Self riteous mums

[Peacenquiet2]

Right where do i start. My daughter s almost seven and has been friends with a kid in her class since nursery age. Through thier friendship i got friendly with the mum of the kid, not going out together sort of friendly but chatting at gatherings and having the others kid over for tea sort of friendly.

There is also another mum whom both girls play with the daughter of. The mum of my daughters friend seemed ok at first but im discovering she has quite a manipulative petty side to her. Its obvious she has decided she wants to be good friends with the other mum which i couldnt care less about.
However in the process she is clearly influencing her daughter by coercing her to befriend the other girl and have less to do with my daughter which is proving to be quite upsetting for my daughter as she values the friendship.
Anyhow i also have a son who is just 3 and she has another daughter who is few months older, who will both be attending nursery together in september. Its very obvious this mum doesnt like my son (shes openly admitted she doesnt like boys) and when we are in the same place for an hour each week once a week her daughter will repeat things that have clearly come from her mums mouth, about my son. My son is very babyish in many ways whereas her daughter is more grown up so she manipulates my son into doing naughty stuff then turns on the tears so that he gets in trouble. Arrrrgggg!

This woman has even gone so far as to go into the nursery to warn the teacher that her daughter may play up when she is in my sons company, which she openly told me she had done. I was so annoyed and gobsmacked at her audacity i had to bite my tongue and calmy walk away before i said somthing i couldnt take back.
She basically likes to think her kids are infalable (which isnt true by any means) and refuses to see beyond that.

She has started to refuse invites for her elder child to come and play after school on the grounds her daughter doesnt want to but i guess this decision is strongly infuenced somewhat by her.

She is manipulative in her personal life also from what i can gather as her poor husband is so brow beaten that he darent have a life outside her/the home/kids etc unless on her order. Ive never met a more complying, quiet man and he has my sympathies.

Let me hasten to add i dont wish to maintain or develop a better friendship with this woman as i dont need negative people in my life, but i have to see her for the next several years on an almost daily basis and wondered how to deal with this situation without making things awkard so any suggestions/input are welcome?
Sorry it has been a long post and hope its possible to follow.

It makes sense to cut this mother and daughter out for the way your DS gets "set up" to tantrum on playdates, for the moves to exclude your DD from friendship with the other girl. Stop flattering them with requests fir playdates

As for seeing her at the school gate, there are likely to be so many people there, fron different years, too, so that you can avoid her without drama.

Nursery dropoffs, in my experience, are incredibly unsociable: people are desperate to get towork, and tge children don't have the autonomy to be going in themselves, so there's no messing about in a playground.

If she says anything in future which requires you to reply through a red mist, keep the MN favourite in mind: "Did you mean to be so rude?"

Don't worry about what she said to the nursery staff, they will have seen straight through that one!
As for the girls, the friendships are so fluid at that age it will likely fizzle out to something less intense by soon. Ime they tend to realise at around that age that they don't have to just have one intense friendship. Encourage her to ask other friends round rather than just sticking with the same one. She'll be fine.

Sorry for any typos people, this touch screen phone is taking some getting used to, i assure you i can spell though :-).
Agent, tbh thats is what has bugged me more than anything in all this that she has badmouthed my son before he was even given a chance. I thought it best to give some background as although the situation between my daughter and her friend is annoying, i am doing my best to encourage her to find other riends and widen her circles.
My son will start after all the other kids as hes the youngest so they will all get chance to settle and so forth and then he gets thrown in at the end which already worries me. On the other hand im hoping the girl shows her true colours in this interim as she will start first.
Newatyhis, my reasons for suspecting the mum is infuencing her child is down to what happened a couple weeks back. We invited her over for play after school and i got a text back saying the friend didnt want to come. The next day my daughter asked her friend why she didnt want to come and she said her mum had told her she couldnt. I have no intentions of asking again and will leave the girls to either remain friends in school or not, whichever it may be.
Before i had kids i never imagined i wp

Ooops pressed to soon. Never imagined things like this would bother me and im suprised at how much it actually has.

It hurts when someone brings your kids into it doesn't it. She sounds dreadful, rise above it. The nursery staff will be too professional to let a busybody colour their view of your DS and in all likelihood they sing have all that much to do with each other at nursery anyway.

Ah, ok. That wasn't clear in your post.

I'm a huge believer in letting kids make their own friends, and only intervening if absolutely necessary - it sounds like YANBU, and the other mother is a cow.

