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 was the same when my daughter left primary. On the party night all the mums had had their own party in a house nearby and left 3 of us out. It really stung and we had to walk past all 50 them to get our children. Enjoy your new freedom of no more nasty school mums

This kind of stuff is why women generally work better with male colleagues. The sisterhood is a myth.

Not unreasonable at all OP, you are not asking for friendships as some have suggested but a basic politeness and acknowledgment that your children share the same school and therefore experiences and memories they will have forever.

I must admit though I am very much a drop off and run type school mum, I don’t like the cliquey playground Mums, I find them quite intimidating how they don’t seem to even smile at others in passing etc.

Good for you deleting the WhatsApp group, must have felt good! Wishing your DD all the best in High School x

I bet your fac3 was a picture when you deleted yourself from the group! I felt the same in a different situation with a bunch of women. I remember reading a study about groups of women whereby one of the women becomes leader, another becomes victim. It’s horribly familiar.

I could have posted the same thing OP.
I have three children. The situation you describe was exactly the situation with my eldest. But in the other classes, the mums are completely different, they are lovely and include everyone. I WFH so I only go to the schoolgate every now and again. It's the same school, different classes. Completely opposite situations. The mums in my eldest's class made me feel crap. It's like being at school yourself again. I do think the world where those women live is very small and that's why they like to exclude people to make themselves feel important. Because they probably have nothing else to focus in their lives.
Have a little celebration. Not having to see them again is worth celebrating. I'm sure you will find a better group in secondary school 😉

'Some' women might. I work far better with other women. The men I've worked with were far too competitive.

Agreed, no one is obliged to be friends with everyone. But the OP and others are talking about being the victims of active rudeness.

I always wonder about people who conflate the two concepts.

You don't know the half of it. They talked about me behind my back and made stuff up about me. They would ignore me if I said hello or smiled, turn their back on me in a group discussion, the same 5 or 6 mums. One of them told the others I fancied her husband. I didn't even know who he was! I'm shy but I'm not so socially inept that I can't communicate in a normal friendly way. I'm just not going to go out my way to befriend them when they haven't been very nice to me. A reserved person doesn't deserve to be treated like shit.

I don't think i ever expected people to make friends, but going out of your way to be hostile/bitchy/mean in those 10/15 mins we all have to stand there in each other company is just downright horrible.

It doesn't take any energy to smile/make small talk.

But that’s not what these women have been doing. I don’t have the headspace to make friends on the school run either, which is why I’m not part of a group there. These women are part of a group and apparently do want to hang around and socialise there. That’s a completely different thing. Also, no one is obliged to be friends with anyone but basic politeness isn’t asking too much.

Are these mums' dc going to the same secondary school? if yes, you're not Reid of them yet!

And I know friendship isn't obligatory and I don't want to be friends with people who can make another feel crap. I have my own friends. But when you have to face people twice a day for 7 years who actively make it known you're disliked, it's not nice. But as I said I've moved on from it now. The new pick up system at the school makes it easier to avoid these individuals in particular.

This mythical ‘mean girls’ perception is so damaging and steeped in misogyny, let’s not shoot our selves in the foot by perpetuating it.

I think this rings very true. I don’t imagine dads caring much about other parents not including them - certainly my DH goes there to pick up the kids and that’s it, if I asked him had he made any new friends at the gate he would think I was mad 😂 He’s got friends already - he knows them from school (his school back in the day, not DS’s…) and has met them through football. He’s also close to some work colleagues. Making friends with his DS’s classmates dads and creating an additional social life around DS’s school experience would not have occurred to him. I imagine many dads are the same.

It actually takes a lot if energy to make small talk with someone you don’t know after a long day of work, with the whole stressful evening ahead of you.

Ds was the last of my dcs to finish primary school some years ago.
I was bloody relieved. No more book banding wars, dress up days, class party issues, nursery rhyme days , Book days, Easter bonnet competitions, Show and Tell . No more having to speak to people who you don’t like. Bliss

You don't know the half of it. They talked about me behind my back and made stuff up about me.

How do you know?
In my experience getting drawn into this kind of high school drama is a two way street.

we have GOT to stop this misogynistic bullshit that we must be besties with one another and we must Be Kind because that’s what good well behaved women do.

I tend to agree. There is no indication OP even tries to make conversation with these women. I bet she just stands there expecting other people to come and talk to her.

LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet I do work and don't even drop or collect my kids that much. They just blank people they consider beneath them.
It is basic manners to acknowledge people., men do it, women do it too.
Do you not do that at the start of a meeting? It's the same. everyone does the 2 min small talk in MT, it's common human behaviour.
By the way I did have the satisfaction of leaving the whatsapp group in the middle of the school year. I couldn't put up with being t in the same WhatsApp group. It felt great.

There's a difference between not talking to anyone (which I admit I tend to do) and bitching very loudly about your NDN when you're NDN is standing right next to you. Which I see daily on the school run (and no I'm not the NDN!).

There is a group of mums with children of varying ages at our school and they have all become best buddies. One person is the ring leader and chooses who gets in the group. I’m sure they don’t see it like that, but that is what it looks like from the outside looking in. Others have commented the same. This person controls who is invited to events etc. Almost grooms people to be part of the gang.

I was desperate to be a part of it. I was invited to something one night but because I didn’t return the favour quickly enough and because I didn’t break lockdown rules I was discarded. To be honest? I was gutted. But then I realised it is not something I want to be part of. They spend huge amounts of time together and that isn’t for me. Plus the “leader” is a total bitch disguised as someone who is friendly and all over people. Other people have helped me to realise that they are not someone I want in my life. And I do not want to be part of such a toxic group.

I do however feel sad that I’ve not made a group of good friends via school. I was hoping I would but maybe I am not appealing enough! Or maybe I’ve not tried hard enough. Maybe I’m not trendy enough…who knows!!

We teach our kids to be kind and include others, so why do we often get this kind of mentality with the Mum’s?

You'll probably find that in years to come their sprogs will either be as obnoxious as they are themselves and they'll be asking What did I do wrong? or the sprog will see her for what she is and cut all ties.

SIde question, why the hell did you move seats, I would have taken great delight in staying put!

@spanishmumireland the school pick up is nothing like a business meeting though and the same social normals don’t apply.
It’s more similar to a queue in a shop or the waiting room of a dentist, do you strike up a conversation with everyone behind you in Tesco?

Its a thing that never applies to dads. They don’t get called ‘mean’ for not making friends at the gate. But I if a woman doesn’t go out of her way to be friendly and initiate conversation she’s rude, cold, bitchy, mean etc. A dad is probably just called ‘busy’.

I agree with @LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet. I definitely wasn’t the type to appeal to the other mothers at DS’s first primary, and it was quite lonely for four years, but, you know, they didn’t owe me friendship. And they probably recognised sooner than I did that we had nothing in common.

We then moved countries, and even though DS only had a couple of months (mid-year move) before the first lockdown, I quickly made friends with some other parents (much more sex-mixed parents dropping off) on the school run. Those are the people I mostly talk to, and I socialise with them, swap babysitting with them etc. People, me included, are welcoming to new arrivals — we’ve had a trickle of Ukrainian children arriving over the last few months — and we’ve added another new arrival to the group we go out for drinks with, but I don’t think there’s anything all ‘cliquish’ or excluding about primarily talking to your own friends on the school run, any more than there would be in a work cafeteria or at a party.

Even within the larger group, some people are closer than others because they get on well, or live close to one another. Even though I’m a fairly new arrival to an established group, I’ve become close to one of the dads whose son has left the school, but who lives nearby, and with whom I get on very well. We now see far more of one another on a regular basis than most of the others, and he’s become one of my best friends — some Mnetters would see that as a form of exclusion, or ‘Wendying’, but it’s natural for some people to be closer than others. There’s no compulsion to ration out your friendships like shares of a cake.

I have worked in various types of jobs as a student then in a professional environment and I always found that I worked far better with men and that tensions were often happening around the women. The attitudes of a very largely female workforce in a low paid job towards the few male workers, often very young, was utterly vile.

I will tell you a story. Which may not help at all, but I will tell it anyway.

I knew a woman. Lets call her Mrs A. Mrs A was like the op describes. Was like it to just about everyone.
But one day, Mrs A. learnt that my son has a PhD[I dont]. She then suddenly decided that I was worth talking to! And carried on talking to me from that day forward! Was perfectly "normal" to me. And to my son of course!

But she carried on being her usual self to other people.
Bizarre behaviour.