Rude of school mums or not ?

[bto35]

Today is the last day of school for my child is in reception

We have a class WhatsApp group and a couple of days ago a message popped up saying is everybody still coming to the park on the last day of school and what food should they bring?

This is the first that I heard of it. For some context there is a park near the school that I select five parents visit because they live near there on the way home from school so you have to kind of be invited to go there with them and so far I never have been I know have a lot of other parents either so I know this is not just something personal to me on my child

Anyway there was backwards and forwards messages on the class WhatsApp group which does have 30 parents on there and about five are participating in the excitement of bringing cheese sandwiches in Tesco finest and then it all went quiet

What is irritating me about this is that I know for a fact a group invite has not been put out to say hey guys it’s the last day of term our children have gone for reception together everybody is invited instead it’s only for the park group if you like but she put it out to everybody to see on WhatsApp by saying is everybody still coming to the park when not everybody was actually even invited ?!

I just find this really rude as I know I’m not the only parent that’s reading these messages knowing full well that we never knew anything about this and I’ve not been included or invited and I just feel because it was the last day of term for the whole class it would’ve been nice for it to be inclusive to everybody

It’s so ironic to me that the two women that do this kind of behaviour are the ones that represent themselves for class WhatsApp group leaders for the PTA for the fundraising and even for the collection of money and for the teachers gifts yet they’ll take your money but don’t invite you to the park just seems really odd

Am I too invested to be annoyed ? Should I have pointed out that it hasn’t been a class invite so ‘ is everyone still coming’ doesn’t actually mean that

Well, it’s odd that there’s 30 odd people in this chat and nobody outside the 6 park mums said anything. You’d think a few would have chimed in with, “Sure, I’ll bring a Victoria sponge,” or whatever.

If the rest of the class had responded positively, there’s not a lot the park mums could have done (even if it was inadvertently posted on the wrong chat).

So why do you think nobody responded?

Maybe the park mums would actually like others to join and are wondering why it’s been radio silence? Maybe they think people dislike them now, or can’t be bothered making an effort? I don’t know.

If you want to go somewhere, can’t you just put a message out now on the WhatsApp -“Hi just wanted to confirm if the park get-together is actually happening or not? Can the reps please confirm the plan? If not, anyone up for doing something else / coming to mine for lunch / going for a pizza / whatever?”

You need to find your inner Liz (Motherland) or perhaps actually Julia, who doesn't like to do mums stuff, and not give a damn.

@Pumperthepumper

They made it very clear (with their dirty looks and refusing to speak, say hello, or invite us to parties), that the mums who were new to the school were not welcome to stand with them or enter their group. They even sat on a table next to ours and refused to pull the tables together to include us at a party. Mums sat with their backs to us!

Why would they? Why would they deliberately give dirty looks to strangers?

Because some groups of mums feel threatened by the idea of other mums joining their group. It's very immature, high school -type behaviour. And because, as the poster below me commented, "they're twats". It did not go un-noticed by any of us new mums, who tried to be friendly with them, but were not admitted into their circle. The Whatsapp group for our Year 4 is dead compared to the much more friendlier Reception group class my son is in. Sometimes, you get groups of bitchy women in cliques.

Because some groups of mums feel threatened by the idea of other mums joining their group.

That’s ridiculous, why would they? What exactly is being threatened?

Quite normal for primary school. Teflon coat on, organise your own stuff and do not engage with this nonsense. Go to the park yourself, if you would like to and ask everyone in the class to join you, be inclusive.

We had an incredibly cliquey year with my eldest, most of them have now fallen out. I don't mean a normal friendship group but a group of women who would turn their backs when you tried to join a chat or look the other way during the school run. Not a great feeling when it's your first child as you are just figuring it all out and trying to join in. In our case, some of the school teachers were part of the clique, it was very odd!

Look out for people you feel you have something in common with if you want to strike friendships in the playground. Be courteous and slightly detached with your dc's parents, there will be inevitable fall outs and awkward moments.

Don't sweat it, it's a marathon, not a sprint through primary school. The children of those 5 park mums might all fall out with each other and start playing with other kids in the next few years, it's early days.

Some mums who cold shouldered me in the beginning started being so friendly once their dc asked to play with my dc.

We made some good friends over the years though the kids though. They're great people but we are not part of a fixed group or clique. Couldn't think of anything worse.

@RedGlassbot

Quite normal for primary school. Teflon coat on, organise your own stuff and do not engage with this nonsense. Go to the park yourself, if you would like to and ask everyone in the class to join you, be inclusive.

We had an incredibly cliquey year with my eldest, most of them have now fallen out. I don't mean a normal friendship group but a group of women who would turn their backs when you tried to join a chat or look the other way during the school run. Not a great feeling when it's your first child as you are just figuring it all out and trying to join in. In our case, some of the school teachers were part of the clique, it was very odd!

