I have this 'friend', lets call E.
I know E for 3 years now, we get on well and most importantly, our child are great friends.
At the beginning I thought very highly of her and was so glad to have the privilege to have such a good friend, then slowly I realised she was a bit two faces (with other friends so obviously with me too), overdramatic (exaggerates everything specially when in need of help which used to be constant), unreliable (not showing up/cancelling/ forgetting/changing her mind).
I learned how to deal with this and kept a "distant" kind of friendship but now there is a new feature. She is stealing my ideas!
The first time a noticed was when I organised a activity for my friends and dd's friends over a half term not long ago. I invited her and messaged her the details just to later find out through other friends that she privately messaged a group of other mums from her FB, inviting them to come along as though as she was the host! The event was public, but I found out and organised a little group to go together, she just stole my idea, copied my email with all the event description, time, tips, meeting point etc, and pretended she done everything and invited her own group!
Maybe there are a lot more that goes unnoticed by me but the other day, another friend of ours was trying to solve a problem, childcare related, and was really drained and in need of help. She was relying on me and E for emotional and physical support (if needed prior solving the problem). After speaking to this friend for a few hours over the phone, I couldn't stop thinking about her and her problem and next day I came up with few solutions. I made the mistake to mention the solution to E first since I saw her first and on the same day, talking to the friend on the phone, I found out E had presented all the solution as her ideas!!! Even though to me, she said the solutions wouldn't work and were not good enough!
I want to understand what is E problem and how I deal with this from now on? I can't just LTB, our daughters are friends, she moved closer to me and is pretty much my next door neighbour and I work random shifts with her H. Also our daughters do dance class together and we have to sit there waiting, I can't just ignore or change days...