BULLIED AT THE SCHOOL GATES... BY THE OTHER MUMS

Ignored, ridiculed and rejected, Josie Dom, 52, was a victim of tormentors long after she'd left the classroom behind

- SARAH WHITELEY

Browsing the cereal shelf in Sainsbury’s, I noticed a woman hovering by my side. ‘Hi Josie,’ she smiled. ‘I’m one of the other  mums from school, I was at the PTA meeting this week.’

As I gave a smile of recognition, she paused before speaking again. ‘Are all of the meetings like that?’ she asked cautiously. I gave a shrug. ‘Most of the time,’ I replied, thinking of how heated the meetings could get. I’d been on the PTA for nearly two years and was used to it.

‘It’s just, me and my friend were talking about it afterwards,’ she said. ‘We think you’re being bullied.’

Her words left me stunned. I was a 43-year-old woman, a single mum, with two children at primary school. Surely I was far too old to be a victim of bullying?

But as I went back home, her words kept circling around my head. Gradually, it dawned on me. She was right. I was being bullied – by the other mums at my children’s school.

When my son Oliver had started primary school back in 2010, I rarely had much to do with the other parents. Yes, I exchanged small talk at the school gates, but it didn’t go any further than that. I was often rushing back to work at my virtual PA business, or to look after Oliver’s little sister Abigail, who was three years younger. Plus, I was suffering from depression, which made it difficult to be sociable.

It didn’t, however, take long for me to become aware that the school struggled to survive on the council-allotted funds and that the parent-teacher association, or PTA, would host a variety of events to raise the much-needed extra cash.