My daughter who is 6 has been friends with a neighbour's daughter and they are both in the same school, she is also aged 6.
Their relatiosnhip tends to be that the friend knows what buttons to push with my daughter and at times, in front of us, goes out her way to upset her, our wee one is getting better at dealing with it, but it's as if this other girl has some kind of hold on her.
Recently at school assembly we went to watch our daughter's class do a performance where they all said poems, sang and danced to various songs. The neighbours daughter was in the front row whispering, pointing and laughing at the kids who were all up performing. Most ignored them, but true to form our daughter noticed and then seemed to fade from the performance as, on asking her afterwards, they made her feel sad that they were laughing at them all.
What struck me as well was that when the 2 wee girls were acting like this, they actively turned to seek myself and my partner out to see if we were watching, before whispering and laughing again.
Now, I think the behaviour is pretty strange for 6 year olds, particularly the latter paragraph. However, my conundrum is, how do I encourage my daughter to ignore them as she has plenty of other friends but seems to always want to be accepted/please these other 2.
Help!
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Sensitive daughter - Mean Friend
GlasgowParent · 10/02/2015 11:11
Oh this is so sad 
I can remember children like this at my school I guess it happens everywhere.
Maybe talk to the class teacher about it. (i was an EY teacher) and we used to do 'role play' with the class and discuss certain situations and make it clear that we did NOT treat others in this way.
I know this is a few weeks old, just wanted to say I feel your pain.
My 6 year old is very sensitive and gets upset if one of her friends looks at her the wrong way.
One of her best friends from last year decided this year she doesn't like her and only seems to want to be friends with her every now and then and it has taken my DD a few months to get used to and ignore, it took a lot of discussion on our part at home to try to teach her to ignore it and realise that there are 25 plus other children in the class.
Very very hard for them, you just want to pull the offending child to one side and times to tell them how nasty they are being 
I hope you LO feels better soon, hopefully she settles with a good group of friends and learn to ignore this child x
Aerfen,
On a few incidents before I/we have spoken to our daughter and asked why she wanted to be friends with her if she doesn't make her happy? She seems to listen and agree, and although is getting better, it still seems she has to be friends with her as she pretty much wants to be friends with everyone.
As I said in my OP with regards to the assembly she felt sad afterwards which was horrible to hear. I know that the girl in question, and the other one who were acting up at the assembly have been in trouble at school before for making other girls cry (not my daughter) in school. (This has come via her Mother who is our neighbour) so there is history of them being mean.
I'm not sure if she would be jealous, and hadn't really thought of it like that, but I just think she has a 'streak' in her and knows how to push people's buttons.
It's a conundrum, but foremost I want to protect my daughter but can;t fight her battles for her, so will continue to encourage her to play with her numerous other friends and generally chat about coping mechanisms if 'other' kids are mean.
It's pretty hard (although wonderful) being a parent, and this is her only 6.....
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