Happy I won’t see these Mum’s again

[Cherrysherbet]

My DD left primary today.

The Mum’s from her class are so far up their own arses. I’m quite clearly not their kind of person.

I have been in multiple situations where they will literally turn their back on me to cut me out of a conversation.

I am friendly to everyone, and don’t have this sort of problem in any other part of my life.

They don’t say rude things to me, but their body language makes it clear that I’m not worth including in conversations.

Why do grown women behave like this?

I’ve hated going there the last couple of years. I really hate the fact that it has bothered me so much. I’m 48 ffs!

Even today at the leavers assembly, they asked me to move seats, and when I moved up, the woman turned her back, so I wasn’t able to speak to anyone! I have never been that close to saying something! I moved right over the other side of the room. Sick of being treated like that.

I am so happy that I’m not tied to having to go there now.
I came home and deleted myself from the class what’s app straight away! Yessss!!

AIBU to ask all primary school Mum’s who are going back in September to be thoughtful about how their actions make others feel?

We teach our kids to be kind and include others, so why do we often get this kind of mentality with the Mum’s? I’ve seen lots of similar post on here before, so I’m sure I’m not the only one who has experienced it.

I struggle with other parents. Some of them like to organise everything so we get messages about a little whip around for teachers presents etc and you end up feeling bad for not wanting to get involved. Now it’s the leavers stuff. Because a number have children from previous years who have left they want a tradition of limos to be upheld or else their children will be devastated. So these limos are being quoted at between £50-60 each. I find it hard to justify this amount of money solely on a limo when the cost of living has jumped so much. On top of that it seems ridiculous to waste petrol driving them around for roughly an hour. But it’s all been put on a group chat and you know that if you say no your kid is stood watching all their friends leave and the cost will increase for all. I’m sure the mums mean well but they aren’t the most approachable and all you hear is how deserving the kids are and this is their reward. I’ll be glad to get it done.

Mummyto2rugrats it's sad to read your post I know what you mean that it can affect your mental health. Little kindnesses and friendlinesses can help life feel smoother for everyone.

I do think we are living in a narcissistic age where people are thinking increasingly of themselves. That's fine on one hand - pps are right we don't need to do anything we don't know what to do but on the other, the school parents' community is still a community and bloody hell it doesn't feel like one most of the time. Especially if you are not from the area or look a bit different.

Maybe your dislike and passive aggressive response dus their reaction to you.

6 of one, half a dozen of the other, maybe

Have you never had a chat with your child's friends' parents on the playground? By y6 surely you know them?

It's so absurd that ALL 30 mums are ALL coincidentally rude and cliquey in the same year group, don't you think? Highly improbable that all of them have made a decision to blank you. For 7 years.

I find these threads so strange. I hope people don't encourage this victim mentality in their children.

If you have social anxieties, you can't blame other people for that. They're just making a dull daily ritual bearable by chatting to people they know. Its not a social club and you aren't the children!

1 I wouldnt have moved seats unless it was reserved for said specific person unfortunately some of these mums may have chosen the same secondary school as you ( hope not for youre sake ) just be youre self but if anything goes down regarding youre child bullying etc nip it in the bud dont stand for that shit. Some people think there better than anybody else at the end of the day no their not they got accepted in the school be yourself and youre child needs to be therself but if somebodys making them unhappy get in there straightaway dont stand for that ive been there and the child in question was mortefied and threatened with the police( an assualt charge ) the head didnt want that it was sorted out there and then with an apology from said child

Totally agree, and people don’t realise how much their anxieties rub off on their children. So these paranoid worry bags produce paranoid worry bag children.

People bangi g on about “stop being selfish” are ironic aren’t they because they’re perhaps the lost selfish - expecting everyone else to make the effort while they just stand there saying nothing, not thinking these people may have their own problems to deal with, then calling them nasty names when they aren’t psychic and behaving in a perfectly particular way

Not only ironic, but deluded too.

*most selfish

People bangi g on about “stop being selfish” are ironic aren’t they because they’re perhaps the lost selfish - expecting everyone else to make the effort while they just stand there saying nothing, not thinking these people may have their own problems to deal with, then calling them nasty names when they aren’t psychic and behaving in a perfectly particular way

Yes and also people need to consider the impact this is having on their children.

If you go home to your child and say "X's mum blanked me in the playground" or "Y's mum thinks she's the bee's knees", its really damaging.

There was a situation in my DD's friendship group recently where one of the girls' mums told the girl that a friendship with another girl in the group was never going to last because "they are all middle class and you're not one of them". The mum in question clearly was struggling with her mental health and obviously had low self-esteem and to a degree I was sympathetic.

But it had a huge impact on the girl concerned and she started exhibiting really paranoid behaviour in the group and eventually became estranged from them. There may have been other factors but I remember thinking it was an extraordinarily destructive thing for the mum to have done.

Being an adult means owning this shit, sorting it out and teaching yourself to be self-aware enough to understand when its real and when you're projecting or being paranoid.

Genuinely hostile behaviour from other mums is quite rare in my experience. If you are a parent you need to get yourself together and not allow yourself or your children to derailed by your own poor self-esteem. If you can't deal with the fact that you're not everyone's best friend on the school run, keep it to yourself or get help for it. Don't pass it onto your kids.

