I had my first child in school this year…Kindergarten. After the first few weeks she cam home and started talking about the clubs the other kids were putting together. The first day or two I just listened and kind of let it blow over but after a week or so it really got me thinking and I decided to sit and have a talk with her.I started to ask her about the kids and how they are coming up with these different clubs. She said that there were 2 girls that started them and they were only allowing 2-3 other people into their club. She was not invited into either. These 2 girls have been giving other kids trouble already and by the end of the year I heard a couple more parents talk about those girls not being very nice.
I spent days, weeks and even months trying to positive self-talk may daughter. I tried and am still trying desperately to make her understand that the kind of friends that are your best friend one day and the next are putting you down are not worth it. She was only 5, do you think she was even hearing me? I sure hope so.
By the end of the school year my daughter was coming home and saying “Mom you know that XXXXX is my friend now and she says I can be her friend.” I would say, that it was OK to be nice and friendly at school with this girl but she was not to expect play dates with her etc. She would get mad. Am I doing the right things? First she excludes her very early in the year with these clubs. Later in the year both this other girl and her friend say mean things to my daughter all the time. One day nice, the other mean. My biggest fear for now is that she will allow these kinds of girls to play such a big role in her life. I don’t want her to have friends like this.
What would you have done, said, or not said to your child? This is he part of school that I do not like at all. My daughter is very friendly and outgoing and I don’t want school to suck that out of her. I still have not tossed out the idea of home school. I wanted her to get a social aspect for a few years but homeschooling may come sooner then later, as this whole kindergarten may stem into something more. Not sure if I want to go there.
Oh, if they only gave us a handbook when we left the hospital after birth! My daughter is only one but I have a stepdaughter that is 10 (she has only been my step daughter for 2 1/2 years) and she is starting to ask me so many questions that I am so unprepared for. I wish you the best of luck!
Social bullying is a hard lesson to learn, but IMHO removing her from the lesson might not be helpful *in the long run*. I was homeschooled for many years, until the homeschool program wasn’t really able to give me the challenge and advanced placement programs I needed for my post secondary goals. I re-entered main stream schooling at 17not having learned the lesson that frankly some people aren’t very nice. That is a fact of life that we can’t really protect our children from. I’d rather teach my children that they can not control the things other people do, but that they *can* control whether they choose to let that be a part of their own life and who they are. It’s a hard lesson, but remember that we learn from our failures and that getting hurt teaches us how to be strong. If you take those lessons away, are you really helping her become a strong, savvy adult?
I think we all go through things like this. I think maybe it might be a good thing to learn about girls like this early on. Makes it easier when you get older to realize not everyone is a nice person.