issues or the requests for money, it’s all a complete pain to me. I’m looking forward to secondary when I can leave them