Baby groups are a nightmare

I have a little girl who's just coming up to 16 months old. She's turning into a lovely, smiley, friendly little creature, and I am desperate for her to have some other kids she can be friends with. However, I am the only one in my small group of friends that already has or ever wants kids, and the various baby groups I have been to so far have been nightmares.Am I the only one who feels like this? I have been taking my girl to them since she was 6 weeks old and I just feel like they are far too cliquey. This doesn't bother me for myself as I don't care about making mum friends for myself (I am always friendly to the other mums and their kids), but I've noticed that when my little girl approaches other children most of the mum's either actually turn their children away from mine or outrightly blank her when she tries to babble/play with them and their kids, and I always end up leaving feeling super deflated.Today for example, my daughter saw a little girl who was around her age wearing a firefighter hat. The girl then took the hat off and dropped it on the floor, so my daughter approached her babbling and smiling away, picked up the hat and tried to hand the girl back the hat. Whenever I am near kids with my daughter I will make an effort to interact as well, so I said "wow! What a cool hat, do you want to play fire fighters?", This girls mum noticed me, and without responding or even making eye contact with my daughter or me, took the hat out of my daughters hands and then moved herself so her back was facing me and my daughter, effectively blocking my daughter from being able to interact with her or her kid. Things like this happen all the time and I always just feel so upset that my daughter gets so excited to be around other kids when we get to these baby groups but then she basically gets blanked/side eyed by cliquey mums who don't want an outsiders kid interrupting their kids playing with their friends kids.To begin with I thought that maybe I was being paranoid and reading way too much into it, but today I brought my mum with me to the baby group I normally go to, and as soon as we got outside my mother commented on how she really didn't like the group and brought up the same concerns that I mentioned before, even though I have never brought them up to her so I'm sure it's not just a me issue making mountains out of mole hills.Did anyone else have any issues? I would love for her to have friends but I just feel like taking her to these groups will eventually really mess her confidence up. I take her to parks and stuff whenever the weather permits,so she gets to play with other kids there, but I would love for her to have a proper friend she sees every week instead of a bunch of random kids she briefly plays with at the parks I take her to. Would it be unfair for me to stop taking her and just let her go to parks and soft plays instead? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2FRJGxd