Can anyone help me understand this social situation not sure what to do!

[Alysskea]

Honestly I feel like I’m in high school all over again trying to navigate the world of other toddler mums. Just wondering if anyone can help me work out what the heck is going on and if I’m the problem.

I take my 2yo to a sports session every week on my day off. She absolutely loves it. Afterwards the mums all go to a cafe and we’ve been tagging along because a) they invited us the first week and then said oh we come here every week b) she really enjoys going with the other kids and c) saves me having to try and feed her when we get home.

My issue is, these mums seem to go out of their way to exclude not only me but my child as well. Of course they all know each other better than they know me and I’m not asking for them to go out of their way to be overly friendly or anything, but we usually sit there for an hour and a half and they’ll talk to each other and ignore me completely. Don’t think they’ve ever asked me a question about my life. Fine, whatever. They also exclude my child! Last week one of them took out colouring pages and pens and handed them to each child except mine, and that’s just one example!

I am not sure what to make of it tbh. I have a few working theories

• they never actually wanted me there and asked me along to be polite. But this seems weird as I don’t know why they’d do this or how our presence takes away from their enjoyment of the experience
• they look down on me as I’m slightly less middle class than them. Honestly I’m highly educated and have the same job as one of them but I’m not quite on their level finance wise. You can tell that by looking at me. This makes me sound class obsessed but honestly I’m grasping at straws here.
• they for some reason don’t like me or my child’s personality. But again, I don’t understand why especially as they’ve never spoken to us!
• they’re just really cliquey and treat everyone this way. But I can’t understand how a grown ass woman would do that. It’s just nice to include people who YOU have invited out with you.

Honestly I find it quite upsetting taking my child along and seeing her excluded. She’s so good natured and describes them all as her ‘friends’ when they basically don’t interact with her because their parents have given them all toys and activities to do and not her. But she’d also be really sad if I said we couldn’t go eat with her friends anymore. It would make her even sadder if we didn’t go to her class anymore.

i am sure I’ll get crap for this post and get called paranoid and entitled, but I honestly just feel kind of puzzled and saddened by the whole thing. I am neurodivergent (I have ‘severe’ ADHD that is not medicated currently). But I generally get on well with people and have a broad group of friends including neurotypical middle class mums who seem to think we’re not beneath them lol. This just comes across to me as plain rudeness and seems kind of deranged 🤷🏼‍♀️.

The nuances of the 'invite' have been explained by multiple posters.

Social communication involves more than direct language, it involves comprehension of such nuances.

No shit. But at some point if one sees a person clearly not getting the “nuances”, one might choose an approach that isn’t “I know, I’ll just leave out their kid and then they’ll understand they aren’t wanted here.”

I have a 3 yr old and I’m struggling with nursery mums, I don’t normally see much of them cos I have to dash to work or am last to do pick up, but we walked home with a couple the other day, I just felt I didn’t fit in. But it might be that’s the story of my whole life 🤷🏻‍♀️

I absolutely hate thinking this but I really struggle to believe men would behave like this. This sort of social exclusion and pettiness over effectively nothing is just so prevalent amongst groups of women. Even the absolute smallest inconsequential social transgression can cause an entire group to suddenly decide to ignore someone like this. I bet they're the type who post shit on social media about being kind.

So this is the question I asked earlier because no, a normal person would not leave out a child, so do they actually know the OP is going to the cafe WITH them or do they think she is just there but separate because the whole situation sounds so weird, and if they didn’t want her there WITH them the usual thing to do would be to all go somewhere else for a week or two. If she’s not speaking to them and they’re not speaking to her but they keep turning up do they actually realise she thinks she’s part of their group? For 2 or 3 months? Maybe these women aren’t the nasty bitches everyone assumes they are, maybe they just don’t realise the woman they barely know, who isn’t talking to them thinks she’s with them?

Have you seen Motherland? It sounds like that sort of set up. Amanda needs her group to be queen b.

I think sometimes you are just not the right "fit" for whatever reason.Often cliques will form . Excluding you both is rude and I couldnt be arsed with it TBH. look for another group. Your little one will be happy anywhere .Maybe try and chat with one or two mums next time

I am having flashbacks to toddler groups when mine were young. It brings out the worst in people...

Swerve them, these lot are not your crowd. Tbh, they aren't thinking about you but are all just trying to fit in with each other and have formed a clique, which is embarrassingly (for them) a bit mean girls.

I was temporarily part of a group like this and there was always one person they liked to exclude as they were not quite the same as them. It wasn't me but made me so uncomfortable I excluded myself, as I don't want my kids thinking that friends are like that.

You can't make people value you.

What I don't get is even if they don't think she fits in with them...it's a once a week sit down in a cafe...it's hardly some huge lifelong commitment . She's not asking to move in with any of them or be their bestie for life...it's a cafe meet up after a kids activity ffs..just include her in conversation while you're sitting there. And so what anyway if she's not totally like them...are people completely unable to socialise unless they're talking to clones of themselves?

Exactly! We're basing replies on OP's interpretation alone. Maybe the group sometimes meets up before the session and bought colouring books at that point. Maybe they do other meet ups and it's a regular thing to get these out.OP doesn't know, because she doesn't know the other parents well enough (if at all).

It's pretty clear the group doesn't see OP and her daughter as friends, but the interpretation of the causes for that has been skewed by OP's insecurities about issues such as class, upbringing, and income (triggering some posters to join in with name-calling and judgement). Most might not even know why OP and her daughter are even there, or that she was ever (very casually) invited!

