What do you do when there's a bully in the playground – except she's an adult and so are you? Maddy Phillipps has some sound advice (and see the foot of this story for where to send your own problems for Maddy).
DEAR MADDY My problem reads like a playground drama except it’s playing out amid 40-somethings. There’s a fellow mother at my daughter’s school who seems to have some sort of issue with me. I honestly think this stems from nothing more than the fact that her daughter was the smartest kid in the class, until mine began at the school. I know what you’re thinking – psycho-mother alert – but I’m not a pushy parent; I just want my kid to be happy, and I was delighted when she made a friend (this woman’s daughter) who seemed as curious and compulsively chatty as herself.
But at the end of last year my daughter took home some kind of “achievement” award (we’re talking six-year-olds) and the weirdness started. This woman’s friendliness towards me at the school gates was replaced with blatant snubbing. And this year my daughter keeps repeating strange comments from her friend which apparently derive from this woman– for example that her bones will break because her mother won’t let her eat meat (we're vegetarian). This is the general theme – that my parenting isn’t up to scratch. It peaked a week ago when I was three minutes late for school pick-up. There were still plenty of kids and parents milling around the grounds, but when this woman found my daughter happily playing on the monkey bars she took her to the school office and told them there didn’t seem to be any plan for how she'd get home. She left her there and the school rang me as I searched the playground for my daughter. I found her sobbing and confused in the reception area.
I’m so furious that I don’t trust myself to say anything to this woman without losing my cool. It’s made trickier by the fact that she’s involved with the school on every level and is popular with many of the parents. No one else seems to be getting this treatment. Do I confront her? And if not, how do I stop the angry imaginary conversations that play on an endless loop in my head?
MADDY WRITES OK, look, I’m not so keen on this woman either. Partly because, as the vegetarian mother of a toddler, your tale feels like a grim portent of things to come, and partly because needlessly competitive and judgmental parenting is easily one of the most tiresome parts of the parenting game. Seriously, it’s right up there with rinsing yoghurty vomit from the labyrinthine nooks and crannies of the carseat. But let’s at least try to set aside our mutual (malnutrition-fuelled?) irritation, take some deep breaths, and think rationally about the best course of action here.
First, some thoughts about her motivations. It’s possible that the vegetarianism comments weren’t meant to be repeated, and the school thing was based on genuine (albeit misplaced) concern, but I agree that the timing of it all paired with the snubbing is suspicious. Anyway, regardless of the true reasons for her behaviour, the point is that we’re clearly dealing with someone with a particularly, er, “well-developed” sense of moral righteousness. Even if the vegetarianism comments and school office thing were 100 percent fuelled by petty jealousy, I guarantee those events have crystallised in her memory with herself as the Judge Dredd of good parenting – much more comfortable that way.
Don't go in adversarial
What this means for the confrontation issue is that you need to consider your intentions very, very carefully. Obviously you want the behaviour to stop, and it seems increasingly doubtful that will happen organically, unless your daughter gets the “Bottom of the Class” award at this year’s prizegiving. But if you’re also hoping to assuage your own anger by making her see how sh***y she’s been (I’m assuming this is a recurrent theme in your imaginary dialogue), forget it. If you go in all adversarial and positional, you’ll directly challenge this woman’s saintly self-perception – and as she doesn’t seem like the self-reflective type, the chances of her responding with effusive apologies and insightful admissions that she is, indeed, more Machiavelli-mum than Janet Lansbury are non-existent. Instead, she’ll get defensive and angry about your treatment of her, making it hard not to lose your cool (and with it, the moral high ground) completely. The result? You’re even angrier, her dislike of you is firmly entrenched, and any chance of self-reflection or behavioural change on her part is conclusively extinguished.
However! If you can let go of the need for her to feel bad about behaving badly, recognise that the past can’t be undone, and instead shape your approach around the simple goal of dissuading any more allegations of anaemia and/or neglect, you might actually get somewhere. The key is framing the discussion in a way that lets her change her behaviour, without feeling like doing so represents an admission of wrongdoing. I know letting her save face feels like not so much a hard pill as a rusty pétanque ball to swallow. Ultimately, though, if you’re right about her motivations she’s clearly an insecure person who lives vicariously through her child, and isn’t that punishment enough? The more you think about these sad underpinnings, the more anger will turn to pity, and the easier it will be to keep your cool.
How to make it stop
So, here’s my suggested strategy for getting the “don’t do that again” message across clearly, without casting even the vaguest aspersions on her motivations or personal qualities. Identify what she did when she took your daughter to reception in the most neutral possible terms, then explain that obviously her actions were completely well-meaning and motivated by pure concern for your daughter’s wellbeing, but in doing so she totally inadvertently worried you and upset your daughter. Of course, she couldn’t possibly have known how you felt until now, but now that she’s aware of how you felt, and how your daughter is relaxed with you being up to five-minutes late, you know she wouldn’t even consider doing something similar again!
Oh, and hopefully assiduous avoidance of the whole which-kid-got-the-Year-2-Achievement-Award-which-definitely-means-they’re-going-to-be-a-Rhodes-Scholar debacle goes without saying.
No, this plan isn’t going to take her from black-and-white thinker to Brené Brown, but it’s not your job to remake this woman’s psyche with less judgment and more nuance. Your task is to do your best to stop more upsetting situations arising for you and your daughter, and really, this approach is the only tool for the job.
Maddy Phillipps is a barrister, freelance writer and clinical psychology student.
EMAIL your life problems to dearmaddy@tvnz.co.nz.
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