Look out for people you feel you have something in common with if you want to strike friendships in the playground. Be courteous and slightly detached with your dc's parents, there will be inevitable fall outs and awkward moments.

Don't sweat it, it's a marathon, not a sprint through primary school. The children of those 5 park mums might all fall out with each other and start playing with other kids in the next few years, it's early days.

Some mums who cold shouldered me in the beginning started being so friendly once their dc asked to play with my dc.

We made some good friends over the years though the kids though. They're great people but we are not part of a fixed group or clique. Couldn't think of anything worse.

So in your group everyone speaks to absolutely everyone in the school playground every single day?

@Pumperthepumper

I have no idea because I don't do that.
I keep my personal stuff off group chat.
I mean why would anyone offer people to buy their worn out high-heeled shoes on a class chat? 🤣 cue 38 posts cooing over manky shoes and calling each other "hun" 🤢🤮

but when I offered the class my son's outgrown but still in great condition logo-ed school jumpers for free there was not a peep from any of them (he's very tall so a shorter classmate could have benefitted - the jumper are £15 each new). not even a "thanks, that's nice of you" - which is what others did.
it was so strange.

of course I didn't do it for praise and medals, I just wanted to help out...and 2 mums contacted me privately so it did work out.

some people are just bizarre.

Sometimes, you get groups of bitchy women in cliques.

In a workplace or a social setting, when a random handful of blokes goes to the pub together or goes to play squash or whatever it may be, do other blokes post threads about it on chat boards saying "sometimes four men get together and don't invite me?"

Why are women expected to universally include all other women in their social lives? Why is it considered bad form for them to build their own networks or just friendships? Are they considered to be so devoid of their own character or opinions that they all just drift happily along together twittering away about their children?

Aside from the pettiness and the paranoia, the thing that pisses me off about the "school mums" threads is the internalised misogyny. Some women expect to be included in everything other women do just because they are also women with children. As if we have no other differentiating characterisitics and can't decide to like or dislike other women on our own terms.

@Pumperthepumper that's the rub isn't it? Unless you're flapping about like Dolly Levi every morning, you've no room to complain. The people who whinge on here aren't including anyone else. They're either waiting for a written invite or their talking to their own "clique".

Utter codswallop

[quote ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba]@Pumperthepumper

I have no idea because I don't do that.
I keep my personal stuff off group chat.
I mean why would anyone offer people to buy their worn out high-heeled shoes on a class chat? 🤣 cue 38 posts cooing over manky shoes and calling each other "hun" 🤢🤮

but when I offered the class my son's outgrown but still in great condition logo-ed school jumpers for free there was not a peep from any of them (he's very tall so a shorter classmate could have benefitted - the jumper are £15 each new). not even a "thanks, that's nice of you" - which is what others did.
it was so strange.

of course I didn't do it for praise and medals, I just wanted to help out...and 2 mums contacted me privately so it did work out.

some people are just bizarre.[/quote]
If you can’t think of a logical reason why they would feel threatened by new people coming into their group - even though you’re convinced they were so threatened they were giving obvious dirty looks and turning their backs on people - I’d say it’s in your head.

@Pumperthepumper

huh??
I think you meant that answer to someone else

You are going to be upset about this for the rest of primary so may I suggest you face this head on! Just Private message the sender and ask them if this invite was open to all. Sometimes some people just don't think and they may be happy for you to attend!

[quote ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba]@Pumperthepumper

huh??
I think you meant that answer to someone else[/quote]
Ok, but still - you’re the one counting how many replies their posts get on a group chat. I’d say that’s more your issue than theirs.

@ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba because you only expect an answer if someone wants them. Ir you get 29 pings of no thank you. Surely that's common sense

Nobody's coo-ing over your school sweaters. Hun

I'm confused at the animosity towards these poor mums.
So they've become friendly because they happen to live near one another and go to the same park after school. Bizarrely you seem to have interpreted this as needing an invite to go to 'their' park, with no evidence for this whatsoever!

They're the ones that run the whatsapp group (to which they've gone to the effort of getting the details of all the parents in the class and haven't left anyone out) and have also organised presents for the teacher - i.e. doing the rest of you a favour and saving you the jobs. They're on the PTA which is the most stressful, thankless task, where they put in a lot of effort to fundraise money for YOUR children. All this sounds the opposite of cliquey!

They've obviously become friendly themselves, as people do, but instead of just meeting up themselves made the effort to put an invite out in the whole class chat to do something nice to mark the end of the year. Yet somehow this has been mistaken as cliquey! They might be reading this thread going 'FFS we've done all the work this year, haven't got any thanks, try and invite people to do something nice for the kids and nobody bothers to turn up or even reply, worse people are even moaning about it!'

