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Primary education

DD - social issues at school

7 replies

millietwoshoes · 04/03/2013 12:01

Just wondering if anyone can offer some advice please. My DD is 10 & year 6 and really struggling at school at mo with social issues. A friendship group which is getting rather nasty and my DD feels as though she is being left out and picked on.
I know that she is no angel but I am really concerned that she is learning unhealthy social skills.
I tell her that she cannot control the way the others behave but she can control how she behaves and how she deals with things and that she must rise above it.... But each day she comes out of school upset - she cannot seem to tear herself away from these girls (who are v manipulative) and I worry that she is picking up this behaviour.
Any advice would be great. Thank you

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learnandsay · 04/03/2013 12:06

Is it a state school, and what does her teacher say about the problem?

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JuliaScurr · 04/03/2013 12:13

Contact school to see if they run any social education
//youngminds.org helped us with similar

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millietwoshoes · 04/03/2013 12:25

It is a state school and the year 6 teacher is a young man who is great but when I went to see him about it he just said (in front of DD) that he is a man and does not really understand femail issues - he then quoted 'men are from mars .....'
The four girls in the mix have a meeting with the SENCO teacher today, who is a very understanding, lovely lady so I am hoping that this does some good. But I am just really concerned a) DD is so unhappy and b) that she may be learning unhealthy friendship skills.

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NikkiH · 04/03/2013 17:03

Can you encourage her to make other friends?

My DS is also in Year 6 and has a completely different set of friends now than he did at the start of the year because of this problem. There seems to be a lot of 'jostling for position' in year 6 with kids wanting to be top dog or best friends with those that stand out because they are great at sport etc. It almost borders on hero worship at times which is really unhealthy!

If you'd asked me a year ago I'd have said he would always be best buddies with the group of lads he'd gone through school up to year 6 but when they started being unkind, taking the mick and leaving him out he voted with his feet and found new pals. He is 11 though so I think that helped. It'll be all change again come September - new school and lots of new people to be friends with!

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Groovee · 04/03/2013 17:15

From experience this age is when true bitchy behaviour seems to come out. Dd was glad to go to high school and not be with the primary social group. There are some bitchy girls in her new school but she's made nicer friends.

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stealthsquiggle · 04/03/2013 17:35

Hmm. Not helpful from the class teacher. Issues between the girls, and the girls very subtly bullying some of the boys, in my DS's class really flared up when they had a male class teacher with a similar attitude, as they were too subtle for him - he only saw the unsubtle reactions from the boys, and not how they had been goaded into it (that is not me defending my DS, incidentally - fortunately he absorbed what we were telling him about bluffing it out by pretending not to care, and they moved swiftly on to the next victim).

I hope the SENCO manages to address this, as the school really needs to - through PHSE or whatever it is called, or otherwise.

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millietwoshoes · 04/03/2013 18:07

Thank you all, I really try to encourage DD to play with other groups and interestingly on the one day that she did this last week she came out of school happy and smiling. However it all reverted back the following day, she cannot seem to break away from the others and I do not want to push too hard and tell her how crap her friends are as she may then stop talking to me. Soooo hard.