AIBU to be a little bit pissed off with the other NT mums at my mums and babies group?

[Cazzybaby]

When they sit and moan that thier children are late at crawling, pulling up, walking ext. I mean these babies are between 9 and 12 months do they not have a clue!

I just find it rather ignorant of them to do so when I am there with DD who will be 1 in 2 weeks and cannot even sit up properly on her own yet(CP).

Sorry really needed to let that out, I am starting to feel very down everytime I meet up with them as I notice now the difference between DD and them. Maybe its time to look for a SN group that meet up. Has anyone else encountered this sort of problem or am I being silly?

crazybaby be my mate.......dd is 13 and has cp so I know you feel.

dont get me wrong I wouldnt swap her for a NT any day, she is amazing and I try to think well she's worked 100 times harder than any of your babies to get to where she is! But they really dont think when they say things!

Oh i know. I personally love dc's with cp they have so much personality.

YANBU at all. DD is NT but I would have been a bit upset at mothers of 9-12mo babies saying theirs were late at doing such things, as she was way later ... but I like to think I'd have had the sensitivity not to moan about the fact around the mother of a little girl with CP. at them.

I wish you didn't feel the need to look for an SN group, it would do everyone the world of good to mix more I think (hence me wading in here, eep) but it's so understandable that you feel the need, esp given some of the other ignorant attitudes people have talked about on here.

(she is a complete sweetpea in her sunhat btw!)

I would feel sad leaving the group, just wish that everyone thought with then same sensitivity as you DCMB!

hi cazzybaby
My ds2 is almost 6 with CP & ASD, when he was tiny he was just like any other baby but it soon became apparent that he was delayed & I too found the NT groups hard.
My HV gave me details of the local SN pre school group & it was fantastic.

Parents & children from 0 -5 no expectations of the child or parent & just the opportunity for the children to play (or not in ds's case) & the parent to have a coffee & relax.

Ask your HV or local childrens centre, most sure start centres run an sn group, but tbh i have found our best local group is one set up by parents of other sn children.

YANBU. Are they mostly first time parents? I find my mates with larger families are a lot more laid back about it all, don't feel the need to boast as much. In terms of leaving the group - depends how much you get out of it really, as to whether you find the small hurts are outweighed by your pleasure in the company of these mums and babies.

I had a letter through from portage inviting to a sing and sign group which starts on Monday morning so I am going to give that a go!

Will ask at childrens centre when we next go for physio good thinking anon.

YANBU - one mum physically turned her and her baby away from me on hearing of DSs brain damage - like its contagious! I got sick of hearing about their 'supposed' sleep problems too - Oh, its so difficult, I only get 6 hrs sleep! Grrrrr! It's annoying and to be honest, I was a little jealous at the time - wish I only had those things to worry about.
My SN HV has a group that goes on about once a month. I haven't commited to it yet, but the idea of chatting to someone who doesn't give a toss about milestones and will be as excited as me that DS held a toy for about 5 seconds, is ever more appealing.
It was worse IME as it was a 'new Mums' group and everyone was a bit PFB ish - fussing over buggar all.

Oh to have nothing but nappy rash and sleepless nights to worry about

I think joining a sn group is a good idea, I am soooo glad that i met a couple of mums through nursery, that are in the same boat. it has made such a differnce.

id go with the sn groups as well .my local ones run by parents but we get all sorts of specialists coming in.Have found it handy that when having bad day they understand or when to everyone else its something small tht our child does .but they understand its abig thing.

Maybe go to the 2 groups awhile i kinda devloped thick skin now to the oh is your son not doing ............

Youre not being at all unreasonable. my little oy is autistic and was very slow in some things and as he is hiuge for his age this was even more obvious - he didnt walk until 20 months but at the time looked about 2.5yrs!!! and he didnt have a diagnosis then i think people sometimes think they are being helpful to try and say they have problems too but just dont realise that their problems are often "normal" problems and they dont see that it could be worse! I have stopped talking to a friend i had after bens diagnosis last may age 2.5 as he has melatonin for sleep and still is not great at sleeping, and has a lot of behavioural problems, no concentration etc etc all the usual really and all she could ever say to me when me son hasd no words was "do you think .......... is ok with his speech do you think he says enough??" he was chattering away and definately ahead for his age as he could say everything, yet my ds who had no speach and at the time also only a few signs and some symbols and didnt even know i was his mummy! i think things like this show who your real friends are and the rest are soon forgotton. I would definately try a sn group. there is a nice one near here in mansfield if by any chance you live near here!! its run by a charity so its worth perhaps googling in your area for something similar is there a cp charity that may know what there is locally??

Sounds to me like they are all PFB ish. Also, you have to remember that having even an NT baby is a big change, really stressful for some people. I didn't know DD was SN until much later (2.5-3 ish) and I remember people having those sorts of conversations (not me, as DD always slept well and physically was far ahead. It's my NT one who didn't sleep through until he was about a year old and isn't walking at 18 mos!!) I would try and find an SN group if you can. I still take DD to NT playgroups because it's good for her socially to be with her peer group, but I do wish I knew a few more people with DCs with SN. However, it's bloody annoying. I remember finding it very annoying with no. 2 because I already had no. 1 with SN!!

