Disclaimer: I’m never going to bloody ask her am I. I’m just going to bitch about it on here while consoling myself with matchmakers.
DD joined her primary in year 3. Before dd joined, there was one girl who was extremely bright and the little star of the year. Dd is brighter. She’s good at everything and confident, but also really lovely and everyone, staff and children love her. Walking into the playground with her is like walking into the Cheers bar. Everyone knows her name and says hi (yes, I am bragging but please let me, becuase believe me, my other three are nothing like her and they keep me humbled on a daily basis, so let me have this one).
This girl didn’t like it and there have been a few horrible incidents over the last couple of years, just mean girl behaviour and some low level bullying.
The main thing is though, what ever dd is doing, this girl does to. Every club dd joins, so does this girl and she just erodes dds confidence bit by bit and dd ends up not wanting to do the activity anymore. Her mum signs her up to everything dd does, the digs start, the pulling other kids away from dd subtlety starts and then dd doesn’t want to carry on anymore.
Now, I HAVE spoken to the girls mother about these incidents. She has made her dd apologies and to be honest, a couple of the class leaders have spoken to her too as well as teachers at school who have noticed things.
I’ve ended up gate keeping one activity that dd is particularly good and absolutely loves going to. Her mum keeps asking for the details of it, even though it’s not local at all and quite a niche thing to do.
The latest thing is, I am putting dd in for a selective exam that is not the norm to do here at all, but all the secondary schools here are awful. Guess what?
Dd was a bit quiet when she came home today, finally got it out of her that this girl has been telling her she’s doing the same exam but she’s going to pass as she’s getting the best tutors and that dd will fail it.
We can’t afford tutoring, so we are teaching dd ourselves in the evenings.
Thing is, there is one amazing local school and this girl not only lives directly across the road, but also has two siblings there and her dad works there. If dd had a cats chance in hell of a place at that school (she doesn’t for many reasons), I wouldn’t be bothering with this test.
Her mum was texting me telling me about the amazing tutor she has found that’s going to cost hundreds of pounds a month and what a shame it was that we didn’t have one. I did ask why she was doing it, and she replied that her dd just really wanted to do it as my dd was doing it and she wanted the choice of other schools if she passed.
I know I should have kept my mouth shut, but the other week, I had an armful of study books I’d just picked up for dd from facebook, she asked what they were and to be honest, I’ve also got two very young children so the school run is basically herding them away from danger and making sure they don’t kill each other and I was too distracted to think she would jump on that too.
I just feel a bit shit for dd. She’s lovely and so clever and deserves so much more then we can give her in the area we live and I know that this is going to be held over her by the other girl. Dd is very bright but I did this exam as a child, it’s a very different animal to anything else with the way questions are worded etc. Me and dh are very capable of teaching her but kids who pass and get the best marks are almost always tutored.
I know in the grand scheme of things this doesn’t matter but dd is so lovely and I am so proud of her. I just want her to get on with this and be happy doing it, not constantly having this other girl in her ear telling her she’s shit.
And yes, dd knows resilience. We’ve had a shit few years as a family with some pretty devastating things happen and she copes so well and is always such a positive person.
I’ve spoken to my best friend in real life and she has offered to trip the mum up tomorrow. So that’s helped.