Hide alerts not syncing with iWatch

Beyond maddening - I have several large group chats I intentionally silence - however every time a new message comes in, I get a haptic on my wrist. To be clear - I have done ALL of the following:

• • updated all to the most recent iOS (both watch and phone)
  • turned on "mirror iPhone" under the settings (and turned off/on several times)
  • powercycled both items (several times)
  • unpaired and then resynced the watch (twice)
  • scoured the forums only to find several people having the same issue, with no definitive answers

other than going into an Apple store - are there any other suggestions on how to fix this problem?