When kids get down to bullying they can be downright nasty. My son has been bullied in school because he doesn’t have a father. It is not his fault that his father chooses not to be a part of his life, and on the other hand there are times when I can’t even take the place of a father. It’s a bit tough at times. Then there are these parents in school who form cliques and keep you firmly excluded from their circles.

My daughter went to what I thought was a rather posh school just before I walked out on her alcoholic father and was forced to change her school unable to afford the very high fees structure on my own. Before that came to be, both my daughter and I were given a bit of a hard time. On the second day of being in a new school, my daughter was unfortunately hit by her father in the school parking lot, as he dropped her and that was the day I walked away from this man. As the fees had been paid, I continued letting her be in the school. I, too, was going through emotional trauma of walking out of a 14 year old marriage and tried very hard to plaster a mask on my face to try and show the world everything was ok. The parents orientation evening came and I stood in a corner all by myself wondering what the hell was I doing in this place.

The mums from my daughter’s class were all in a group. Actually, it was not all the mums. All the Asian mums were in one group laughing away and sipping on their glasses of wine. If you know me personally, you’d know what an outgoing person I am and how easily I make friends. Well, I went up to this circle of mums to introduce myself and I was literally looked up and down like I was invading a very personal party. There was a token Mzungu mum in this clique who made the effort to shake my hand and smile at me and ask me my child’s name and what school she was in previously while the rest fell silent. Basically I had killed conversation.

I walked away and stood nearby feeling like a fool and overheard one of the mums say that my child was strange and that I was fat and had no dress sense and then they laughed. Yes. Children do get a bit strange when their parents make the decision to live apart. Children get even stranger when a parent whom they love and trust resorts to hitting them in front of everyone. Children are even more strange when they are unable to make friends quickly in a new school and tend to withdraw.

Not only did my daughter have a hard time settling in, I was also taken aback with this rude, uncouth behavior with these women who drove posh cars and didn’t work at all because their husbands were the breadwinners.

Lay off, women. If forming cliques and making others feel excluded is your way of feeling important, go have your tea parties and lunchtime drinking sessions on another planet. I hope you never go through what I did at your hands. I wouldn’t wish such nastiness even on my worst enemy.

Ok, maybe just one of them.