To feel bullied?

[JoulesMrs]

Name changed in case the mums are on here, long back story so bare with me.

When my DD was at nursery she was inseparable from another girl. As a result of this I became very good friends with the girls mother. We used to meet each other socially and text each other virtually everyday. As they were approaching reception age I felt that my DD shouldn't be so reliant on this girl so I asked the nursery to change their days so they weren't together. I told the mum it was due to my work so as not to hurt her feelings. My DD then became friends with a girl who was also friends with my friends DD.

The problem came when the girls all started school as my DD then didn't want to play with my friends DD. My friends DD had some tantrums at school because my DD asked her not to play with her and their mutual friend. My friend then approached me to say her DD had come home from school upset and asked what was going on. I let slip about separating them at nursery and she went mad, accusing me of lying (OTT) and since then we haven't spoken.

I then became really good friends with the mum of the mutual friend to the girls. We started going for coffee and meeting at the school gates. My ex friend then started getting upset accusing us of talking about her and to be honest it ruined my DD's first year at school.

They are now in their second year and the mum of the mutual friend decided to move her DD to another school. My ex friend is what I call a PTA mum. She's involved with everything to do with the school and she's all up the other mum's asses, talking to them at the gates etc.

I now find myself stood alone at the gates because I can't join in conversations with the other mum's as she is there. My DD doesn't have many friends and I've tried inviting children back for tea but never get an invite back.

AIBU to speak to the head that I feel bullied and excluded?

If I were you I’d change schools, your daughter is not happy and while you might have been trying to do the best thing for her I think you’ve realised that you can’t influence your kids friendships without consequence.
Move on and draw a line under it.

She wasn't excluding her, she was just asking her not to play with her and this other girl.

Are you not hearing yourself or do you not know the definition of excluding?

I am firmly of the opinion that the op is the four year old.

Bizarre.

You can't 'tell' on other parents and get the head to make them talk to you 😂

So as long as it was the other child and her ex-friend mother being excluded and it supposedly benefitted you and yours, that was okay?

But now the shoe is on the other foot you're whining?

I'm very. Ross at you daring to use the word 'bullying' Nd taking all of its potency away.

You're an idiot.

I have nothing more to add than has said already but I would encourage you to try and talk to your ex-friend and apologise, and I mean properly apologise, and try and explain why you did what you did and hope that she sees enough good qualities in you to put it down to PFB behaviour this time and forgive you. You also need to apologise for allowing your daughter to exclude her daughter, which is appalling behaviour, and tell her you've already spoken to your daughter about this and that it's not nice, which is what I truly hope you've done already.

Being a parent isn't always easy and we all make mistakes but having made a huge one you need to try and fix it.

You were unreasonable for encouraging your DD to exclude the other child and to engineer and manipulate the breaking up of their friendship.
I have always brought my children up to be inclusive. But many kids sadly are now brought up like your daughter is which is why many girls are so nasty and horrible to one another at school.
You will just have to suck the situation up now as will your DD try and prove you are a nice person without being overly pushy or slating the other Mum and I wouldn’t get too pally with the mums of any new friends your DD makes in the future. Try and find friends away from the school playground.

wonders if OP has gone to MNHQ to report all the bullies on her thread

Can I just add, OP, that your use of ‘PTA mum’ in your first post is downright rude. I’m one of those ‘pta mums’, I know a lot about the school and I can’t imagine anyone who knows me would suggest I’m up anyone’s asses.

Maybe consider joining your DD’s school’s PTA, or volunteering at some events - you might make some new friends.

You ABU OP, the practically unanimous response detailing why your behaviour was inappropriate should give you pause for thought.... it is a rare thing for posters to be in such agreement.

We are only recently in a new school year and hopefully given time your DD will be able to forge new friendships and this will all be forgotten. Primary age friendships change and evolve very quickly. I think you could perhaps ease this situation by apologising to your ex friend for separating the girls and then lying about it. She may not accept the apology but at least you will have done the right thing. The school gate issue is difficult as if you have a reputation of being exclusionary over involved with DD's friendships then other parents may be wary.