On the upside, if her daughter turns out anything like her,then she's done you a favour!

Won't! I'm on my phone too, don't worry about typos phones are buggers to type on!

God, that sounded a bit flippant. As others have said, the nursery staff will make up their own minds, and pay no attention to others unjustified opinion.

It's very upsetting when you realise other people don't like your children, I'm pretty laid back but when I found out that someone very close to me (IL's family) had been bad mouthing DS to others it really got to me! As it happens that backfired on this person as they got told in strong terms to leave him be but of course it will get to you.
The nursery staff will be on top of his settling in, I assume he's going to do a gradual admission? They may well be on the lookout but not for the reasons this other mum (who sounds like a total cow btw) thinks.
Him being the youngest there will really only matter for a very short space of time, one of DD1's good friends is almost a year younger than her, DD is the oldest in her year and the difference isn't noticeable, hasn't been for some time.

I suppose it wouldn't be unreasonable to mention to the nursery staff that her daughter tends to deliberately get your son into trouble ?

She sounds like a right pain.

Thesecond, sorry i didnt realise my post was coming across like that, the kids are only kids i realise that and my issue is with the mother.
The youngest is being fed my her mum in saying what she says but she is that bit wiser than my son and ive blatantly seen the things she does, for eg karate chop him across the neck to which he then pushed her away but of course only the push was seen by all else, as she picks her moment.

I am then compelled to tell him off which i would do in those circumstances regardless, while the mum sits there looking very smug. I wont get drawn into telling tales like a child so i rarely point out her childs misdemeaners.
Im going to try not to worry and hope the comment she made to the teacher is already forgotten. I dont want to always fight my childrens battles as they will face many instances where they will need to use initiative and judgement and hopfully i can equip them with the skills to do this in a reasonable manner.

I agree there don't let her mother being an arse colour your judgement of the child - she's only a little girl and no little girls/ boys are perfect.

DS is quite a handful and often gets loads of kids trying to fit him up for things, I think it's quite natural behaviour. It's also quite common for older kids to be really tell tale with him they all do it.

I watched a very nice little boy give DS 10p the other day and run crying to his mum saying he knicked it!

She's a Wendy with a daughter who's being manipulated into being a mini Wendy. Run for the hills!
The school will be well aware of what a pain in the arse this parent's going to be.
Ignore and make new friends

TSC three year olds can be manipulative. My friend and I watched her then three year old stand next to my then 5 year old DS and yell as though he had hurt her! He hadn't, we were watching! She was being manipulative!

OP in the karate chop situation, as an adult who had seen it all ( assuming the other mum hadn't) I think you should have pointed it out and not told your DS off as such but had a conversation about telling an adult when someone hurts him rather than retaliating.

Sticking: YABU for not using a capital letter and a full stop at the beginning and end of your sentence.

Don't worry about the Nursery OP, they'll be rolling their eyes I expect.

But you do seem to have every single detail/reason for these kids not wanting to play with yours, sewn up very tightly.

Have you considered that the little girl really didn't want to come over when she was invited?

Just because she told your DD her Mum wouldn't let her, doesn't make it true. Perhaps she just didn't want to say that she didn't fancy it?

Of course you might be right in everything you're saying...but there's also a chance that there's a grey area you're not seeing, because you're determined to blame everything on this Mum?

I meant to add...

Kids grow apart and form other friendships of their own accord

They're not always influenced by their parents.

AlfalfaMum: What type of person 'doesn't like boys'?

The mothers of some girls. Generally the 'princess' type ime.

I wont get drawn into telling tales like a child so i rarely point out her childs misdemeaners.

That's a bit of a shame for your DS, isn't it, having to take any shit the little girl dishes, with no acknowledgement of provocation, even by his own mother... I'd keep him away from her socially: at nursery, their key workers will mediate fairly without mother-social anxiety.

Seriously, do dump both children, and the mother.

Worrel, i keep stressing this to my daughter, i tell her about the several 'best friends' i had growing up before settling on one very good one buts she is still finding it hard to let go. Hopfully she realise in her own time.
Renter when u put it like that it does souns bad doesnt it, i do feel guilty for shouting at my ds when hes stuck up for himself, maybe i need to start stating what the daughter is doing when she does it. Its impossible to avoid being in their company once a week and its only going to continue if i dont nip it in the bud.
Thanks for the feedback everyone.