I realise before I write this, that I may sound petty, but a year ago I had an argument with a good friend and even now I still feel angry about it. AIBU...?
So, last year I met up with my good friend and her children. She has two (5 and 2 at the time) and I have two (2 and 6 months at the time). I was finding the transition from 1 to 2 children pretty tough, not helped by the fact that my then 2 year old was going through a difficult phase of pushing and banging into things. He’s a lovely little kid, but slightly delayed in his speech, so just tended to be a bit more physical (he’s past this now thankfully!) Anyway, my friend knew I was struggling and had recently took a break from going to baby/toddler groups as, in my sleep-deprived state, I was emotionally struggling to attend groups with both children and felt really mortified when my 2 year old was acting up whilst I was trying to breastfeed to other one, etc (looking back, I think I may have been a little depressed!). We met up for a play date though and from the outset I felt she was ‘picking’ on my 2 year old. Commenting and criticising everything he did, but in a really underhand way (e.g. saying to her 5 year old “Oh don’t worry X, you’re a good boy!” when her child pointed out that my little boy had eaten some of the bread for the ducks, etc). She was also very critical of my parenting (e.g. “but WHY don’t you let them have cakes yet?!”)
The whole afternoon felt unnecessarily tense and eventually I told my little boy it was time to go so to fetch his shoes. He did this, but in doing so, ran past her 2 year old who was standing in the doorway, knocking her over. Her two year old didn’t cry until my friend ran over screaming “OH MY GOD!!” and whisked her up in her arms, when she started crying. My little boy looked at me and said “X is sad”. I told her she was and he walked up to her and said “sorry X”. At this, my friend turned her little girl round so she couldn’t see my little boy. I told her he was trying to say sorry and she ignored me. Eventually I said I’m very sorry and that we’ll just leave (she didn’t reply) and I text her when I got in the car to say again how sorry I was but thank you for a lovely afternoon.
I didn’t get a reply for a whole day and then the following evening I got a reply telling me that her child was “still upset about the push” and that she remembers my little boy from the last time she saw him. She said she was just letting me know so that I could take “appropriate parental action”. I didn’t know how to reply. My child was two, he was asleep in bed two nights after pushing past another child which he had apologised for at the time. Of course it was not ok that he did this and he said sorry at the time. I just feel, even now, hugely betrayed by my friend as I was so low at the time and I felt that she really attacked both my parenting and my little boy’s character. Even a year on I still feel upset, which makes me think I’m taking it too far. She has tried to meet up on one occasion, but I couldn’t do the date and so far we haven’t re-scheduled. I could just cut the contact, but we each had significant roles in each other’s weddings and were supposed to be legal guardians for each other’s children if anything happened to the other, so I feel I need to decide now what to do - save the friendship or give up on it.
Please tell me MN - am I the one with the problem?? Is this a good friend? I feel it’s hard for me to decide given how low I was feeling at the time which may cloud my judgement.