Which is all very well for you but you’ll find there are certain other mothers who very much decide who their children will be friends with.

I’m feeling like David Attenborough should be narrating this!

I know what you mean though OP ….. some people are just thoughtless. (Or engineering manipulators …. It’s a fine line)

Totally get this OP.
Eldest child’s class was lovely and not cliquey at all. Youngest child’s class was cliquey and I always felt awkward. I was actually on the edge of the clique through choice. These mums did everything together, with and without kids and definitely controlled their childrens friendships which was a shame as my youngest was best friends with one of these children at the beginning , having known them before school. I really felt like I was back at school myself, with the mums slyly competing with each other and not daring to miss anything for fear of missing out. My eldest has now left and youngest moved schools so we are out of it now. I was so happy to leave the sodding WhatsApp group! I am quite introvert so that probably didn’t help but like I said, didn’t feel like this with eldest class. Luckily it’s not forever.

I feel the same way OP. Some posters here have said that nobody is obliged to make friends with people outside their group. But this isn't about friendship. It's about basic manners. Yes of course if you think about it logically, it doesn't matter in the great scheme of things if a group of strangers whose children are in the same class as yours, don't want to be your friend or even acknowledge your existence. But we don't all think logically in these situations. Very well done to those who do. However, people are not weak or needy just because they find it hurtful or discomfiting that a group of people ignores them.

I quite promise that you can’t dictate who your child plays with 5 days a week when you’re not there. If you are the type of person to say “don’t play with Eddie” - which I honestly doubt many people are despite the paranoia displayed here - they’ll nod but either think “sod off” in their heads or forget entirely

@ClinkyMonkey

But nine times out of ten when you unpick what has actually happened in these scenarios its really really trivial.

It will be "she turned her back on me" or "she looked past me and started talking to the next mum".

In almost every case when you actually interrogate these situations its explainable behaviour (someone being short-sighted, someone being tired or in a rush or just homing in on someone they happen to know better or whatever) that the person posting on MN has read far too much into or massively over-reacted over.

Then this person goes online and goes on about "cliques" and "bitchy mums" etc.

I guess at one level fair enough and people need an escape valve so posting on here is harmless enough. But it does make me alarmed that so many people feel this constant sense of suspicion about fairly normal behaviour just because it happens to be taking place at school. And it would worry me if this got passed on to children who need their confidence and trust boosted and not undermined by this sort of paranoia.

@Thepeopleversuswork absolutely!!

I think people have watched too much American TV or something when they claim this great rude snub happened, but as you say if you actually unpicked it it’s probably something innocuous. We all have brain fart moments! The other day I drove past my neighbour, who we get on well with and always chat and wave to. We grinned and waved at me, and being tired and having a bit of a headache, my brain didn’t compute. So rather than my usual waving back…..I stared at him. Just stared, as he was waving. Like I was some sort of psychopath.

Luckily I’m confident enough to say later that day when I bump into him “so sorry for just staring not waving, I blame the heat” kinda thing and he laughed it off. But if he was a paranoid deluded sensitive soul like some on here imagine how he could tell that story

”My neighbour is such a stuck up birch. Saw her in the car the other day, and gave her a wave. She literally glared back at me and w on. Bitchy cliquey bitchy mummy mean girl that she is”

@LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet

Totally. Also never underestimate how many people do this through being short-sighted. I've lost count of the times I've been "blanked" by someone I know well, called them on it and it turns out they just didn't see me.

I don't know if the solution is some counselling or positive affirmation or whatever but we all just need to take as the baseline assumption that no she was not a cliquey bitch, she just didn't see you.

If she actually does turn out to be a clicquey bitch then screw her and you'll be glad you didn't let it get to you. But she almost certainly wasn't a cliquey bitch in the first place. And if, as is normally the case, she wasn't, you'll be glad you didn't burn a relationship by being paranoid.

Far far healthier for everyone concerned not to come from the starting point that everyone is always out to get you.

I don't think feeling that other mums are distant is synonymous with being the type of person who reveals all of this to the children.

I do think that, of course, some instances of excluding can be innocuous and innocently done.

However, if you are special friends with someone at the school gate, you've probably screened them and checked out that their your type - based on clothing, manner, etc. One poster has told us that one clique chatted to her, after she lost weight!

You can't have it both ways, you can't have it: ' It's all too rushed to notice people - you chat to your particular friend because it's natural' but somehow you"ve got to know and have made that friend? Based on what, if you didn't know them before? Perhaps you'd like another mum, if you got to chat to them, but there is probably, in some instances, a case of not rating the look of someone, but having selected your special friend, in that rushed meeting point, based on elitist criteria.

It wouldn' t bother me - I don't care if people talk to me or not - and I don't remember feeling excluded in this way in the school gate setting, but I wouldn't like it to happen, and I've experienced this in study situations and further education and it's not pretty when people buddy up in an exclusive way in an adult learning context.

The polite thing to do would be to keep it superficial and inclusive at the school gate, but arrange to meet up with your special buddy, once the kids are dropped, or at some other time.

