Reply to Breaking up with my toxic mom group (Ashley Tisdale essay)

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Breaking up with my toxic mom group (Ashley Tisdale essay)"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What I got from that is that social media caused all the toxicity. [b]Without Instagram she would have no idea who was hanging with who and that she wasn't invited.[/b] And basically all the anxiety I have with other women also stems from some variation of this: "there they are, all hanging out and didn't invite me. What did I do wrong?" 
I hate it so much. Currently dreading logging onto Facebook to post family pictures my mother keep hounding me about because I know I'll see something like this.[/quote]

That certainly makes it easier to find out. But even in the old days, it would usually get back to someone that a gathering was planned or took place without them. The social dynamics of a large group based on loose connections can be weird, and not being invited doesn't always mean you did something wrong.[/quote]

In the old days it was considered the height of poor manners to talk about a party to someone who wasn't invited. If it got back to someone it was because someone screwed up. Nowadays a party isn't really a party if pictures of all the guests aren't posted for the world to peruse.[/quote]

Not where I came from. You learned early that sometimes there are parties and you won’t be included. Maybe it’s small, maybe it’s family, there are many reasons.

It’s toxic to teach your children to kept secrets and walk in egg shells to control others feelings.

Teach them not everything is about them and have many and diverse friends groups. [/quote]

I'm not sure why you're referring to children. The article was about adult women. And I'm not going to waver that it's rude to post every "mom's night out" to an audience that includes people who for whatever reason may feel that they warranted an invitation. No one is impressed and some people are hurt. There's literally no upside. Send the photos to the women who were present.[/quote]

+1 on posting the photos. It's cringe behavior that I will admit to having done when I was younger. People do it to project a certain image of themselves, and potentially also to make people jealous. The more secure I am in myself, the less I feel the need to do this. Even now, when I feel the urge to post a photo like this, I recognize it's usually an expression of insecurity. [/quote]

I do think that groups that do this - especially women in their 40s and 50s - know exactly what they are doing and they do it for themselves. It's about their own self-confidence and, as you said, their insecurity. And they even do it about their children - there's a group from my kids' elementary school that constantly posts pictures of their outings, of their teens together, etc...[/quote]

Using the kids as an excuse to engage in this competitive social media posting drives me crazy. There are numerous families like this at our elementary school and I've learned to be very explicit about asking people to please not post photos of my DC on social media. The photo-taking at birthday parties and other get togethers is excessive and intense, and then they'll post them all over their accounts and tag people and gush in the comments. I don't even have a Facebook account and my IG account is private and I'm not connected to any of them on it, so I didn't realize this was happening at first. Then I noticed a couple photos in the PTA's IG account that I thought were a little extra (like photos of a group of kids, including my DC, with the tag "besties" which to me seem like an odd use of the PTA account and could easily be viewed as exclusive in a yucky way). That's how I discovered the other parents' public IG accounts and found pics of my DC on them with a similar vibe. I hate it! These people have socially successful kids in elementary and are using that to pump themselves up. It's so, so gross. As the kids have gotten older, they are being conscripted into this as well. I've had multiple of my kids' friends ask me why I don't have an IG account (I do, but it's just for family and close friends and it's not public), which means their parents are discussing it at home in front of them. Ugh.

Sometimes, hell is other parents. I am deeply grateful that my social life is independent of my kid and hoping that as the kids get older this behavior diminishes a bit.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics