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Is the school WhatsApp group taking over your life?
A forum for parents to chat about class goings-on may seem like a good idea, but it can quickly spiral into pettiness and feuds, says Maria Lally
When my daughter started school in 2014, walking hand in hand with her into the playground that first morning felt like my own first day as much as hers. What would the other parents be like? Would they like us? Would we make friends? Gradually, I started swapping numbers with a handful of the mums I got on well with and, over the next few months, and then years, we became friends.
Compare this with when my second daughter started school in 2017, and I was immediately added to the class WhatsApp group – along with 25 other mums. The pings started almost immediately. “Welcome mummies! I wonder how our little ones are getting on?” asked one mother. “Is it normal pickup time today?” asked another. “It’s 2pm today I think,” replied one. “No, hang on, it’s 1pm pickup today,” said another. Before adding: “By the way, where did everybody buy their little one’s plimsolls from? And shall we organise some class drinks?”
The pings continued all day, into the next and, 18 months after my youngest started school, they keep coming. So I’m not surprised that class-wide WhatsApp groups, a relatively new and tortuous development in the world of modern parenting, have attracted criticism.
Last week, Dominic Floyd, the headmaster of Mount Kelly preparatory school in Devon, claimed class WhatsApp groups called the trend for parents to set up group conversations “worrying”. Writing in Attain magazine, a termly publication for the private school sector, he said that, while they can be a useful way to communicate, they can also be dominated by a “few key players”.
“While these groups can be helpful, and really positive, they can also fuel misunderstanding and become a forum of negativity,” he wrote. “Minor complaints become amplified to an unintelligible degree: one lost sock takes on a proportion never intended and, far from being constructive, perspective can quickly be lost.”
My friend Hannah found this out the hard way when her son started school last year: “I was added to the class WhatsApp group,” she says. “A few first weeks later he lost one of his welly boots, and then his gloves. I sent a quick message saying I thought it was strange that he kept losing his stuff and would people mind checking their children’s bags?
“Despite the group being very chatty, there was just tumbleweed. No response. Eventually one of the louder mums replied, asking if I was accusing their children of stealing my son’s stuff. I got that sicky feeling
I used to get when I was at school myself. I re-read my message – that I’d quickly sent while feeding my two-year-old – and realised it probably did sound like I was accusing them.”
Another friend, Claire, faced similar treatment when she suggested her very chatty group quieten down. “I have four children, four WhatsApp groups, and I work, and my phone was pinging all day long with chatter.,” she says. “Somebody would ask an inane question that they could have just quickly googled on the school’s website. They’d receive 27 replies, which would then turn into two people setting up a play date.
“Really politely, I said, ‘Hey, I don’t mean to be a pain, but I’m a member of four class groups and I’m finding it hard to keep up. Could we keep the messages to a minimum and just talk to each other in text messages if we want to make plans? Thanks guys!’ Silence. And there was silence in the playground, too – nobody spoke to me for a few weeks after that. I’m still glad I said it, though, because it was getting ridiculous.”
Other friends of mine have shared anecdotes about awful class WhatsApp groups. “How many stories do you need?” asks my friend Julia, “I’ve got tons!” The highlights include one friend whose daughter joined a private school midway through term, just as the school announced that the girls were allowed to wear trousers. “One of the mums was bitterly complaining about it and said that she wanted her six-year-old to wear pretty pinafores and skirts for as long as possible. “Another mum replied and said that was a ridiculous opinion to have in this day and age and why shouldn’t girls wear trousers? This sparked a huge row, so I went to make a cup of tea. When I returned to my phone there were 56 unread messages. I sat and read through them all with my tea and a biscuit, and it was like watching a real-life soap opera unfold. The two mums have never spoken since.”
My friend Steph tells me about a personal trainer mum who sends around pictures of her homemade broccoli muffins with the hashtag #sugarfreeparenting and lists reasons why children shouldn’t have sugar. “It’s so sanctimonious and makes us all feel terrible,” Steph says.
Another friend, Belinda, tells me that a mum in her class, with a bright child, often sends around a picture of the book her five-year-old is reading and asks, “Is anybody else’s child on this level yet? My daughter loves them!” “It’s just a ruse to show off about how good a reader her child is,” says Belinda. “I have a friend in the same class whose son is very slow to read and is receiving extra help, and messages like this just make her feel worse.”
“Messages where children are compared just need to be ignored,” says mother-of-two Sarah Ebner, author of The Starting School Survival Guide. “There are so many things that us parents get stressed about, we could do without WhatsApp being another.
“My advice is to ignore and move on. Never give in to the temptation to join in with any kind of spat, even if it’s to stick up for somebody or make a comment which you think makes sense. Others may not agree with you and you’ll end up falling out with other parents without even meaning to.
“I would also suggest turning off notifications for these groups and only checking them once or twice a day at set times. But you can’t solve this problem entirely, which is why most parents, even begrudgingly, do want to stay in these groups. Otherwise you may miss details of that crucial birthday party or half-term meet-up – and your kids won’t thank you for that.”
“Of course,” says Dominic Floyd, “it is possible to argue that these groups are just a digital version of the ‘school gate’ culture of old. But [at least] people talked at the school gate, face-to-face, and issues didn’t take on such a life of their own.”
Some names have been changed