It's a year 2 boys problem.
There's child A - devilishly handsome, football crazy but very insecure and shy inside. He's decided that everything is either "cool" or "babyish" and that he needs to lay down rules on which is which.
There's my child, child B, who's only in child A's gang because his best friend is.
And there's child C, lovely boy from an adult perspective, but some very immature social skills, tends to "blow it" by giving unwanted hugs, poor sense of personal boundaries, mum has worked hard to help him overcome this.
My child B is caught between his desire to include his friend Child C and his fear of being excluded from child A's gang (and hence losing best friend). It's a pain and it means playtime isn't fun, but worse things happen at sea, all a good learning curve (it's teaching him that sucking up to child A won't work) and he'll get through it.
But here's what child B tells me about child A's treatment of Child C.
- Child A calls child C "fatso"
- Child A "hates" Child C
- Child A says that anyone who plays with Child C is babyish and therefore can't play with child A
- Child B sometimes runs away from child C for fear of Child A
I have not told my friend Child C's mother any of this. However, she is aware of Child C's immaturies, concerned about his loneliness on the playground, and has had reports from child C such as "Child A's group made me eat grass". She finds it very painful (as you would).
At parents' evening, I said to the teachers that "the playground doesn't seem as benign environment as it used to be, DS1 feels under pressure to reject another child he would like to include for fear of losing friendship with a more mature child - could you talk to the boys about what is "cool" (letting others join in) and what is not (ie name calling)."
It will not escape your notice that Child B and I have our own agenda - we wish Child A would vanish in a puff of green smoke! We want to play peacefully with best friend and also child C and also Child A (but not at any cost). So we are not objective.
Do I - (a) stay out of it and just keep listening to what my own son tells me and helping him to work out how to protect his own position?
- (b) pass on the reports to child C's mother so she can decide whether to raise it with school. She has raised various concerns with them before and they seem to have her down as a neurotic mother so I'm not sure how much they listen to her.
- (c) mention it to the teachers more directly than I have done already?
Please help. This is a real dilemma and I know that I'm not objective.