I posted about some of this issue last year. I don’t want to drip feed so apologies for the length. My DD (8) was bullied by her “best friend” and two other girls at school for 12 months last year which had a devastating effect at the time. School did nothing except tell us about it (but only when she came home in floods of tears and with marks on her).
I raised it with school a number of times (ordering them to contact the parents which they reluctantly did once).
We were sort of friends with the parents of one of these girls. This child has bullied most people on the class (threatened to bring a knife to school and stab one of them!) and the parents have a had a lot of people complain to them but did nothing. Apparently it “broke the child’s spirit” to raise this with them (the mother is very strange). The mother went over the top telling me how much her daughter loved mine so I pointed out that they didn’t get on anymore and my daughter was very upset about what was going on- still nothing was done.
Anyway, at the end of last year this mother and the mother of one of the other bullies tried to bully me and my daughter in a parent WhatsApp group. I won’t say too many details that are revealing but apparently my child had told their children something they would have preferred she hadn’t (it turned out she hadn’t and it was someone else). One messaged me and I said I would speak to DD when she got home. She then gave me some parenting tips and sent me a monologue to read to my child about “learning to be kind”- my blood was boiling but I stayed calm. Both then went to the group chat to tell everyone that a child had said something inappropriate and to give more parenting tips to the mother of that child about teaching their child to be kind. I decided to take control and responded that they were talking about me and my child, that I said I would deal with it and that this was completely inappropriate. I also pointed out my child had been bullied for 12 months (didn’t say by who) and so I hoped we were all teaching our kids to be kinder.
Both mothers went ballistic and left the group. The one messaged me all sorts of nonsense and said I was a horrible person. She apparently then spent considerable time telling other parents at the school that I was a bully. We haven’t spoken since and she blocked me on social media etc which doesn’t bother me in the slightest but shows how petty it got. It’s been awkward at school but my DD is now in a good place and I’m glad I fell on that sword. One of the Dads spoke to his child and the school and all the kids backed off after that. She has new friends and these girls seem to have lost their popularity at school.
Anyway, cut to now and the mother is making great efforts to ingratiate herself with my DH. She approached him at school to say how hard she had taken not speaking to him. She waves enthusiastically at him when she sees us and she’s started messaging him. He’s livid and very uncomfortable after all the things she’s said about me and the way her child has behaved. He hasn’t replied to the messages and says he says very little to her and cuts conversations short when she tries to talk to him at school. He’s quite shy so wouldn’t be as abrupt as I would be but said he’s pretty short with her and makes it clear he has no interest in resuming that friendship. He feels she’s trying to ostracise me more by being buddy with him but whatever the motive he’s really angry about it.
I want to point out that not being friends with that family has been somewhat of a relief (some of their and particularly her behaviours were really inappropriate (asking us to childcare because they “couldn’t be bothered”, asking us to buy things off them, drive them places and do constant favours) and apart from a bit of awkwardness at school we’ve spent very little time thinking about them but she’s becoming quite persistent now.
I guess we just ignore her? She added him to a WhatsApp group the other day which he immediately removed himself from but again he was livid. It’s not like they were good friends before.
Do you agree this is a bit odd of her to be approaching him and so often?