It could be as simple as crossed wires - OP is wondering why she's not integral to the group when she's sat right there, the group wondering why on earth she's sat there in their space!

Why put yourself and your daughter through this?
There ,s no pint wondering why they don't want you there ,it's their issue not yours
Just don't go along again.

Join a different sports centre, in a less affluent area with people who are less judgemental.

They are awful. I always make the extra effort with the new person that's feeling unsettled.

Life is too short for tolerating this.

You'll find your group. 💐

Yeah I'd carry on with the activity and don't meet them in the cafe. They sound really horrible.

I live in my husband's home town and it's quite a provincial place. I've experienced being invited out then being sat round with noone talking to me or even looking at me half the time despite fighting my hardest to but in in conversation and make myself included. I honestly just thought why bother inviting me if you aren't interested in including me?

I sometimes find in places that are less metropolitan, where the flow in and out of the city is small, people lack the skills and understanding to include "outsiders" because they've already got their friendship groups established and they've never been an "outsider" and don't know what it feels like.

You don't need people like that in your life, I wouldn't bother with them.

I would just do the activity and not go to the cafe afterwards. Those people aren't your people!

Supposedly grown-up adult women can be absolute TWATS towards other women, whether it be in the workplace or any other setting, especially groups of mums.
I was absolutely gobsmacked when I had my first child and began mixing with other mums at playgroup, pre-school, etc, to witness, (and be a victim of), the cliques, the "Queen Bees", the faces-not-fitting, and so on, and so on.
Awful, puerile behaviour that can really affect women, (like me back then), who are already low in confidence.
We women should be supporting each other, not behaving as if we were back in the playground.
Shameful.

So weird that people are trying to excuse this. It doesn’t matter what their previous friendship is, they can include OP’s fucking kid. It’s been going on for 3 months, they would have been aware that OPs kid would have been there. They could have brought for OPs kid.

They’re utter dickheads. I have a child of similarity age and would never behave this way, even if I couldn’t stand OP. There is no defending ignoring a small child in this way. None.

@Alysskea Run. Far away. They’re not good people.

This doesn’t excuse their behaviour. They go to the same activity then to a cafe and must sit next to or near each other. They know OP and her daughter are there to socialise with them, they’re not stupid, they can’t assume she just happens to have started going to the same cage. And even if they are that thick, they can still say hello and socialise.
They’re just mean people.

I'm sorry op, you're right that they're behaving badly. Basic manners would mean extending a little courtesy to an innocent child.

But you're aware they don't want you there, and you keep going
At this point, you're being unreasonable. They won't tell you directly to go away, but they are telling you and you're stubbornly refusing because you don't think they're reasonable.

Just make other plans for afterwards. She'll get used to the new routine soon enough.

Yes, mentally they've never left school....

Stop hanging out with them. It sounds too painful and awkward for words. Are you seriously only sitting with them because you don't want to make lunch that day. So many other options. It's not a binary - sit and feel awkward with this group and have a cafe lunch versus go home and make lunch. You'll find some people you click with, but it's not these women.

But they don't want to.

The OP never came back on the question of what they actually said when they originally invited her to come with them -- in her OP she says they just invited her and said 'Oh, we come here every week'.

In a subsequent post, she says

I mean they did literally say we come every week feel free to join us.

To me those are two entirely different scenarios, and given that the OP seems completely unable to read the room and has spent two or three months continuing to go to a cafe with people who could not make it clearer that they have no interest in talking to her, it seems perfectly possible to me that she misunderstood the original invitation as a general one to hang out with them weekly.

Absolutely they could have been kinder in making her aware of this, but I'm not sure there's any way of telling someone kindly that they've misunderstood a specific one-off invitation as an open-ended one, and could they please not keep coming to the same cafe and sitting with them, because they're a group of friends who enjoy this chance to get together, and don't want to make smalltalk with a virtual stranger. It's possible they've just hoped she'd get the message.

(It's just reminded me of an old friend of mine who had moved to Chicago a year or two before, who was contacted by his mother, asking if she could give his number to a friend of hers whose daughter had just moved to Chicago after graduation and was finding her feet. Thinking this would just be a matter of a coffee and sharing some Chicago tips, he agreed for this woman to drop around to his apartment, which was near her workplace. He opened the door in ratty workout gear, just in from the gym, to see this woman, all dolled up to the nines, apparently under the impression it was a blind date. He was so embarrassed he ended up taking her out for dinner in some nearby diner, but his attempt to be tactful backfired, because his mother reported that her friend had had an outraged phonecall from her daughter, complaining that my friend 'had made no effort' and disgraced her by taking her to a cheap neighbourhood joint wearing a tracksuit. 😱😰😀

Go along with a notebook next time and scribble in it throughout the sports session. When they ask why, smile sweetly and tell them you’re pitching a preschool version of Motherland to the BBC.

If your daughter really enjoys the cafe and isn’t old enough o realise she is being excluded then pack a lot of ‘stuff’ for her to play with and keep going and don’t worry about befriending the other ladies

You do need to be quite thick skinned to get mum friends. I was new in town and went to all the playgroups lots of cold shoulders from established groups. Found my tribe eventually of other new in town moved from London mums and our gang grew. 15 years on 20 odd of us still friends and see each other all the time.

I don’t agree that this excuses ignoring a small child. There are no excuses for ignoring a small child in this context. They can dislike OP but to treat a 2 year old thus is shitty. Of course OP should stop going but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they’re crappy people who deliberately leave toddlers out based on their feelings towards their parents. Which is shit behaviour, no excuses.