How to deal with this?

[Myira]

Mom A and her daughter B. DD is friends with daughter B, same grade but not same classes and they do one common activity that is dance on the weekend where we carpool together and it’s an hour round trip.
One is B would like to hang out with DD after the dance and also many other times over the weekends. I’ve refused this a couple of times since DD has n number of things that she needs to catch up on and there just isn’t enough time to give up 2-3 hours like that. Yesterday when we met A brings up the topic of pushing kids and voices her opinion very strongly that she does not believe in pushing kids, it’s just middle school, life can go either ways. I should’ve not engaged in this topic at all, but I did (thanks to being socially awkward), I’ve never been able to show so much presence of mind in social settings. By engaging, I only said that probably depends on the kid and my kid is lazy enough that if given a choice she’d sit at home on a device all day. Her other friend C also happened to be there and they went gangbusters on me, or atleast that’s how I felt about that conversation.
I have not asked for her opinion on this, I cannot fathom how someone can start pushing their views down my throat! But they did!
Am I not free to parent my kid however I see fit? I said at one point half jokingly yeah who knows, we’re all just fumbling with this parenting thing. Their response was totally an unexpected punch in the gut to me - “ if you are fumbling then your kids will too. We’ve got to show our kids how we deal with tough situation, model behavior, they’re watching us”. I was completely lost at that point. Are you saying I just suck at parenting to my face when I did not even ask for your opinion? I don’t know what’s going on. I do feel like an abject failure since that conversation. Mom A was almost mad at me that I, according to her I push DD.

What do any of you make of this? And how do I deal with this going forward?


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