How do you KNOW nobody else was invited? Like you say, nobody else has commented to say 'wait, what plans?', which you think they would have if this was the first anyone had heard of it. Perhaps they've mentioned it face to face to a few parents when chatting at the school gates or asked the teacher to say something to the kids. Perhaps they thought they'd posted a message before in the group, but they forgot or it didn't send. You don't know but you seem pretty adamant it's some bizarre sort of game playing, but I don't get it....if they wanted to just meet up themselves they easily could, so why would they go to the effort of posting on the main group?

I'm not one of the mums by the way , and normally I hate cliquish behaviour but really struggling to see what they've apparently done wrong on this one...

Quite easily. The OP knows who the 5 women are out of the group of 30 on the whatsapp group. Just go into settings, note down all numbers bar those 5 and set up a new group with the remaining 24 parents

@HalzTangz

Quite easily. The OP knows who the 5 women are out of the group of 30 on the whatsapp group. Just go into settings, note down all numbers bar those 5 and set up a new group with the remaining 24 parents

What about the people in the class who aren’t in the WhatsApp group?

@thevassal

I'm confused at the animosity towards these poor mums. So they've become friendly because they happen to live near one another and go to the same park after school. Bizarrely you seem to have interpreted this as needing an invite to go to 'their' park, with no evidence for this whatsoever!

They're the ones that run the whatsapp group (to which they've gone to the effort of getting the details of all the parents in the class and haven't left anyone out) and have also organised presents for the teacher - i.e. doing the rest of you a favour and saving you the jobs. They're on the PTA which is the most stressful, thankless task, where they put in a lot of effort to fundraise money for YOUR children. All this sounds the opposite of cliquey!

They've obviously become friendly themselves, as people do, but instead of just meeting up themselves made the effort to put an invite out in the whole class chat to do something nice to mark the end of the year. Yet somehow this has been mistaken as cliquey! They might be reading this thread going 'FFS we've done all the work this year, haven't got any thanks, try and invite people to do something nice for the kids and nobody bothers to turn up or even reply, worse people are even moaning about it!'

How do you KNOW nobody else was invited? Like you say, nobody else has commented to say 'wait, what plans?', which you think they would have if this was the first anyone had heard of it. Perhaps they've mentioned it face to face to a few parents when chatting at the school gates or asked the teacher to say something to the kids. Perhaps they thought they'd posted a message before in the group, but they forgot or it didn't send. You don't know but you seem pretty adamant it's some bizarre sort of game playing, but I don't get it....if they wanted to just meet up themselves they easily could, so why would they go to the effort of posting on the main group?

I'm not one of the mums by the way , and normally I hate cliquish behaviour but really struggling to see what they've apparently done wrong on this one...

There'll be a parallel thread with these mums saying "we did all this yet again and only 5 of them bothered to reply"

And those 5 people could have still had their picnic. The OP is as entitled to arrange her own events, just like these women have been excluding all the other parents from their events

[quote Nohomemadecandles]@ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba because you only expect an answer if someone wants them. Ir you get 29 pings of no thank you. Surely that's common sense

Nobody's coo-ing over your school sweaters. Hun[/quote]
🤣

You are deliberately misunderstanding what I'm saying so I'm not gonna bother explaining it.
some people will know exactly what I meant. that's enough for me.

So in your group everyone speaks to absolutely everyone in the school playground every single day?
I haven't got a group. But when I stand and chat with a group of school mums and someone approaches to join in I always make sure to be polite and inclusive as do the nice mums I have become friendly with.

The mum group coven in my eldest year actively turned away and shut mums who weren't part of that group out. We all know the vibes. It's ridiculous behaviour for grown up women.

@RedGlassbot

So in your group everyone speaks to absolutely everyone in the school playground every single day? I haven't got a group. But when I stand and chat with a group of school mums and someone approaches to join in I always make sure to be polite and inclusive as do the nice mums I have become friendly with.

The mum group coven in my eldest year actively turned away and shut mums who weren't part of that group out. We all know the vibes. It's ridiculous behaviour for grown up women.

Why would they though?

What about the people in the class who aren’t in the WhatsApp group?

Us queen bees have the power to pull mobile numbers of women we've never met out of our arses. We just randomly choose to exclude a few for shits and giggles.

For some context there is a park near the school that I select five parents visit because they live near there on the way home from school so you have to kind of be invited to go there with them and so far I never have been I know have a lot of other parents either so I know this is not just something personal to me on my child

This is what sticks out to me. So what if these 5 parents choose to regularly go to the park? If you want a play date at the park just invite someone- just like they clearly do!

@Nohomemadecandles

What about the people in the class who aren’t in the WhatsApp group?

Us queen bees have the power to pull mobile numbers of women we've never met out of our arses. We just randomly choose to exclude a few for shits and giggles.

Or just take advantage of the numbers you’ve got from a group someone else set up 😂