@Diverseopinions

You can't have it both ways, you can't have it: ' It's all too rushed to notice people - you chat to your particular friend because it's natural' but somehow you"ve got to know and have made that friend? Based on what, if you didn't know them before? Perhaps you'd like another mum, if you got to chat to them, but there is probably, in some instances, a case of not rating the look of someone, but having selected your special friend, in that rushed meeting point, based on elitist criteria.

But you can have it anyway you like. That is the whole point about friendship. There are no rules or parameters for whether people like someone or not. Some people you just click with, others you don't. If you are the kind of mum who rushes in and out you may identify others who appear to be like you and fair enough, that's a legitimate reason to be friends. There's no legislating for this and nothing in the code of conduct for the behaviour of parents at school which dictates that you are obliged to make friends with anyone outside your comfort zone.

The point here is that for plenty of reasons some parents don't rush with open arms to embrace every other parent socially. Most of the time this is for perfectly harmless reasons without unpleasant motives. Yet every time it is read as evidence of a plot by a group of "cliques" to undermine outsiders.

It's impossible to prove whether this is true or not: I am convinced that most of the time it is not but I can't know for sure.

However, whether people are being deliberately bitchy or just short signed and tired, far your best tactic for dealing with it is to shrug it off, be pleasant but not let it get to you. You simply don't enhance anyone's life by going off to stew in your own juice about "bitchy mums" or "cliques". Least of all your own or your children's.

And these endless "school gate mums are so bitchy" threads (and there is literally one a day on here) don't do anything to support women with anxiety or low self-esteem. They simply make women overanalyse things that in the scheme of things don't matter that much and draw very damaging conclusions.

No but you can decide who does and doesn’t get invited to your house for play dates, days out etc, don’t reciprocate play dates etc.

Its interesting you seem so determined t say this doesn’t exist/happen when so many other people on the thread know exactly what the OP’s talking about.

I think when mums appear to be asking someone to move up a seat, without saying, "How are you? I loved Lizzy's drawing on the art board! I said to Hamish, it reminds me of "The Hungry Caterpillar!", before turning away, then the issue in this thread is more about manners suited to the occasion, rather than being about friendship.

Of course you can't be 'friends' with everybody, but you could use your fifteen minutes to say life-enhancing positive stuff to whom is there. Save the friendship connections to another time. You do have something in common with the other people standing there - you're kids are in the same class, learning the same stuff. There must, surely, be opportunity to say collective stuff that's occurred to you, such as: " Will the PTA be giving out water on Sports Day, like last year, d'you think? Carrie will have her bottle, but she doesn't like it when it becomes warm".

I like these thread, even if there are too many of them, for the humerous examples - like the mums who started talking to the poster, after she'd asked a minor dignitary or celebrity to pick up her kid, a few times!

It's fifteen minutes each end, so why not create a good, constructive vibe, instead of shielding yourself from irritating people . Sure, on the other hand, there's not much you can do but be a bit distant if there are certain mothers who will dive into a monologue about their mother's operation - but that situation will be the exception and your clique could politely take it in turns to listen to the operation details.

I think if you are only 'friends at the school gate' then that is not a friendship, if you simply must talk to them then, because you won't be seeing or texting then at other times. I'd call it a strategic grouping, and not a friendship group.

But yes, it's a given, which I think all posters understand, that life's a free gig and anyone can choose to talk to whomever they want and be 'friends' ( marked inverted commas) with whom they like. The question is what is becoming as good manners, not will you be arrested for not greeting all and sundry.

I'm by no means saying this doesn't happen but most half sane parents will at least have a half respectful conversation with you and be happy to organise for the kids to play together if they are playing nice. At least this is what I've found. I don't consider myself the most likeable or 'on-trend' person but most people will facilitate their kid's friendships rather than making barriers. You do need to put yourself out there a bit though even when it feels uncomfortable. You can't expect people to be constantly thinking about your emotional booboos when they have their own lives and own problems. If you're finding that parents don't talk to you ask yourself honestly when was the last time you actually bothered to ask them how they are and took an active interest....

@Cherrysherbet are you me? I have been looking forward to the end of primary. I skidded out of that what’s app group so fast, I think I left smoke behind. I just feel it’s such a shame; it could have been a nicer 7 years if people had just acted like grownups! The cliques, the deliberately excluding others, not knowing how to apologize when your child has bullied mine (school has dealt with it but a “am so sorry he acted that way I brought him up to know better” would have been nice). I can sum up the 7 years in one phrase “the good, the bad and the downright ugly”

Oh forgot the wanting their children to only mix with people from their race or community

Totally agree. Lots of them decide who they would like their kids to socialise with out of school hours and build their relations from an early age. My husband and I are both highly educated, kids are very academic and well-behaved. Maybe we chose the wrong area/school.

"My neighbour is such a stuck up birch. Saw her in the car the other day, and gave her a wave. She literally glared back at me and w on. Bitchy cliquey bitchy mummy mean girl that she is”

But you're giving examples of one off behaviours that are clearly just that. The OP is talking about behaviour that is consistently cruel and cold over a 7 year period. Can you really not see the difference?