Ashley Tisdale has declared that she left a 'toxic' group of other mothers after feeling like she was back in the bad old days of high school.
Your humble writer may be childless, but he has been assured by others who do have kids that it takes over your life and makes it difficult to maintain lots of previous social connections.
Other parents can end up becoming your social circle, and Tisdale spilt the tea in The Cut that when she had her first daughter, she was 'craving connection with other mothers' to get advice on all the parenting stuff that comes with experience.
Tisdale, 40, tied the knot with husband Christopher French in 2013 and they welcomed their first child in 2021, with a second following in 2024.
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She explained that what started out as a search for advice became something else as she needed other new mothers with whom she could relate about the massive impact becoming a parent has on one's life.
When she got into a group, she initially 'felt a sense of belonging' and thought she'd 'found her village' as they started to arrange events and set up a chat.
According to USA Today, the group reportedly contained a number of famous faces, though Tisdale named no names in her explanation of why she had left.
Then it all went quite wrong as she started seeing on social media that the rest of the group was doing things together without her, and she thought she was being 'frozen out of the group' as she was left out of a birthday dinner and a 'girl hang'.
The actor explained that in her early days in the group, there was another mum in the group who was often not included, and that in hindsight, she felt like this was now being done to her.
She didn't say who was in the group and who was doing the leaving out, but she said she was feeling the 'emotional echoes of high school' as she felt excluded from the group she'd once been part of, and told everyone else exactly how she felt.
"This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore," she wrote in her departure message, which she says didn't go over particularly well with the rest of the mum group.
One of the mums sent her flowers, then blanked Tisdale when she tried to say 'thank you'.
Another told her that when they made plans without her, everyone assumed she'd been invited and didn't show up.
She wrote that she doesn't think they're bad people, except perhaps for 'maybe one' who she doesn't name, but the High School Musical star didn't want to deal with playground drama.
According to Tisdale, she's actually been contacted by other mothers who've told her they too ended up having a pretty miserable experience as part of a similar group that was meant to be mothers supporting each other, while one friend also told her, 'you're so brave'.
Such drama.
Joe Harker