The worst bullies at school? It’s not the children – it’s the mothers
THE gaggle of school ‘incrowd’ was standing by the gate, so there was no way past. Could I sneak by? Would I be lucky today? How I longed to be invisible, to slip through, to escape their judgmental eyes, their comments and put-downs.
My heart was thudding as I drew near. Just a few more steps and I’d be heading home, putting this whole ghastly school behind me for another day.
No such luck. ‘Oh, hi, Beezy,’ one smiled, as everyone turned to stare. Their voices were soft, kind even, but the look in their eyes told a different story: ‘How are you?’
Damn, they’d clearly been waiting for this. For me. I was snared. I just wondered who would strike the first blow.
The end-of-term school test results had come out the day before and someone scored a shameful 30 per cent in English. This was public knowledge because everyone had been given a graph, plotting the full range of scores, from 30 up to 90.
No one was named, of course, but everyone wanted to know which child had done so badly at the school where results were the litmus test for social acceptability.
They suspected the poor soul was my seven-year-old, severely dyslexic son.
And, as I would learn yet again, the worst school bullies are now not in the classroom, but at the school gates — among the parents. ‘So, is it true? Was it your boy?’ One of them came straight out with it.
I should have told them to mind their own bloody business, or fired back a clever putdown, but bullies have this way of sapping your strength.
All I could do was mutter a ‘Yes, it’s true,’ before fleeing home, where I finally let the tears fall. Not of shame, but fury that I was allowing them to get to me again.
Bringing up two boys, now 12 and ten, I’ve been shocked at the ‘mum-upmanship’ surrounding parenting. A spirit of competition has seeped into everything, from breastfeeding to exam results.
No wonder the UK is reported to have the second poorest mental well-being among pupils in the world. Almost all teachers say they’ve seen pupils suffering stress or anxiety. Some are said to be as young as four.
And that’s just the children. How many women are plagued with self- doubt and feelings of worthlessness because parenting has turned into such a blood sport?
And it’s not just in Central London and private schools (where this scene was played out) — there are reports of unhealthy sparring and competing throughout the UK and in state schools, too.
My experiences started at baby group. I hadn’t been much good at breastfeeding and the other mothers had ‘told me off’ for not giving my baby the best start in life.
They also made me feel like a failure every time I switched on the TV. I saw CBeebies as a godsend, allowing me half-an-hour to have a cup of tea or do the washing-up. They saw it as lazy. ONE even looked down her nose because I wouldn’t let my baby sleep in the same bed as me and my husband.
‘You’re missing out on such a bond,’ she cooed, while all I could think of was a bit more sleep for us all if the baby was in the nursery.
Milestones such as walking and talking were not celebrated, but instead were used to compare one baby with another: ‘Oh, isn’t he crawling/walking/talking yet?’
The high standards of being the perfect mother led to such a sense of failure and loneliness that I’d frequently cry my way around the park, as my baby happily burbled in his pram. As our children reached school age, I felt excited about my son enjoying those early, carefree years in the classroom, splodging paint and learning to read and write (my parents were teachers and I’d loved school).
I looked forward to spending more time with other mothers.
But the competition I had witnessed in the baby years was about to reach terrifying levels.
Tutors were mentioned — for five-year-olds! When I questioned this, I became the odd one out. And we all know what happens to those in the playground.
It was around this time I started to notice that my elder son was struggling badly at school. His writing was scruffy and he just couldn’t remember spellings correctly — and he was still on early reading levels.
I suspected early on that he was dyslexic, but we had to wait until he was eight for a diagnosis.
Exams brought fresh horror as results were discussed and compared and pitying glances given to mums whose children didn’t do well. This was a £12,000- a- year private school, where parents were used to getting the best.
I found myself the object of scrutiny and fascination. They’d lie in wait to grill me. Why wasn’t I stricter? Had I considered tutoring? One said I was ‘treating my son like a little Buddha’.
Another laughingly boasted her son ‘hated her now’ because of the amount of revision he had done. ‘I have broken him,’ she said, clapping her hands with glee. The suggestion was that I should aspire to do the same. Frequently, I’d come home in tears, doubting my parenting skills. Maybe I wasn’t pushing hard enough?
Every night, I tried to avoid them at the school gates, but they’d ensnare me. ‘Just ignore them,’ my husband urged.
But it’s not that easy. There’s a part in all of us, whether we are four or 40, that wants to be accepted. So I said yes to offers of coffee or lunch in a way that was typical of a bullying victim.
The summer fete and sports day were another triumph for the Mumzillas, who cheered and yelled for their offspring to come first, even in the egg and spoon race. The mums’ race had been banned several years earlier. Too much ill-will, apparently.
Even fun activities, such as making a picture to celebrate harvest festival, or an Easter bonnet, became competitive for mothers. Who’d have thought a five- year- old could master perspective in his drawing of a tractor, or a six-year- old could triumph at decoupage?
I saw miniature gardens created in shoeboxes which would not have looked out of place at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show — but any suggestion that mother dearest might have been involved brought glacial stares. AND in the classroom, my son’s confidence was plummeting. He started chewing his clothes to pieces at school. When he scored zero out of 16 in a spelling test (marked by another pupil, so everyone knew), he told me he wanted to die.
I removed him immediately, and enrolled him at a specialist dyslexic school. We were free.
We took a decision to move out of London to Oxfordshire six weeks later, so he could attend the school. This meant my younger son, who was not dyslexic, moved to a school that was more nurturing, but with a good academic record, although one of my old tormentors still scoffed that it ‘ wasn’t going to push him hard enough’.
And you know what? He’s happy. They’re both happy. We are all happy. My relationship with my husband, strained through years of stress, has never been better. And away from that intense environment, my confidence has soared.
Sometimes, I think of those hot- housed children we left behind. Will they be happier than mine when they grow up?
Well, I know of several pre-teens who have virtually given up on schoolwork because of the constant helicopter parenting they endured from the age of four. One child had five different tutors and got into a top London day school at 11 — but developed a speech impediment in the process.
As for me, I pick my friends much more carefully now.
Who would you rather be friends with? Someone who runs a spreadsheet, stuffing their child’s every waking moment with extra tuition while plotting their next act of mum-upmanship, or a mum who tells their kids to do their best at school, who sometimes cooks fish fingers and oven chips for tea, and plonks the kids in front of the telly now and then?
The latter are the people I hang around with now. Call me a quitter, call me a low achiever, but I will never be bullied by pushy parents ever again.
Beezy Marsh’s new novel, Mr Make Believe, published by Ipso Books, is available from amazon at £7.99 (paperback) and £1.99 (Kindle).