Need to know if other people experience this, or if it's just me?
I'm in the upper age limit of primary school years. 2 DC in upper KS2.
For DS birthday I took him and a group of friends out to a local theme park for the day. 1 mum texted me 30 mins before leaving to say what do I need to send with my kid. I replied - only a water bottle and a warm hoodie, nothing else as everything else is covered by us, food etc, and the entrance fee has already been pre-booked and paid for by us. I had already covered this information in my invite, but I accept that people read and then forget by the time the date comes round. The mum replied ok, thanks. 5 mins before we were due to leave, the mum texted again and said sorry, Sam can't come now, he's suddenly not feeling well. She said I'll pay for his entrance fee. At school pick up the next week i overheard Sam talking loudly to another kid that he went swimming on Saturday, the day of my DS's themepark birthday day out. He was animatedly telling the other kid about it, the flumes, etc and about how he had a McDonald's afterwards. He didn't notice me standing there listening. The mum never has paid me for his wasted entrance fee and has never mentioned it again.
Another kid came round to ours recently to play with my DS. This kid is 11 years old. Whilst here, he threw an almighty temper tantrum. No-one knew what it was about. He went from laughing and mucking about in the garden with my DS, to suddenly shouting, yelling, out of the blue, I witnessed it, there was nothing that happened to cause his tantrum. I was shocked to see it. He went out of control like a 2 year old's tantrum. It had all been convivial. His mum and me were sitting in my garden drinking tea and chatting. Kids were laughing and playing in garden. I'd just made a massive effort with a table full of lovely food that I'd cooked - all favourite things of the kid we'd invited round, I'd checked with his mum beforehand about what are his favourite foods and I made them all for us all to enjoy together. Plus i made lovely deserts. Then he spontaneously tantrumed, ran in to my house, trashed my DS's bedroom, threw a photo frame of my DS as a toddler across his room, my DS exclaimed "You've cracked it!!!" And the kid shouted "Good!!!" Then he kicked over my DS's really expensive toy crane and broke it, then ran into my little DD's bedroom and trashed it and TORE THE HEAD OFF OF HER NEW DOLL that she'd literally just been given as a present the week before which she was in love with, he tore it off! Then laughed at her when she burst into tears and then threw all her cuddly toys down the stairs and kicked them all over the place. DD was crying her eyes out. I mean, he was going off his head and started screaming "GET ME HOME! GET ME HOME!" to his mum. It was mayhem. My DS looked shell-shocked and was on his knees trying to repair his broken crane and worrying about his cracked photo frame. I was trying to console my DD and was in shock at what had been done to her new doll and the fact that my house had been trashed by this yelling 11 year old. The mum said "Ohhhh, sweetie, has something upset you? There, there, it's ok, are you sad? Tell me sweetie, it's ok...."
I was thinking "It's not fucking ok".
She said they ought to leave, and left without any, and I mean any, apology.
Next day the mum texted and said can I send her the details of the doll her DS broke and she'll replace it. I thought OK, I'm pissed off but at least you're doing the right thing by replacing the broken doll. So I sent her a link immediately. That was the last I heard. She never did replace it and I've never heard from her since. I've texted twice and got no reply.
So I've replaced the doll myself, which was expensive.
Another time, my younger DD had a friend round. The mum stayed for coffee. DD and friend were playing on the floor with a Sylvanian caravan which had been newly bought by me, anyone who knows Sylvanians knows they are expensive. Then I heard a loud "SNAP" and DD cried out "Oh you've broken my caravan!" I went to look. Indeed, the child had snapped the entire caravan door and completely broken off the hinges, all completely snapped broken. I picked it up to examine the damage and whilst I tried not to make a scene, I could feel my expression must have looked a bit upset....I'd saved up for that caravan. The child said NOTHING by way of an apology. Then the mum looked at it and merrily said "Oh don't worry! You can easily just glue it back together again!" And smiled happily at her kid. NO APOLOGY given by the mum to my DD or to me. Then they ate our food and went home. I never could repair it with glue, the hinges had snapped into little pieces and was unrepairable. DD has never been able to use it since. The mum has never mentioned it since.
Another kid came over. He played with my DS's remote control car. He purposely kept the control handset pushed on at fastest speed whilst gripping the wheels of the car to stop them from spinning round, DS kept telling him to stop, I told him to stop, he didn't stop, then the motor made a fizzling noise and the whole car and handset died. He'd burnt the motor out. Dead. Broken. His mum witnessed the whole thing, then smiled serenely at her kid and said in a singsong voice "Well now Ted, that's what happens when we're rough with toys! Let's learn from that shall we!" They left with no apology and no replacement of the broken car.
Another mum has been texting me relentlessly to complain that our 2 children had a squabble at school and that she wants us to sort it out together and support them and 'counsel them through their fallout'. WTF? They were playing together again the next day! Which I've said. But she won't stop texting me to say we still need to counsel them so that they can learn and develop and so we can "build in measures to ensure they don't fall out again". But they will fall out again. Because kids fall out. She made it clear she didn't like it when I said that though. I've had numerous texts from her about it. She fully admits it's not my DC's fault, she says she wants her DC to learn from fall outs.
I could go on for 2 or 3 pages with endless examples.
In my own world, with friends of my own who are not 'mum' friends, life is nothing like this. Myself and my long term friends all have strong value systems. Moral codes. A strong sense of responsibility. In any one of the above situations, I would have been profusely apologising and instantly replacing the broken stuff. So would all of my friends. I would have been helping to tidy up the trashed house. I would have been making my DC apologise. I would have gone round the next day with flowers in all the above situations. I would never be hassling a mum with texts insisting we counsel our children after a basic uncomplicated fall out when they were friends again the next day. None of my friends would do that either.
I feel like I've stepped into some sort of weird twilight world where no-one reacts in a real life way.
Help!