Parent WhatsApp Groups: 5 Things Not To Do
Love them or loathe them, group chats are a way of modern parenting life. Journalist and mother-of-two, Leo Bear offers up some words of wisdom on WhatsApp chats
Parent WhatsApp groups: can’t bear them or can’t live without them?
For millions of busy parents, WhatsApp is a means of keeping up with friends, chatting with family sprinkled across continents and for spreading urgent news of their child’s missing blazer/PE shorts/ Prada backpack. Those glowing blue ticks have proven addictive. According to the latest figures, 4.2 billion messages are sent globally per hour – that’s 69 million per minute; more than 1.1 million per second. Put simply, WhatsApp is making the world go round.
Depending on the number of children you have, the number of after-school activities they do, the number of birthday parties they’re invited to and the thrusting levels of energy the head of the PTA/class rep/volleyball captain has, the volume of messages can easily hit ‘overwhelm’. And that’s before you factor in your Pilates group, baby shower group, dog-walking group, marathon training group and the laydeez of 1999… A friend in Lagos with three children at three different schools recently resorted to muting and archiving all her WhatsApp groups, checking in on them just once a week. She’s what you might call a ‘lurker’. I’m more of a ‘liker’. Thumbs up emoji.
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
First, let’s look at the positives. A well-run WhatsApp group is a prime example of hive mind. Parental wisdom-sharing at its piston-pumping best. If the group is big enough (more than, say, 120 members), you can source pretty much anything: a baby sleep guru; a maths tutor; a patisserie that sells Galette des Rois. Indeed, moments before accepting this commission, I was on my own neighbourhood WhatsApp forum (323 mums and climbing) trying to sell some theatre tickets. Within minutes, I’d offloaded them. Far superior to Google or Dubizzle, the mummy network is one of the most efficient, trusted, no-nonsense answer-to-everything systems in modern society. After all, nothing trumps the whisper of one mother to another.
The group I have with my three best girlfriends allows us to coordinate diaries and share photos of Jamie Dornan. My pickleball group is essential for organising mid-week games and, of course, now that my offspring are thumb-typing wizards of technology, I have a ‘family’ chat group that informs us of who’s doing what, when and whether or not said person has arrived on time (usually not). Yes, messages are coming in morning, noon and night, but living in a big city, in a state of perma-parental angst, I like the security of it. I like that the kids – and my husband – ‘check in’.
There are downsides, of course. Waking up to hundreds of unread messages cannot fail to affect stress levels. Posts can be highly tedious. Irritating. A distraction. The worst offenders are parents who take to WhatsApp to have a good old-fashioned rant. Take, for example, the two British dads whose squabble over which boys were being selected for the school football team spilled onto the Year 10 WhatsApp group. Angry messages kicked back and forth until it got so bad, both dads were blocked. The entire exchange was printed verbatim in the local newspaper. You’ve been warned.
DOS AND DON’TS
It goes without saying, there are rules…
1. Always be polite.
2. Don’t spam the group with anything unrelated to the purpose of the group, like promoting your business or flogging ‘pre-loved’ wares (no one wants your Lamaze playmat, darling).
3. If you ‘exit’ a group abruptly, it’s seen as a snub but excuse yourself politely and you’re unlikely to cause offence.
4. Avoid deleting messages. At best, it looks scatty, at worst it elicits suspicion.
5. Above all, never use a WhatsApp group for gossip. Anything vaguely salacious is begging to be screenshot, distributed outside the group or stored for revenge at a later date.
My advice? Sign up to all the groups. Some will sparkle and flourish, others will fizzle out. Mine them for information. Respond with gratitude when someone helps you out, and do whatever you can to help others. Because who knows how long the phenomenon will last.
Lead Image Supplied
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s Junior Spring 2024 issue