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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that ‘mum’ friends are often far more hassle than they’re worth?!

358 replies

Blargon7 · 07/10/2019 10:45

Jeez.

I’ve been dropped by my close ‘mum’ friend from the school, she’s gone from being super keen to not wanting to meet up with me. It really hurts and I don’t know why. She is however still going around with another group of mums, a couple of whom she has moaned about to me on many occasions.

Then there are the other women there. Some I say hi and have a quick chat to but sadly we don’t have much in common and don’t really click, it’s just polite how are your kids doing chat which is fine.

Then there are a lot of mums who have cliques and seem to bully and slag off a bunch of other mums to the point where some mums have stopped coming into the playground and have been reduced to tears.

I just can’t be arsed with this fucking bullshit anymore! Life is too bloody short.

What’s your experience?!

OP posts:
shearwater · 07/10/2019 12:17

Just for balance, whenever there are groups of men you get cliques, jealousy, backstabbing and bitching as well. I have worked with mostly men for most of my adult life.

Thurmanmurman · 07/10/2019 12:19

To be honest I've never seen or heard any cliquey behaviour or bitching from other mums. My DCs friends mums are all lovely for a chat in the playground and we help each other out with pick ups and occasional childcare etc but nobody takes the piss and favours are always returned. We'll go for a drink occasionally and they are just normal nice people! I feel pretty lucky after hearing some of the horror stories on here. Perhaps there are horrors in the school playground and I've been lucky enough to avoid them and find the good eggs!

RaquelWelch · 07/10/2019 12:21

YANBU: Even at the secondary school level, I can see the mums of the so-called "popular girls" acting just like kids. Sitting at the back in school meetings and gigging and chatting through meetings. My daughter says to me that the "popular girls" are bullying bitches and bully the people within their own group. She is really glad she isn't classed as "popular" and I'm bloody glad I don't feel insecure enough to want to be part of one of these groups. It's like an episode of Real Housewives when you hear the shit that they have going on

Ninkaninus · 07/10/2019 12:21

Obviously it’s not all women or all mums who are like this, nor only women, but a significant cohort are, and I’ll have nothing at all to do with them. I find them utterly ridiculous and I’ll waste precisely 0 time and effort engaging with them and their dramas.

Wotrewelookinat · 07/10/2019 12:22

Just don’t get involved. I did make a couple of good, close friends when my kids were at school, but in general I would keep myself to myself. But then I was like that at school. Can’t be arsed with the pathetic cliques, Queen bees and hangers-on in girls/women of any age.

MonnaLIza · 07/10/2019 12:22

Hi! I am a person (and a mum) who likes to make friends with other persons. Sometimes they are other mums.

I liked some of the mums at the school very much. Others less so. I had a little circle of mum friends/support and it was really helpful when the kids were driving us mad. Now my kids are older out of primary school and we have lost touch a bit, but I met one for coffee in town the other day and it was really great fun to reminisce about a period of our lives and when the kids were small.

My take would be, do not take the whole thing too much to heart, but if you find some other mum companions to travel with you in the Tardis for this period of your life it is great, it makes the whole best-of-times-worst-of-times of the Early Years a lot easier.

TemporaryPermanent · 07/10/2019 12:23

My 'mum' (and dad) friends have been true friends, including unstinting support both for ds and I through appalling personal tragedies and loss. The fact that we met when our children were babies is to be celebrated but they are just friends, wonderfully. A couple who are 'parent' friends of that era are now Ds's guardians if anything happens to me.

If your school gate seems cliquey, get stuck in, you can be the change you want to see.

Rainbowknickers · 07/10/2019 12:24

We moved to a new area once

Where I came from it was very working class-I’m still mates with most of them

Where we moved to was very middle class and nobody spoke to me at all

That suited me right down to the ground!

Then out of the blue my son got an invite to a girls party

My mother did the drop off and I sent a lovely present and card for the birthday girl

I don’t know what I did wrong but her mother took a real dislike to us as a family and tried to make my life hell (she lived over the road from us) dirty looks in the playground,snide comments made in earshot and spreading lies around school about me

The daughter tried to join in by repeating what she must have heard from her mother-low level bitchy comments again in my earshot

School did nothing cos mum was high up on the pta so I took it higher and whooped their arses

Until the day we moved this mother used to glare at me in the street

And I still have no idea what the hell I did wrong!

MonnaLIza · 07/10/2019 12:25

Sorry to add, give zero time to people who are difficult and concentrate on the mums you like. Like kids, like people, they (we) come in all sorts.

StormcloakNord · 07/10/2019 12:26

I am honestly so confused at how mum group friends or whatever even start?

Surely it's just go to the playground, drop-off/pick-up and then out again. Who on earth has time to stand and chat away and actually forge anything more than a civil hello?!

ZaZathecat · 07/10/2019 12:26

I say YABU because I have made some of my closest friends at the school gate, However, I never got into any 'group' just talked to people individually and eventually some of them became good friends.

ZaZathecat · 07/10/2019 12:28

Storm, mostly people who are not working and are also craving adult company because of that.

