What's the most barking thing you've witnessed at a mum's group?

[Berts]

Not just the usual competitive, Stepford Mommies rubbish, but real 'back away now, slowly' stuff.

Mine was when one of the babies, ten months old fell over and banged his head. His mum picked him up to give him a cuddle (of course) but, when he didn't stop crying pretty quickly she stands him on her lap, looks him in the eye and starts barking: "Man up! Come on, Man up!"

Barking being the operative word...

I am still sniggering at the panpipes, the tortoise and the squaw

I went to a weaning session at my local Sure Start centre when DD was about five months old. The nurse was very sensible, and after a short introduction, someone asked about baby-led weaning.
Before the nurse had a chance to say anything, one of the mothers starts evangelising about how it develops the immune system, means that they will never touch a whit of junk food, eliminates fussy eating, and 'maintains their instinct to select the most nutritious food available to them'. She knew several school-age children who enjoyed eating crisps and chocolate, which she knew for a fact was because that they were fed on purees. Her own PFB, at six months, was able to select the food containing the most vitamins from a tray at every meal.

Mother B then asks when Mother A started weaning, and Mother A proudly says four months.
Mother B accuses Mother A of child abuse and says that she will not feed her PFB anything at all until he is 10 months and can ask for what he wants.
Both mothers then have a loud argument that lasts for about 10 minutes. Mother C chips in with 'Of course, baby-led weaning only works with breastfed babies, because bottle-fed babies aren't intelligent enough to grasp the concept'. Fighting stops and all mothers nod gravely.

Funny about the EC evangelisers. I was very careful not to - horses for courses, it worked for us, and that was all that I cared about one way or the other - but when I slunk off to the loo with DD rather than change her nappy on the floor at one particular mother and baby group, you'd have thought I had admitted to foot-binding or something. For someone who (according to bonkers mother) would develop trust issues, major psychological problems, chronic constipation and renal failure as a direct result of my letting DD crap in the toilet rather than a nappy, DD is doing OK so far .

I am crying with laughter reading the stories here! And feeling rather deprived, I never had anything weird happening to me at baby groups, really feel I missed out!

Panpipes lady is the winner for me so far

There is one mum I whose (only, pfb) child is now in the same school as mine, and who still possesses the unerring ability to set everyones' teeth on edge - but her crowning remarks were when the children were small. One was a lecture on why a mum (with surprise third baby, so two older children PLUS PND) should have stuck to breastfeeding for longer. She reduced said mum to tears in the middle of a group and then proceeded to justify herself instead of apologising!

On another occasion at a toddler group we were all admiring a gorgeous newborn boy (mum had a toddler DD). Mad woman then announced at the top of her voice that she could never have another in case it turned out to be a boy. Faces from all of us with boys, but she blithely sailed on regardless!

Obviosly she still knows best about everything.

Mostly the mums and toddlers at our local group were pretty normal but....the old codgers bowling club and sewing club, who had the hall the evening/night before us were the problem. The bowling club, average age = 70, decided the new block wood floor needed something 'extra' so got it fully polished up! The outcome was a whole load of toddlers falling left right and centre, slipping and sliding and banging their heads on the hard wooden floor!! The sewing club seemed totally incapable of keeping track of their needles and pins - to the point where we had to try and sweep the floor before we could let our DC loose! Still found numerous pins and needles which had got wedged into the cracks. Despite asking (and explaining - several times) to both groups the dangers of their actions, it took months for them to adjust their actions! Sheesh!

Not baby group but toddler one. One very woo mum invited me to her house to "Celebrate womanhood", which was fine. She said she had a spare mirror so I did not need one. I asked why we needed mirrors and apparently the celebration entailed sitting in a circle and adoring your fanny in a mirror. I was unfortunately too busy to attend her fanny club.
Her son also peed on me from the top of a shed roof.

Hahahaha

Choked on my grape Pirouette!

Fanny party hahahaha.

Pirouette. That's fantastic!

Ha ha ha! Loving the fanny party!

I was invited to a very woo mums house, with both my dc. Ds1 disappeared with her ds into one of the bedrooms and were suspiciously quiet. Suddenly the dad started bellowing at ds1 so I rushed to see what he'd done. He was sitting, bemused, on the floor eating a fairy cake.

Turns out the two dc had been at their 'memory' boxes in the cupboard which contained all the biscuits and cakes their dc had ever made at nursery! They were at SCHOOL by this time.

I was more concerned that he'd eaten a 4 year old cake. Bonkers dad kept shouting that his dc would never have done such a thing and my ds had instigated it.

We left straight away. Me and the dc still laugh about it!

freepeacesweet it really must have been crumbs, not cum, surely!

