Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The Problem with Playgroups

As a military family you are constantly moving and would like your children, especially your non school aged children, to socialize since you are not around family. So you go out and look for playgroups and frg socials to find someone to connect with and have your child play with. I am a member of Meetup.com. This is an excellent way to find social groups around you. People go to this web site and advertise their "clubs." For example, playgroups, scrapbookers, knitter, bike clubs, book clubs and so much more. I found this site when I was living in San Antonio and my son was an infant. I met up with a group twice but it wasn't for us. My son was just too young to socialize than.

When we moved to Colorado Springs my son was one and walking around so I decided that we should join a playgroup. I went back to meetup. com and joined Connect - the - Tots. This group was just great. The first time I arrived to a playdate I was immediately greeted by the organizer and was given the low down and at the end of the date I was asked what I thought and was ask to continue showing up. I did. This group did expand to over a 100 moms but I think that was great because there were NO CLIQUES. Of course you had a group of moms you saw more often and hung out with more often but I never ran into anyone unwelcoming. Everyone I met was very welcoming and spoke/treated everyone with great respect. I miss these women very much. I wish them all the best.

Well I got to Killeen and it was all a different story. I almost want to say because they are army wives because I did have a few problems with the few army wives in Colorado but this place is army wife central so I don't know. I joined Hot Mommas, a group of about 20 moms. Just like the previous playgroup the organizers here were absolutely wonderful. I was always greeted and always spoken to. The rest of the members never said a word to me. I would try to get into the conversations or make small talk but I would get a quick, "ha ha," an eye roll, and a walk away. I spoke with the organizers most of the time I went to anything. I did talk to one mom there but that is because she directly came up to me and told me that she would talk to me because no one else will welcome me.  I honestly don't care as long as my son has an opportunity to play. The last event I went to was the Valentine's party. My son was running around with another little girl.  They ran into each and bumped heads. She ran to her mother and said she got hit. I tried to apologize to the mother since he daughter was crying (even though I shouldn't have had to) but she didn't want to hear. "Oh well." I thought. Later that night she posted on the playgroup message board that her daughter got punched in the face. I was furious. I told her that if she spent more time watching her kids and less time socializing she would know what had happened. Evidently that comment opened up the floodgates and I was told by the organizers that I shouldn't "insult" anyone. If you people think that comment was an insult you got another thing coming. Every one of those mom lets there kids run wild to where they run outside the building, are sitting on the bathroom floor eating toilet paper and beating each other up. But since I said something, the truth, I rocked the boat and pissed everyone off. I left this group. I couldn't believe what idiots, yes Hot Mommas, IDIOTS, I was dealing with. Unfortunately Killeen is a small town and everyone talks to everyone, I haven't had luck with another playgroup. I "applied" to another one on Feb 12th and still haven't heard anything. I guess I will just have to wait until my son turns 3 in a couple of months then I can put him in sports.

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