I really hope that at the time you explained to your DD that although she may have wanted to play with her new friend it was very unkind to ask her old friend not to join them. She needs to understand that her old friend was not just having a "tantrum" but was genuinely upset at being left out when she had done nothing wrong. If you did not deal with that issue it could set an ongoing pattern of exclusionary behaviour which could lead to her being labelled a bully without her realising.

I would urge you not to interfere or engineer changes in your DD's future friendships unless there is genuine concern for her safety. She needs to develop the social skills for herself and this should happen organically. 5 year old's are fickle and what is a big drama today could well be forgotten tomorrow, there is always lots of drama surrounding school friendships right up until sixth form and sometimes beyond!

Firstly, I can understand (a little) wanting to help your child make healthy friendships. My son has a ‘frenemy’ at school who switches from being his best friend to pushing and bullying him from one day to the next. I encourage my son to make other friends, and when he does I invite those new friends for tea- I don’t encourage him to leave his old friend out at school though and would be very cross if he did. As others have said more eloquently than I, that would be bullying behaviour.

I wonder what you are more worried about here. Your child’s friendships or your own?

School pick up and drop off takes 10 minutes out of your day. Does it matter if you spend those 10 minutes chatting to a mum you don’t like and her friends or standing alone? Smile, say hi to everyone and keep your distance. It really doesn’t matter.

As for your daughter, encourage her to forge friendships within school. Join games, chat, play, be nice to everyone. Children of that age are innocent and don’t generally hold grudges- if they see a happy friendly girl they are likely to play with her.

If you want to, invite those friends over. But do it because it’s what your daughter wants, not because your concerned with getting return visits. Let the other parents drop their kids off and get on with their day- they don’t need to be your friends and if you try to force them to be then it will be very off putting

Remember above all that non of this is about you. If you really want what’s best for your daughter then drop her off and pick her up with a smile on your face and stay away from school gate politics!

I was on the receiving end of this sort of shit. I just cannot understand people like you.
Selfish, meddling, socially engineering amoral unintelligent piece of humanity. Yuck.

In my bullier’s case it worked, people believed her (or didn’t carry) that she hadn’t deliberately excluded DS because it didn’t benefit her social climbing. She formed a little clique and continued to exclude him, yada yada. Thankfully DS is popular wherever he goes (apologies to those whose kids are suffering from not having enough friends, not smug) so is thriving.

You’re teaching your child (and exemplifying) a very poor moral standard.

Didn’t care

Oh dear OP; you’ve got your arse handed to you on a plate, haven’t you...

I think what you need to take from this is that friendships via your children can be very fickle. The children fall out and then the parents do and it can get awkward.

It's best to not get so close next time and keep such relationships strictly business and the good news is that this becomes far easier as your child gets older.

If you are uncomfortable standing there on your own, turn up just as the bell goes or wear headphones or play a game on your phone. Change the way you look at things. I see pick up as a bit of me time before DS gets out. Sometimes making small talk is a bit of a pain, tbh.

As for playdates, if your DD is not invited back, don't invite them again. Instead, involve your DD in out of school activities to build her confidence a bit - things like Rainbows, Brownies, Gymnastics. Look at it positively - you don't have to have other people's kids coming in, making a noise and trashing the house and then have to lie to little Matilda's mum that she was an angel.

My DD had loads of playdates and it didn't really help friendships either way. She would have made them anyway, as DS did and we have far fewer. DD didn't sustain her friendships beyond primary school as they change so much at secondary and, in fact, I would go as far to say having to many playdates made my DD far too dependent on me to organise her social life and she does struggle now to do it herself. I found a lot of playdates led me to being suckered into unofficial childcare, too.

You need to teach ur dd to be friendly and not act in a mean, excluding way.

You need to maybe give your dd a bit of respect in terms of not feeling you have to actively manipulate her choice of friends esp for v little reason, as seems to be the case initially.