I've been going to toddler groups for most of the last 13 years and have never encountered really bonkers behaviour.

Does that mean it is most likely I am the bonkers one...?

We go to rhyme time at the local library, which is a mix of small babies and toddlers.
At this weeks I had one GM telling me very loudly how I was going to poison 11.5mo dd by allowing her to eat bread (dd was eating a cheese sandwich at the time) and how I was setting her up for a lifetime of food allergies and problems because of the gluten.
At the end of the session, she produces a massive box of fox's biscuits and her gc sat and munched about 10! The youngest is about a month older than dd...

Also at the same group a few weeks ago there was a boy about 2 running around kicking out at all the other children and generally being a bit of a terror. They hand out maraccas and bells and other small instruments for the kids to make some noise with while they sing the songs, and this same little boy went around taking all the toys off the other children and taking them to his mother, who just sat there and held them!! When he tried to take DD's maracca, she bashed him in the face with it and the mum went MENTAL telling me how I needed to control my child and how she was going to grow up to be a bully!

The mother has since been told not to return to the group after her son pushed over a baby (who had just learned to walk) into a chair, splitting his lip, and then proceeding to take the lid off a sippy cup of juice and tipping it all over the screaming, bleeding child

I don't think anyone is responsible for making ds2 feel bad about glittery stuff. Dh and I always let him get on with it. I think it's externl influences. Tv and such like.

Cpt!

I took DS aged a fortnight or so to DD's toddler group. A mother accosted me to tell me all about what DS's name meant. When I finally got a word in edgeways to say that yes I knew what his name meant and we chose it precisely because of that meaning, she looked all deflatedly shocked that anyone beyond her could ever know that..

CPT

Yes it must have been crumbs!

I went to one baby massage class when DD was 7 weeks old. One of the other mothers was a bit...ahem...rough. Near the end of the session the leader asked me if DD was my first baby. I said quietly 'no, she's my second, my first was stillborn'. The leader said 'oh, I'm so sorry, when was that?' and before I could answer this woman says very loudly: 'I died on the operating table, you know'. We all stared at her and she followed this up by saying that 2 of her 4 kids had something wrong with their ears (slightly deformed bit), which she demonstrated by pulling at her son's ear, and then she said 'and that's not all, he's got something else wrong with him but it's easier to show you than to tell you', pulled down her 13 month-old's trousers and nappy and grabbed his willy to show us that his foreskin was abnormal. (Tbh I couldn't tell what was wrong with it but she said he would need to have it removed when he was a bit older)

It was as if she was doing one-up-manship with illnesses!

Mental naked panpipe elf = best post ever.

Mother Earth type at the play group I used to take DS to, still BFing her 4.5 year old (which I am NOT judging btw!) She would just whip her nork out, grab her DS and shove her udder into his face whenever she felt he needed "calming"... One day, my DS was having a meltdown over this fucking Tonka truck, that was the Holy Grail of toys at the group. I was there at eye-level, trying to calm him down and distract him and I'd just about got through to him when I could feel a presence at the side of my face. Earth Mother had got her tit out and was offering it to DS. "It's a great calmer" she said "Nothing more soothing than a suckle on mummy!"

WHAT???? I imagine that's true if you ARE the mummy, which you weren't, you loon.

Still, I suppose it reflects more badly on me that I felt sorry for her a few weeks later (she came from hundreds of miles away to live with her DP and had made no friends here) and accepted her offer of going back to hers for a coffee. Well, I am a messy bastard so for me to judge the state of someone else's house things have to be pretty spectacular, let's just say that. I'm not just talking usual house mess but things like a used condom on the bathroom floor, cups of half-drunk tea going moudly... then she offered me some lunch. Which I couldn't turn down as I had been moaning at the group about being starving :(

Still didn't learn my lesson after that and invited her and her DS to DS's garden party for his birthday. She turned up, got pissed on Pimms and passed out under the gazebo whilst her DS terrorised everyone in sight.

Local CM came to group every week. Once her mindee who was about 11 months fell over and landed on her face. Cue mindee screaming. Childminder didn't turn a hair. Every other mother sat there looking like whilst staring at the CM. CM only moved when another mum picked the poor baby up, at which point the CM demanded she put the baby down, because baby was just attention seeking and she ignored so as not to encourage that sort of behaviour.

"It's a great calmer" she said "Nothing more soothing than a suckle on mummy!"

Okay this is bonkers!

foreversunny that tortoise story is hilarious!

"It's a great calmer" she said "Nothing more soothing than a suckle on mummy!"

Er yuck! Can't believe she got her tit out to calm a random kid! I have an image of her calming her child on one boob and her husband on the other.