Advice please

[juicybelle]

Hello,

Need a bit of advice please?

Long story so will condense it...

DD bullied for 2 terms by a group of controlling girls. Head and teacher aware of it but didn't do much. Teacher kept being cryptic about it and never really knew what she was on about. Got so bad that had to withdraw dd for a day as all girls in her class were whispering about her because of a badly handled situation by teacher (told girls off but said not to mention it to my dd - which of course they then told pretty much whole class) and it utterly ruined her confidence. She is a shy girl anyway and had already lost her confidence.

Then head took proper action (although I don't think has explained in full detail what our concerns were) - but now the parents seem upset with me for their kids being classed as bullies! No concern whatsoever for the damage that their children have done to my dd. In denial I would say. I did try and sort it months ago with a parent but let's just say - she wasn't having it.

2 of the parents approached me afterwards and said their kids were scared of the main kid and that they had been picked on by her too. (Which begs the question - why were they encouraging such an unhealthy friendship in and out of school?) One parent was particularly scathing about the parents of this kid - yet they all socialise together and are really cliquey.

Clearly the situation has been dealt with badly -

I'm exhausted from it, my daughter feels friendless and having tried but failed to get into another school we are stuck. Building our dd back up but she's only 7 going on 8. Quite sad, really.

Am I right to feel angry with the school? Unfortunately one of the parents is on board of governors (as well as everything else going at the school) so, I don't feel I can contact them about it. As someone said, we are being bullied as much as our dd!

Any ideas? Thanks. x

[Happy36]

This is horrible. How unpleasant.

If you want to resolve it you may be most successful in contacting the ringleader's parents directly.

Also keep a diary of all bullying incidents and do keep on asking the school to take action.

Thirdly, I'm sure you do this already, but try to boost your daughter's self-esteem and encourage more friendships with different children - an extracurricular hobby could help both of these thing and be great fun too.

Good luck, take care.

[Kenlee]

That is horrible.....

Let me remind you that the queen bee at my daughter's primary school. Now resorts to ringing my daughter to ask if she will return to thier primary school together as no one else will talk with her...

So its all about Karma...obviously my daughter is not the bigger person and ignores the calls. No matter how many times I try to encourage her to forgive her.

She now is at Boarding and has a nice clique of friends. Full of confidence and enjoying life.

It may not help you now but I hope my DD story will help to encourage your daughter.

[juicybelle]

Happy36 and KenLee - thanks for your supportive words.

I did initially contact the ringleaders mother but it was fruitless and quite scary to be honest. We are doing lots of things outside of school which make her happy. The school has taken action - but too little too late and we are pretty upset about it. Having looked through old emails and a letter, they had enough evidence of bullying months ago to actually do something.

It would make your toes curl if I told you some of the behaviour from her teacher regarding this. It was made out that I was just being an anxious mother when, now that I have seen the reports - it is totally clear that my dd has been targeted and picked on.

Why don't schools want to know when your child is being bullied? Surely, they have a pastoral/moral obligation if nothing else?

Spending the summer holiday evenings trying to find a new school or advice on home schooling for a bit.

Never thought we would have to do this. It's horrible and I get surges of sadness and anger that my dd has endured this. We are positive around her but there is no doubt that this has really affected her.

[joozy]

An update on my dd's situation. We moved her to a new school. Which was far from straightforward but worth it in the end. She is now happy.

She questions from time to time why we had to move her when she wasn't the bully, which is a fair point and not easy to explain to a young child. But, she is always smiling when she gets in the car now. That's the main thing. I hope this all doesn't scar her in the future - we had no choice in the end though.

We had no apology from the parents of the bullies and no contact afterwards. Guilt maybe but I suspect more just not interested. Astounding as I would be devastated if my child had made another so unhappy.

Funnily enough the parent of one of the bullies had said they didn't want their child playing with the main one anymore but they're all happily playing together again and apparently nothing has changed.

When I contacted the head to say that we were leaving he didn't even bother replying for a few days and then showed no remorse (dealt with it all terribly) or compassion for my dd.

So glad we are outta there!

I'm still thinking about making a complaint. One the one hand we are moving on but they also seriously let my dd down. The governor didn't even know that we had left or why when I contacted him. He apologised but it's not good enough really.


Any thoughts would be appreciated x