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 in your position the thing I would be most horrified about would be your daughter excluding your friend’s daughter. You have to stamp out that kind of behaviour when your DC are young so they don’t grow up to be bullies.

Is it any wonder your former friend is so upset at you? You forcibly separated your kids despite them being friends instead of talking to your friend about helping the kids make new friends too. Then you allowed your DD to bully and exclude your friend’s DD and claim it’s just your DD knowing her own mind. And now you’re upset that your friend doesn’t like you any more and is friends with the other mums. Surely you can see that YABU?

School teacher here, what the fuck do you expect the HT to do about this? Tell the other parents, to stop being mean.... .

Yes, it’s okay to encourage children to mix with other children (it’s actually quite healthy). But, what gave your daughter the right to exclude friend 1? You say the other girl was possessive.....IMO your daughter sounds possessive.

I only feel sorry for your dd in all of this.
The other children involved have nice, sensitive mums and now they have lots of friends and play together.
You have meddled in your dds friendships, deliberately caused a rift and now she has behaved unpleasantly to a little girl at school. You have confused her and resulted in her bullying this little girl by exclusion.
When people have worked out that you are mean, and your parenting style causes your dd to be mean, they don’t want to associate you.
Yet you believe this is bullying by exclusion, but you treat others this way first.
Sometimes you reap what you sow.
Like I say I feel sorry for your dd as you are teaching her to be a bully.

If you wanted to put this right for sake of your dd, I would suggest apologising to the ex friend and tell her it was worry about your dd causing you to act in this way but you recognise that it was wrong and are hoping for a fresh start.

What's done is done. I very much doubt an apology would achieve anything and I don't think ex friend would be receptive to an apology and I get the impression that OP doesn't/didn't really want her as a close friend and was finding both her DD and her a bit much. I can't help thinking there is more of a backstory, which is why I'm a bit reluctant to judge.

What is lacking in this thread is any advice to OP about how she could learn from this and move forward. I did suggest a few things upthread but it was more in the line of lowering your expectations re the school gates, which is what I have done and what has worked well for me.

What OP needs to do now is tackle her own awkwardness re the situation. Beating herself up about it is going to achieve nothing and neither is listening to a whole thread of diatribe about how she has conducted herself.

Yes, perhaps Ex friend has told everyone what OP is 'like' but, in this situation, I would have the strength of character to want to find out for myself and, if a potential friend rejected me on that basis, they probably wouldn't be a good fit anyway.

What you need to do, OP, is not project your anxieties onto DD and I think this is where your engineering the situation you got yourselves into has come from.

I don't think you are as bad a person as you are being depicted here. I think you had the best of intentions but made a gross error of judgement. Take it with you and move on.

Take care. x

In the school I work in, some of the parents treat us teachers like their teachers, telling tales on other parents and wanting us to punish them!
It's quite immature really.

@nannyplumhairstyle what do you do about it?
It would be almost comical these grown adults snitching on each other, if it wasn’t for the sad fact it is taking away teaching time and the focus on the children.

We just say "obviously we can't referee disputes between parents or tell them how to behave"
I have genuinely had to say this on several occasions in the past year alone!

Sounds like you are the one still in school, OP. You're an adult, act like it.