Hello, I went to see a friend with my DS the other day and left feeling really upset. Looking for some honest opinions on whether I overreacted though!
My friend is child-free and lives alone with her puppy. We do meet up and it's usually either at my place or out for lunch. I try and make things fun for her when we do meet up and am not one of those mums who talks about her DC all the time. I also do meet her quite often without my DS as we've been friends for a long time and I didnt want me being a mother to affect our long standing friendship just because she doesn't have DC.
She's been asking me for a long time to go see her at her flat and to take my 20 month old DS with me. I'd been trying to avoid it for a long time and warned her several times that I didn't think it was a good idea as i was worried that DS would make a mess there etc etc but she has still been insisting that we go over there. So we went along the other day. I am quite an anxious parent in the sense that I watch my DS closely and tend to follow him around and stop him from touching things rather than just letting him run riot like some parents might do... especially in someone else's home. I also constantly clear up after him when we are in anyone else's home.
Anyway....we were only there for an hour and a half and I just had to leave quite abruptly because I'd had enough of the constant comments.
First he was eating blueberries and dropped 2 on the floor. Immediately she said to pick them up as she was worried about her puppy eating them as he's on a strict routine with his snacks and she didn't want him to become ill. Ok no problem at this point. Then there was some polystyrene left on the floor from one of her deliveries and h DS had literally just touched it and she immediately freaked out and told DS off and said to stop touching it as she didn't want the polystyrene scattered around her flat (which btw was messy anyway, I could understand her being uncomfortable if it was spotless!). He then had another snack where I cleared up the crumbs immediately from the floor. The last straw for me was when he started opening and closing the door of her dog's cage. Honestly....he was doing this very slowly and gently and not slamming the door at all. If he had been I would have stopped him immediately. Friend tells me that she's fine with DS doing that but if the cage door breaks then her puppy would have nowhere to sleep.
I had enough at that point and said I would just leave as in the space of an hour and a half I just felt constantly on edge there. She was a little taken aback but is now acting like everything is fine.
I am supposed to be meeting her soon without DS, but I am thinking to cancel as I feel so upset and angry after our visit as I don't think he was behaving terribly and also it's not like I was just letting him run wild around her flat ...he just wasn't behaving perfectly which is expected for a toddler. She used to come and stay over at mine all the time and if she ever spilt anything I never freaked out and tried my best to be a good host. Am I overreacting?? Happy to be told if I'm being silly.