When a school mum wanted to keep the WhatsApp after graduation, this was my reaction

Last year I lost roughly three months of my time on five apps for my kids. Honestly, I never knew the school app and various parent group chats would absorb so much of it.

Like many mothers, I squeeze the nagging burdens of these apps into the corners of my day, sending permission slips after drop-off and placing online orders in appointment waiting rooms. I’ve filled in countless sign-up sheets during basketball training or in the karate school’s car park. I’ve been the recipient of, and responder to, hundreds of messages, from “What time is the camp bus due back?” to “Can anyone find any information about the Information Evening?”

All the school mums I know ping with insistent group chats until we are nothing more than raw nerves on a lead with a labradoodle at the other end. By the end of each year, no wonder we feel depleted.

But you can’t ignore them: “Esme/Brailey is not allowed to attend the camp/history excursion and does not have permission for the sex talk/PG-rated film imperative to the curriculum.” The consequences of missing a demand on these apps are serious.

I know someone who went for minor surgery and when she emerged the school had locked her daughter out of the year 10 formal. It was an expensive private school that runs entirely on FOMO. Let that be a cautionary tale.

For those not in the know, schools sometimes ambush you with five emails or more per day. It’s virtual laundry and, in my experience, definitely gendered. There are no dads on my group chat and I’m yet to see a dad create a sign-up sheet or casually ping everyone their bank details because they’ve just shopped for the class cupcakes, found the lost water bottle, or asked “Which shade of ceramic cup is just right as a gift for Miss Carruthers?”

In one of my group chats, there was even a message expressing compassion for those who find the sign-up sheet triggering. Another 10 messages ensued.

In fact, the group chat is an insatiable, sanity-sucking monster. So when, at the end of my daughter’s final year of school, the head mum announced that she wanted to keep the group chat open forever, there was an ambivalent silence (I had that feeling you get when a house guest plans to stay for an indefinite period). This woman saw the group chat as a lifebuoy in rough seas, whereas I saw the chat as the sea itself.

By that time, I’d learnt to identify certain trends in group chats, and the archetypes who would inform the characters in my first novel. Top of the tree, of course, is the hero who rescues everyone from huge gaffes and puts their hand up for every event. This is the character we all are hugely grateful for – the mother of the mothers.

Then there’s the over-user who deploys the group chat as a personal diary, documenting every non-event: their step-parent’s house sale, post-surgical appointment details etc etc etc.

There’s the silent attendee, the one you forget is on the chat until she DMs you to propose something controversial, then asks you to post it.

My favourite is the one who uses any excuse to create a poll. Which of course means that we all have to tick “yes”, “no” or “maybe” to “Is 6pm the best time to start the drinks evening?” This will lead to a thousand messages about who will come but won’t be drinking, who will be drinking a well-deserved cocktail, who doesn’t drink any more but might make an exception (just for one night). Finally, of course, there’s the person who hasn’t read any of the posts and asks again: “What time are we meeting?”

But then, scrolling back through a few of my group chats, I arrived at a message I’d sent out saying my daughter was very unwell, a message I’d forgotten sending. As I read through the responses, I was reminded that these women had offered their sympathy and support, and that some had followed up with phone calls offering suggestions, or just sympathy. At that time, I was new to the group and this was my only lifeline to the school. I needed these small but considerate gestures of support more than I realised.

My daughter recovered slowly, then went on to have the most wonderful year of her school life. At its best, the school group chat provides a scaffold we didn’t know we needed. This virtual scaffold is now full of photos of our children’s last ever school day, and there’s a teacher’s speech I know I will never forget. The group chat that had been a life laundry had become a lifeline.

The Mother of All Calamities (Allen & Unwin) by Lisa Moule is out March 3.

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