My friend's kid is bullying mine

[MayCAnne]

I don't know what to do. I've recently approached a close friend of mine (our daughters are in the same class) to tell her that her daughter has been bullying mine at school by gossiping and by excluding her from playdates. She called me immediately and her reaction was, "It's just little girls tiffs, don't worry" and she was really nice about it. However, ever since that day, she cancelled on a gathering at my place and have ignored me since. I thought I could talk to her about it because we were such great friends to the extent that we would meet up almost every weekend.
Truth be told, we all knew that the girls were not getting along for over a year already but because the adults got along, we let them be.
So now I'm here thinking about what a bad parent I was for not doing anything and allowing my child to be ignored/excluded at these gatherings until it got to a point where this girl felt she could get others to gang up on my child. And I do feel sad that my relationship with the other mother ended. We share some common friends (other mothers) and have to meet up from time to time. In fact, I have to meet the mother this Saturday. How then am I supposed to act in front of her and other mothers in the group?
Fortunately, the bullying stopped because my child approached the teacher for help.
What would you do? Just accept that the relationship had ended and just move on? I think my kids are relieved that they no longer have to go over to the other girl's place (my youngest was also targeted by this girl). But here I am thinking about my friendship with the other mother.
Sometimes I wonder if I should have just kept quiet, except I've kept quiet all this time and my kids continued to suffer at the gatherings.

School are best placed to sort this out.
I think approaching the other parent directly is always a bad idea.

Some people really do live their kids' relationships for them. Of course you only find this out when it goes wrong! It is upsetting but it turns out your relationship was based on the girls' friendship and so has ended when theirs has. I've experienced similar and it's hurtful and surprising if you're the type of person who doesn't think your friendships are intertwined with your kids', but it's not your fault (and not hers really, just a different approach).

Kids that do not get on should not be forced to gatherings just because their parents are friends. You should have kept your friendship with this mother separate from the kids when it became obvious there were issues.

Not being invited to playmates is not excluding your dc. The other child should not have her playdate invites dictated by her mother's friendships. And I'm not sure what you mean by gossiping? I think your mother's protection instinct went into overdrive - you went to the school who sorted it, so why the mother as well? Or why not the other way round?

Children's friendships should be organic, not an extension of their parents'. Perhaps she's avoiding the gather because she doesn't want her dc to be in a situation with yours.

Can you not have an adults only friendship and keep the dc separate?

Thank you all for your feedback.

I agree that approaching the other parent was a bad idea. I wish I hadn't done that. I thought she would understand and we could solve it together since we were close and our kids met so often. But now, I regret that I did that.

Regarding the gossips, my daughter was getting screenshot messages from other friends where they were told to ignore and not play with my daughter. Their school friends were saying that my daughter was the topic of facetime conversations. My daughter told the bully to stop or she'd tell the teacher. The bully didn't stop and so my daughter approached the teacher. On the same day, I had a chat to my friend regarding it. I think deep down I was hoping that we could resolve it together with the kids since we were good friends. And there's a big truth in that my mother instincts went into overdrive too because I really wanted to protect my daughter from being bullied.

Regarding whether or not we could keep our friendship separate from our kids, I actually prefer that and my kids do as well. You're right in that we should have done this sooner instead of waiting for the bubble to burst. Maybe it's too late now to save the friendship, I don't know.

And yes, I agree, that my friendship with this close friend was based on our kids' friendships. When theirs fell apart, it would have been so hard to keep on doing things together as families.

I think I've learnt my lesson too and as hard as it is, I will just have to learn to move on.

Thank you all.

Well you can't go back and do things again a different way with the benefit of hindsight so is it perhaps time this particular friendship has drawn to a close? It's not like the kids hot on much anyway and there will be other mums you can bond with.

Got not hot.

You were brave to raise this with her Mum and it sounds like the right thing to do. This is different to leaving it at school because you were close friends too. Her Mum has minimised the behaviour and treated you the same way her daughter has just treated your daughter. I think you have dodged a bullet here OP, you can step backwards a little and not invest so much in someone who on the face of it seemed nice but isn't actually. If she was a good friend you could have had the conversation you were hoping for. But she isn't.

I also think you mother's instincts were spot on. Your daughter is better off without stuff like this in her life.

I wouldn't want to be friends with a woman like this anyway. She minimised her daughter's actions (sending bullying screenshots is beyond just excluding your DD, it's very nasty behaviour) and is now conveniently avoiding you to avoid having to acknowledge that behaviour. Much easier to just make you the problem and cut you out. I think you did exactly the right thing approaching the mum, if anything it should have been nipped in the bud when it started. Nicely, but you need to examine your priorities here. Yes, you lost someone to pal round with, but your DD got rid of someone very damaging to her mental health, I'd call that a massive win tbh.

OP,
She wasn't a good friend at all.

How awful for your children to have been forced to socialise with someone who was bullying them.
Very stressful for them.

I wouldn't give her a second thought but I would reflect on continuing putting your children in a situation every weekend that upset them.

Bullying is terribly damaging to children's esteem.

Good luck.

I don't see how she can be much of a friend when she rubbishes your concerns. I would have approached her in your situation to try and resolve it because the situation could have arisen out of a misunderstanding. Move on, its not worth bothering about.

I don't think you did anything wrong. If I was the other mum, I'd appreciate very much that you'd come to me. She's not the type of woman you want to be friends with, OP.