Ashley Tisdale leaves 'toxic mom group,' cites 'mean girl behavior' aimed at her

Ashley Tisdale opened up about her experiences with her "mom group" and revealed why she left it. 

Now going by her married name, Ashley French, the former Disney star wrote a short piece in her blog By Ashley French entitled, "You're Allowed to Leave Your Mom Group."

In the article, she wrote about needing to connect with fellow moms when she first gave birth. She shares two daughters, four and one, with husband Christopher French. 

"When I became a mom, I craved connection almost as much as I craved sleep. So I did what a lot of us do. I joined a mom group," French wrote. 

It was a "village of moms" she didn't know she needed at the time. Ashley and her mom friends swapped parenting advice, shared photos of their kids, and celebrated each other's wins. 

"But here's the thing nobody prepared me for: Mom groups can turn toxic," she said. "Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behavior."

The entrepreneur and lifestyle advocate was writing from experience, she said. 

"In my mom group, I started to notice that certain people would get talked about when they weren't present, and not in a positive way. I realized that there were group text chains that didn't include everyone, which led to cliques forming within the larger group," Ashley wrote. 

She left the group after the third or fourth time seeing photos on social media of everyone in the group hanging out—events she said she wasn't invited to. 

Wanting to delve into more detail, French recently wrote an opinion piece for The Cut, a New York Magazine women's lifestyle site. In her article, titled, "Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group," she talked about how she realized the continuous exclusion from group events was intentional, though unexplained, as reported by MSN. 

"I kept thinking, 'When they get left out on the playground, aren't we supposed to teach kids to include each other?' I knew that I had to speak up for myself, just like I would want my daughters to do," she wrote. 

Being excluded, she continued, reminded her of an "unpleasant but familiar feeling... Here I was sitting alone one night after getting my daughter to bed, thinking, 'Maybe I'm not cool enough?'"

She then sent a text message to the group, saying, "This is too high school for me and I don't want to take part in it anymore."

Ashley said some in the group tried to pacify her. One other mom sent flowers, "then ignored me when I thanked her for them," she wrote. "Another tried to convince me that everyone assumed I'd been invited to gatherings and just hadn't showed up. 'Then why didn't anyone ever ask where I was?'"

While the former Disney star did not specify who was in her mom group, some photos shared on social media by Entertainment Tonight show her going on a weekend getaway with fellow moms that included celebrities Hilary Duff and Meghan Trainor. Mandy Moore is also reportedly a part of the mom group. Keen social media observers noticed that Ashley has unfollowed Duff and Moore.

Ashley's rep, however, denied these, clarifying that the piece was meant to spotlight the issue of social isolation within peer groups.