DS and I attend a playgroup a few times a week that's at the end of our road. We love it there and love the people who run it who also run another playgroup we go to, and of course the fact that it's at the end of our road is a huge godsend.
Everyone generally gets on, there are a number of faces we will see regularly etc but lots of new people come too so it's not an exclusive group or anything.
A woman attends with her son and has done so for a while. There have always been obvious issues and initially I felt a bit sorry for her and tried my best to be extra friendly.
Her son is coming up to school age. He has lots of accidents (of the poo variety) which of course lots of kids do but she brings him in jeans with no pants on. Jeans that are usually too big for him and fall down to display his pooey bum. He's very boisterous and I've seen lots of parents get really pissed off when he's purposely rammed into their child for the umpteenth time. One woman in particular has taken to making sure her daughter plays away from him as he's always trying to kiss her.
I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way but she's clearly not very bright. I suspect there may be social services involvement which is why I was keen to be nice to her and not segregate her like everyone else seems to have done which would make things worse. But a few things are starting to piss me off and I'm feeling less and less sorry for her.
She's a smoker (as am I so no judgement for that, but I never smoke infront of DS). She will sit in the playgroup rolling her cigarettes infront of all the kids and I just think it's inappropriate. She then stands just outside the gate (where the children are playing outside) to smoke it. Technically she's allowed to do this but I just think she could either smoke before she comes, or bloody wait til she's not at a playgroup. The staff has had words with her about it but she says she's not doing anything wrong and if anyone has a problem they should talk to her face.
She disappears off to speak to people or staff etc and leaves her son to play outside unattended knowing that he has a tendency to be violent to the other children. She only tells him off (and I use this term loosely) when somebody complains to her about something he's done.
She's made a few unsavoury comments that have irritated me ie slightly racist and homophobic stuff but I realise some people are like that I can't do much about that.
It's making it less enjoyable to be there, and the atmosphere in general is tense. Given that the staff have already tried to talk to her about things I'm wondering if there's anything that can improve things? I feel like a busybody saying all this but I just think it's a shame.
AIBU and WWYD?