Mother of my son's friend is penalizing my son

[Anonymous]

Mom X, the mother of one of my son's best friends, is annoyed/mad at me, and she is effectively penalizing my son.

Last month I sent Mom X an invitation for my son's birthday party (he turned 8), and she never responded. I know that she viewed the Evite, though. I tried not to take her silence personally, and later sent her and her son an invite for another event. She never responded to that either.

In the past, Mom X and I have been friendly -- she used to be great about responding to emails, etc. But now that she has cut me off, my son is feeling the brunt. Our sons are very close, and it's a bummer that Mom X is keeping them apart.

I want to talk through the situation with Mom X, but I don't want to make her even more annoyed. I don't particularly like Mom X or her son. But my son likes hers a lot, and I'd like to smooth things over for his benefit.

What to do?

[Anonymous]

Dump her and move on. Your son can see him at school.

[Anonymous]

Why is she mad at you

[Anonymous]

You can't change her or the way that she feels. And you can't force her to let the kids play outside of school.

[Anonymous]

Why is she annoyed with you?

[Anonymous]

If the boys are 8 years old, is there any reason they can't just do occasional play dates together without much parental involvement? Are they walking or biking distance from each other?

[Anonymous]

OP here. I believe Mom X is annoyed with me because of a PTA incident last year. Mom X ran a finance committee, and I told her that I thought the PTA was too focused on certain topics covered by her committee. Meetings were focused almost exclusively on money. While money is a very important topic, I thought we should expand the time spent on areas such as new activities for the kids, issues with teachers, etc.

At the time I thought I had made it clear that I didn't intend for my remarks to be in any way a criticism of her committee leadership. I told her several times that she was doing a great job.

She hasn't spoken with me (or responded to emails) since my remarks, so I'm guessing that she's still pissed about my comments.

[Anonymous]

She may not be angry at you - she may just be busy and not have a lot of time and energy to spend on this. It's likely just not a priority for her. (the moms who run committees, especially finance, are usually working moms with busy jobs and lots of stuff to juggle.)

It's possible she saw the evite and then forgot all about it. I have done that with a couple of events, and I feel bad, but sometimes it is hard to manage all the different websites on which people are contacting me and inviting me. I get a lot of emails and it can be hard to manage them all.

I have an almost-8-year-old child and we don't really do many playdates because my child is in extended day. Her entire afternoon is a playdate. We also have several activities, so she's around kids all the time. Weekends are pretty busy with youth sports and other stuff, so we rarely fit playdates in then either.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I believe Mom X is annoyed with me because of a PTA incident last year. Mom X ran a finance committee, and I told her that I thought the PTA was too focused on certain topics covered by her committee. Meetings were focused almost exclusively on money. While money is a very important topic, I thought we should expand the time spent on areas such as new activities for the kids, issues with teachers, etc.

At the time I thought I had made it clear that I didn't intend for my remarks to be in any way a criticism of her committee leadership. I told her several times that she was doing a great job.

Yeah, there was no way that this was going to be taken well, given that she was volunteering her time and you were criticizing her, no matter how nicely. I'd let it go and let the boys be friends at school or arrange play dates on their own, assuming you don't need to drive them to each other's houses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

OP here. I believe Mom X is annoyed with me because of a PTA incident last year. Mom X ran a finance committee, and I told her that I thought the PTA was too focused on certain topics covered by her committee. Meetings were focused almost exclusively on money. While money is a very important topic, I thought we should expand the time spent on areas such as new activities for the kids, issues with teachers, etc.

At the time I thought I had made it clear that I didn't intend for my remarks to be in any way a criticism of her committee leadership. I told her several times that she was doing a great job.

Yeah, there was no way that this was going to be taken well, given that she was volunteering her time and you were criticizing her, no matter how nicely. I'd let it go and let the boys be friends at school or arrange play dates on their own, assuming you don't need to drive them to each other's houses.

+1 If she's determined to be petty about this, really nothing you can do.

[Anonymous]

Pick up the phone and call her.

[Anonymous]

OP, I wonder how your son is feeling the brunt of it - or if he really is.

You never know what's going on in the life of other parents and it may just be that she's been too busy to respond to the evite or she's trying to figure out a conflict and doesn't want to respond until she does. For budget and work reasons, we made some significant changes to our household schedule this school year and its changed the way we do things on weekends as well.

All that to say, there are too many other possibilities to conclude that it's all about something you said or did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I wonder how your son is feeling the brunt of it - or if he really is.

You never know what's going on in the life of other parents and it may just be that she's been too busy to respond to the evite or she's trying to figure out a conflict and doesn't want to respond until she does. For budget and work reasons, we made some significant changes to our household schedule this school year and its changed the way we do things on weekends as well.

All that to say, there are too many other possibilities to conclude that it's all about something you said or did.

PP again. I meant to add that you might send her an email and ask directly, saying that your son is looking forward to seeing hers.

[Anonymous]

You either try and find out what's going on by calling or sending her an email. If she doesn't respond, drop it. No more relationship there.
Let the kids play together at school since you can't control that part.

[Anonymous]

This happened to me OP under similarly petty circumstances. Our kids were acknowledged best friends. She had a change of heart about 2 years later and invited my kid to a b-day party. I let my kid decide if he wanted to go. He did but I didn't reciprocate b/c her imposed rejection of him the first time around was hard enough. I didn't want to put my kid through it a second time.