Where did the mums leave their manners?

During the week Little Miss C and I like to get out and about a bit. We mix trips into town and to the local park with playing in the garden and play dates with friends. We also do a couple of classes a week locally. There's one music group that we've been going to since LMC was very small and several others that we go to on a drop in basis.

We generally have great fun at these and both LMC and I have met some lovely people at these. Sadly there is a bit of a sour note though – some of the other mums. At nearly every class we go to there seem to be at least a couple of mums who just sit there and chat all the way through. I can understand the need for parents to talk to their kids a bit, especially if they need a bit of encouragement to join in, but I really can't see the need for the mums to chat as if they were gossiping over a cuppa. If that's what they want to do then there's a cafe just next door.

All this is of course going on whilst someone is trying to run a class and engage with the children and other parents. I've been to some classes where the noise of the mums gossiping is so great that I can't hear the teacher over it, and I'm sure LMC can't either. Even requests from the person running the class for them to be quiet seems to fall on deaf ears (if you excuse the pun).

It often seems that the same mums also are quite happy to let their children run riot somewhat in the venue where the class is taking place. I've seen kids go and happily hit other children in the room, pul curtains off rails and in one case start jumping up and down on a teachers guitar case – all whilst the mums carried on chatting. In most cases the parents have paid to attend these classes with their little ones – and I'm left wondering why some of them bothered.

I took LMC to a new trial music class today – a free trial I should add. As usual there was a couple of mums in attendance who obviously knew each other already and they sat down next to each other and the chatting soon began. Twice the woman running the class asked them to keep it down. The fact that she had to do it a second time speaks volumes. Their kids (a boy and a girl) were left roaming the room for most of the 45 minute class picking up things and not really following what was going on. On several occasions the woman in charge asked the kids to go back to their mums so that they could do something with them – this was ignored by the mums. At one point the little girl decided she'd had enough so she ran over to the door, opened it and ran out into the corridor. Unsurprisingly the mum didn't notice for a good minute and only then it was when another mum pointed it out.

I'm at a complete loss as to why these parents bother to come along with their children. Why not take them to a soft play place where they could run off some energy whilst they mums chat over a cuppa? What makes these mums think that it is acceptable to disrupt the class for other people. It's rude towards the others that have paid to be there and also to the person running the class. Do these same people talk through work meetings? Most of them claim to be professional women yet I sincerely hope they don't behave the same in the workplace.

It seems that that is not the only way in which some of these women want to be rude though. I sat down at a music class the other week next to a woman with a young gir who looked a similar age to Little Miss C. I smiled and said hello as we sat down and was just met with a frosty look. It was a Monday morning and I know not everyone is a morning person so I didn't worry about this too much. As I took LMC's coat off I saw the little girl next to us get excited and start pointing at LMC. LMC was wearing a cardigan with Lola on it from the children's TV series Charlie and Lola which she loves. It seems this girl next to us also liked it as she started shouting "Lola Lola!". For some reason the mum apologised for this and trying to still be friendly I responded with "no problem, my daughter's a big Lola fan too". I'm not too sure why this was the wrong thing to say, but it seems it might have been. Her response left me gobsmacked: "My daughter's a Lola fan, but I certainly wouldn't let her wear something with her on it". What??? I wouldn't say that to a friend, let along to another mum who I was going to be sat next to for the next 45 minutes. It just seemed completely unnecessary and very very rude.

So where do these mums leave their manners? Did something happen at the birth of their child which makes them think that they can now be rude to other people?