YANBU at all. I much prefer to spend time with my sn mums now and I always go to the Portage coffee mornings. It's so much more relaxed and they talk about real problems. It got to the stage where my NT mums great concerns were that their DC was becoming too dependant on the dummy or as you said they were late to sit/crawl etc (when they were only 10 months). I found it all very annoying so started distancing myself.

Cazzybaby can you email me
[email protected] so I can send you an invite for TTR

I know exactly how you feel. Been there, done that, joined the SN group .

I did find it hard when ds2 had not been diagnosed with autism yet, and most of the parents with NT children would try keep their kids away from my ds2, as to them he just behaved like a spoilt child. I stopped going in the end, as most sessions ended with me walking away in tears, both out of frustration that ds2 wouldnt get involved with anything, and the fact that the other parrents wouldnt give ds2 the time of day.

Fingers crossed you find a lovely SN group who you can relate more to. I thoroughly enjoyed the one I attended, as all kids had autism, and the parents were in the same boat as me.

I used to hate it too! (dd is now 7, very nearly 8). I found a couple of lovely SN groups, even 'gatecrashing' a music group in the next borough (went with a friend we met on the NNU who lived in that borough) which was great. Also went along to the portage groups, which was fantastic, and so lovely to meet other mums in the same boat. (dd has CP, hydrocephalus, epilepsy, global delay) Where are you?

I know what you mean - I always felt we fell in the gap between NT and SN playgroups. Ds' differences only became apparent when he turned 2, he was pretty textbook until we realised his speech was delayed but I don't think I ever got involved too much in the PFB conversations which went on before that, I always disliked the competitive stuff - I felt awkward when ds1 was behind the others in speech, now I actually often feel awkward that ds2 is ahead (at the moment anyway!). All children are so different.

I had one friend who was a nightmare for starting the competitive conversations up, she always, without fail used to ask how many teeth ds2 had and whether he was talking/walking/reciting the alphabet while standing on his head. I now avoid her, I feel like she's ticking the ds' skills off on her mental checklist and it's really uncomfortable.

I tried a SN support group but tbh it wasn't for me and maybe I need to try again - one lady there had had a rotten time with her ds and actually warned me not to expect that my ds would be invited to parties or have friends at school I went for support but actually came away feeling quite negative about things.
I think a SN playgroup would have been better but they don't seem to have them in our area..

snap kettlechip! could have written virtually every word of that post. even down to the SN support group - except my problem was more that they didn't take me and DS seriously as he didn't have a DX and seemed happy and sociable.

Oh this sounds so familiar, unfortunately. I can recall a 'friend' telling me how clever her ds was to have done this and that, whilst my ds couldn't even talk. And the older SN kids get, the more obvious their difficulties/differences become. In the end, I deliberately lost contact with many 'friends' who I felt just couldn't get how things were for my ds. It was very easy for me to do this because first of all, I couldn't actually take my ds to their houses anyway (he was too destructive!!) and secondly, I didn't want constant reminders of how my ds should have been developing but wasn't. I subsequently made lots of new friendships with people whose SN dc attended the same nursery (and now school) as my ds - altogether more relaxing because the playing field is level.

Perhaps when your dd starts nursery/pre-school, you will also come into contact with like-minded people. However, having said that, I did, and do, maintain contact with those friends who did get my ds and our situation - so it is possible to have friends who have only NT dc.

YANBU, I had a really frustrating morning with DS2 at swimming today.

It started before today really, when we realised at the end of December that we hadn't booked (well we thought we hadn't booked) so we rang up and they told us that DS1's class was fine, but DS2's normal one was booked out.

So we thought we'd book him in to the earlier and more advanced one, and just change after week 1. He's been doing the same course for ages, and we know the teacher quite well so we knew it wouldn't be a problem (DH reported to me afterwards that were actually on three DCs in the later class anyway!).

Then we found out we had been charged twice for 2 courses! £160 worth! So we complained and they told us they would have to talk to head office, yada yada yada, who knows if we'll get our money back.

Anyway, before the start of the "advanced" class for DS2, I'm reasonably happily changing him (although he was screaming) then the other DCs of his class started coming in - 2.5 to 3.5 years old, chatting away like there's no tomorrow. I was and and all at once and knew at that point it would not go well.

Then a little boy falls over, I don't remember hearing him cry, but his mother (very PFBish) has to tell every other person who came how bad it was he fell over. I was like get over yourself! This is not a big deal!

Then when we actually got in the pool DS2 is crying, and I got the dirtiest look from some PFB woman while she tells her mates how much her DD loves swimming. OK, so DS2 was crying (the pool is b**y freezing!), but don't be rude about it!

Then all the cliquey PFB mothers stand around in the pool, in the middle of the lesson, chatting!

To top it off, on the way home DH told me that his sister rang up, and she had put her DD1 on the phone, who is only 4 months older than DS2, and she was chatting away....she knows DS2 has issues, she's knows we've recently had his dx confirmed, so I thought she was a little insensitive putting a 2.5 on the phone (she barely knows us, and what can a 2.5 tell you anyway?)

Sometimes I think I am "accepting" DS2 but today just brought it all home how "different" he is!