I have a 3 week old baby so I'm aware I may be being a bit hormonal, but I'm seriously tempted to put my foot down over a friendship Ds2 (8yo) has because I'm growing to really dislike the child's mother.
I'm 38, I have 6 children from 17-3 weeks. So far I've managed not to kill, maim, permanantly misplace or seriously traumatise any of them - the teens are a bit iffy atm as they found my teenage Greece holiday photos in a box last week and apparently seeing your clearly drunk mother on a bucking bronco in a club is 'sooooo sad and embarassing' but I'm sure they'll get over it. My kids are happy and healthy and I've working fucking hard to make sure my issues with my parents (they were neglectful and abusive so I ended up being brought up by my grandparents from 7) don't impact them negatively in any way.
DS has a new friend. New friend's mother is a counsellor. Someone else (I'm not sure who and I'll be having words when I find out) has mentioned to her that I'm seeing a counsellor atm after a massive fallout with my siblings when our father died. New friend's mother has taken to commenting on every single decision I make about DS and what he's allowed or not allowed to do and trying to analyse it in terms on my past. I see her every day at the moment when I take DS to playscheme, once school is back I'll see her twice a week at activities. I won't see her at the school gate as DS walks himself - a decision I've apparently made as seeing children being met at the gate by their parents is obviously painful for me as I was never met at the gate by mine.
I've said to her twice that I don't dwell on the past. I've also said twice, politely, that I would never mix social crowd with counselling so I'm quite happy with my own counsellor, but she's still going on. Everything is a thing and today the boys asked if they could go to an adventure place after the playscheme. I said no because it's the kind of place we'd go as a family if we were going and we'd done something DS wanted to do yesterday so today I'd promised DD3 we'd do feet painting. This apparently (because yesterday's choice by DS was at home) suggests that I'm nervous about my children being around strangers and I lack confidence. I, admittedly rather abruptly, told her I didn't lack confidence, I just don't feel the need to say yes to everything DS asks and I'd rather she stopped trying to analyse me when she knows nothing about me or my past. We then left as I didn't want to discuss it any further and I didn't want a scene at playscheme because I'm actually the chairperson.
She's mentioned to a committee member that she's concerned about me because it's not like me to be rude! I'm now bloody livid. Any suggestions of polite, but firm ways to tell her to back the fuck off? I've enough on my plate as DH goes back to work next week and that means he's away for 10 days and my new HV is humming and hawwing about 'lack of support' even though I'm fine, baby is thriving and my PIL are a great support and 5 minutes away. I get that people are nice, but no-one was bloody concerned when I was on crutches and barely able to walk with SPD and had 5 kids, I've now got the ability to walk and a newborn who luckily has taken to BFing like a dream and is considerably less work than the pain of SPD!