StarlingsInSummer · 07/10/2019 12:28

I always kept my social life separate to my kid's school.

I stand in the playground and pass the time talking to whoever was standing next to me and I'd help out at school fetes.

DS has just started Reception but this is definitely the route I'm planning to take.

StormcloakNord · 07/10/2019 12:30

@ZaZathecat I didn't even think of that. I've always worked so it's always a quick in and out.

Annasgirl · 07/10/2019 12:33

So on DC number one we all get sucked in and believe these people are our friends. Cue much hurt and misery over the years and by DC 3 I have realised there is no such thing as mum friends from the school gate.

I now realise it is not just me (I believed for many years the problem was me) - it is universal. But do not worry, you are not alone, and you are not the problem.

Letting go of all attempts to be friends is the best option - be civil, but always remember, they are acquaintances not friends.

Evilmorty · 07/10/2019 12:35

All I get is judgement, jealousy and comparison at the school gates. Hopeful for the next DC, maybe I’ve just got a bad lot this time round 😂

Milicentbystander72 · 07/10/2019 12:38

I never properly clicked with anyone at my dcs Primary School. I had acquaintances who I chatted to, did the 'likes' on the FB posts etc but it was never very deep friendship. Nothing I would get worried about not having.

Incidentally I seem to be the wrong way around than most people as I seem to have found good friends at Secondary School. Of course there's no hanging around in the playground, but having not made much effort in Primary, I decided to get involved with fundraising at Secondary. This led to more volunteering with different groups and now I'm a school Governor. Here, I've found lots of people I really like. I don't rely on them for friendship but I'm very happy to get involved and make the effort.
It somehow feels a lot more 'grown up' probably because our children are.

wondering7777 · 07/10/2019 12:38

If your school gate seems cliquey, get stuck in, you can be the change you want to see.

I love your attitude but I definitely wouldn't have the confidence to do that!

MrsPeacockDidIt · 07/10/2019 12:45

such a shame that so many of you have had bad experiences. This has not been the case for me at all. My DS is in Y4 and I've made some really good friends at school BUT these are people I would have been friends with no matter where I'd met them. We have a really nice class of kids who all get on mostly. Just because someone is in the playground dropping or picking up a child doesn't mean they aren't nice people worth more than an aloof stare. Some are even funny and good company ! By all means don't start the school journey expecting to make great friends but don't discount it either, you might just miss out.

BadgersBum · 07/10/2019 12:47

I'm the older mum with the resting bitch face and a child with ADHD. All the other mums were lovely … to my face.

We're now in the last year of junior school, my son makes his own way there and back so I hardly see any of the other parents anymore. I have made a handful of friends at the school gates and we've seen each other through some tough, school-related times, but I'm not an 'in each other's pocket' type of person anyway.

Itsallsuchamess · 07/10/2019 12:48

I have realised there is no such thing as mum friends from the school gate
Not always, I met my best friend at school when the kids first started. Love her to bits, she's like the sister I never had.

However, I couldn't be bothered with the majority of them and some of them turned out to be just downright nasty, so all things considered OP yanbu.

FeckOffGraham · 07/10/2019 12:50

If your school gate seems cliquey, get stuck in, you can be the change you want to see.

The thing is that not everyone wants to get 'stuck in' and thereby, potentially, dragged into some total stranger's dramas or unpleasantness. Sometimes people just aren't meant to be anything more than passing acquaintances and that's fine. Every time I meet someone and don't get on with them well, I don't see it as my mission to make changes so that we can all be buds. I always think that if friendships don't happen, there's probably a reason.

That said, of course everyone should be friendly and polite, (while maintaining a safe distance, if that's what they want).

I have no family support nearby, so I should fall into the 'needs support and adult company' category, but I am still pretty discerning when it comes to people whose company I truly want to share. If I force it, it always shows I think and nobody enjoys it.

As a result I have a very small circle of friends, but I am very close to each of them.

Ninkaninus · 07/10/2019 12:55

I wouldn’t ‘get stuck in’ if you paid me! I don’t want to be involved. I pity the people that do, tbh.

Straycatstrut · 07/10/2019 12:56

Worst part of my weekdays by far. I actually try and time it so I arrive as late as possible for this reason, but it's impossible the days both boys are there - DS1 starts school 8.40, DS2 Nursery at 9.00. There's 20 minutes of standing around the Nursery "pen" Grin and it is flipping awful. All closed in with the cliques!

I stand away from them and make it obvious I don't want to socialise. I'm quite 'alternative' so they kind of eye me sideways and look away quickly. It was exactly the same when I was at school, so I'm well trained in dealing with it. I wouldn't want to be involved in the bitch fests. They can bitch about me but they have no idea what they're bitching about.

Next year I'll be studying full time, using the morning/after school clubs & GP's will be doing a lot of the pick ups/drop offs thankfully! Cannot wait!

Vulpine · 07/10/2019 12:59

Haha tbe patronising tone from some on here!. Its only mums who dont work and are 'craving adult company' who like other school mums! I work and still have time to chat to people because i am sociable not because of a craving Hmm

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