Your dd may not be invited back if she's actively behaving in the way you describe tbh. Prob nothing to do with ex friend.

I think rel with ex friend can't be fixed, how could it, you lied to her, your daughter s excluding her daughter etc.

OP- you sound utterly ghastly. Someone I considered to be a good friend did this to my dd (interfered in her friendship with her kids, influenced her kids to tell my dd she couldn’t play with them etc). My dd was devastated at losing her best mates, and I felt gobsmacked and hurt. Needless to say we are no longer friends: when someone shows you their true colours, believe them. Your colours in this regard are pretty grotty. Shame on you, you are the bully here.

OP,

The first and most important step for you, is to admit culpability for the situation you and your DD are in. At the moment you seem to be coming up with every excuse under the sun to deny any wrongdoing - either intentional or innocent.

Once you get to this stage ( and actually acknowledge what nearly single poster has said here ), then you can start to repair the damage you have caused.

You owe original mum an apology. You were dishonest in your original conversations about how you moved your DD to different groups at nursery. If you had been honest about the situation and reasoning behind it, it could have been all so different.

Your comments about ' PTA mums being up the schools asses' and you thinking complaining to the head teacher about something that is nowhere near their responsibility shows a meanness and lack of thought that is very damaging to you and your DD.

It is not too late to learn from this, but to do so you need admit you have done wrong, and I genuinely don't think you are ready to do this.

I think it's safe to say that the OP is off having a strop now.

Poor kid, being manipulated like that.

i understand it's hard to listen to what peple have said but from what I'm reading you and your daughter made really good friends with a mum and daughter. Your daughter was very close to this child and instead of speaking to nursery about it or encouraging your daughter to be friends with other people or trying to arrange playmates with other children you just moved her days at nursery and Lied to your friend. Your daughter and you then pall up with friend 1s friend and became very close with them ( I think you need to honestly think how you would feel if this was you in the situation and honestly think about how you would ferl if you had bern dropped then friend 1 had paired of with your friend ) Then they all start school friend 1s daughter wants to play with the 2 girls your daughter won't allow that and upsets her. Instead of trying to sort it out , speaking to your daughter , the school ECT you then tell friend 1 you moved your daughter to get say from hers ( you had to know this was a bad idea and would upset her ) . Now because mutual friend is moving school you have no one and your daughter has no one. Listen I don't think your a horrible person ECT but you have behaved badly I also think that you and your daughter seem to pick one friend and stick with them. You did it with friend 1 and mutual friend when things go wrong or move away if you have only really concentrated all your efforts on one person then you will be left alone. Friend 1 has obviously spent reception cultivating relationships with numerous other people. If you don't know any of the other parents I can only assume you have paired of with mutual friend and been happy doing that. This is my advice apologise to friend 1 yes you probably won't be friends again but try and be civil and speak to all other parents, don't just attatch to one speak to all of them , keep asking for at dates and try and just be nice to everyone friend 1 included and speak to your daughter about being friendly to everyone and not excluding people. I don't know if friend 1 has said lies about you or maybe she told people the truth and the truth is you acted badly I think you need to acknowledge your mistake and own it them move on. The head can't make parents like you or invite your daughter to playmates they just can't. Good luck and I hope you will take some of the advice on the thread as it's hard to accept you did the wrong thing and I'm sure at the time maybe it felt like the right thing but it obviously wasn't and this is a result of what happened. You love your daughter you want her to be happy so think honestly about your own part in creating the situation and put your pride to the side and try and fix it.

Also I wonder what the nursery staff thought of you “erm, you know how my daughter has formed a lovely friendship with little girl A? .. well I’d like you to separate them, please .. just because I think it’s a good idea ..”

Does it matter if no one speaks to you at the school gates anyway.
Just drop your DD off/pick her up and go about your day and don’t give it a second thought.
I couldn’t give a shit if other mums don’t speak to me. I’m polite and say hello if I’m spoken to but couldn’t care less if not.