Parents of Year 3 children, please !

[Kittypickle]

My DD is becoming increasingly intimidated by one of the girls in her class and her friends, known as "the gang". She was visibly cowering away from them this morning when I dropped her off. She has dyspraxia, which means she does struggle a bit socially, so I have found that I do have to keep a close eye on what goes on in the playground and help her deal with situations that stress. As the children are getting older the differences between DD and quite a lot of them are getting more magnified and her teacher has told me that she is quite unlucky with her year group as there are a large number of children who "have rather too much to say for themselves" - her words, not mine.
Is it normal at this age that they start doing the whole gang thing and that it causes a fair amount of tension in the playground ? I get the impression that it's not just DD who is a bit intimidated by it. Before I have a word with the SENCO I need to know if she's not coping with age related play stuff , if that makes any sense at all. This would be a lot easier if I had been through it before!

[MamaG]

oh ypur poor DD.

my DD is in year 3 too and i don't think the "gang thing" has started yet. Lucky really, as there is only one class per year at our school

Could your DD change class? Does she have special friends of her own?

I would defo jump up and down at the school, they need ot deal with this now and nip it in the bud.

[frogs]

Er no, not okay.

We had a gang incident last year (Y2), involving various boys playing at 'being in gangs'. The school (rightly) came down on it like a ton of poo. The boys involved (my ds among them) were sent to the head's office for individual tellings-off, and letters were sent home, asking us to have a word with our sons. I think this is entirely reasonable, even though they were only just playing and my ds was by no means the ring leader.

There are two children with dyspraxia in the class, and I don't think there are any particular problems with them, although one of them has a limited pool of potential friends as there are only 10 girls in the class, four of whom are from a close-knit non-English speaking community, who don't socialise at all with other children or parents. In general I think there is a positive and reasonably friendly atmosphere in the class, and incidents that upset children are dealt with well IMO.

That is no more than you have a right to expect, really. Hope you manage to sort something out.