Why toddler playgroups are torture for us mums

There are certain rites of passage one must go through as a new mother. The birth, obviously, is the first and generally most dreaded - though what comes after can be just as painful.

For a start, there’s the social battle over whichever feeding method you choose – you’re bound to be wrong in some mum circles, whether you go for breast or bottle. Then follows the heated discussion over sleep training; baby-led or spoon-fed weaning; the pros and cons of co-sleeping… trying to ‘do the right thing’ by other mums, with their loudly voiced opinions, is never easy.  

But, without a doubt, one of the trickiest things a mother will have to navigate is the toddler group.

Granted, not every woman will baulk at the thought of a church hall filled with tepid cups of tea and screeching babies, but for many it’s a world away from the ideal.

Which is exactly what new mum and ex-BBC presenter Helen Skelton discovered this week.

This is a woman who has run ultramarathons, kayaked the Amazon, cycled to the South Pole and walked on a tightrope between the chimneys Battersea Power Station. Yet when it came to her 19-month-old son’s new playgroup? She was no match for the mum crowd. She described it as the worst day of my parenting life’ on Twitter and was reportedly asked to leave after 20 minutes of her child ‘screaming the place down’.

I instantly recognised the panic and isolation she must have felt.

For me, playgroups were a special kind of torture. When your child is born you’re brainwashed to believe they’re something you must attend, or risk being labelled a ‘bad mother’. Academics from the London School of Economics and Oxford University recently found that children are better off going to nursery than staying home with mum, as it helps to 'socialise' them. With that kind of pressure, what parent wouldn't willingly go along?

But didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t understand why I was expected to pay two pounds for the privilege of watching my child play with disinfected toys, while I desperately attempted small talk with a group of women with whom I had nothing more than procreation in common.

The toddler group soon became a dreaded ritual for me. In my small Buckinghamshire town, the mums were super competitive, with big diamond rings and even bigger egos. Their children were always the first to sleep through the night, to eat a piece of organic avocado, to walk three steps. The exertion it took to keep up with their boasts was exhausting.

The whole thing was an effort: to make friends with the wrong people; to pretend my offspring knew how to share dog-eared plastic fire engines at the age of 18 months; to nibble biscuits that were probably way past their best before date.

With the taste of Dettol lingering in my children’s mouths long after we left, these gatherings weren’t happy experiences for any of us. Toddler groups - one of the places new mums can supposedly go for support and reassurance - left me feeling inadequate, lonely and really rather sad.

According to parent-infant psychotherapist Jinny Sumner, these feelings can become real concern.

“Social isolation is a proven and recognised mental health risk factor for new mums” she explains. “It can make them more prone to depression and anxiety, impacting on their relationship with their baby which can have the knock-on effect of hampering the child’s social and emotional development”

Sarah Hesz and Katie Massie-Taylor recognised this isolation, and used it as the inspiration behind their networking app Mush: specifically for mums who’d experienced a cold shoulder.

Speaking to 4,000 mothers in March 2016, they discovered that 82 per cent thought having other parent friends made them happier and more positive in their parenting, yet 60 per cent could go a full day without adult interaction. What’s more, half found it hard to make local mum mates.

Sarah Hesz explains: “Baby and toddler groups can be a nightmare for new mums. When you’re overwhelmed with a baby, forcing yourself out of the house to be social is a huge deal. And once you get to your baby group, if you’re made to feel inadequate and lonely it can put a huge dent in your confidence.”

Having experienced this herself on several occasions, Sarah decided something had to be done. “I spotted another woman in a playground and, desperate for a friend, I strode up to her and demanded her number” she explains. “And thank goodness I did, because not only did I meet an ally to snigger at the guitar-wielding playgroup musician with, but just a couple of years later we launched Mush”.

The app aims to help women to meet kindred spirits, and make being a mum a lot more fun and crucially, a lot less lonely.

Looking back, I can imagine how my confidence would have been drastically bolstered by having a friend or ally to approach these uncomfortable playgroups with, minimising those feelings of awkwardness, comparison and inadequacy. And I expect Helen Skelton would agree.

Had she been able to face that toddler group with a friend by her side, maybe the 'worst day' of her life wouldn’t have been so bad after all.