To drive down to London and collect DD tonight after this

[Kareninthetardis]

Sorry for starting another thread on this, things have moved on and I wanted a fresh perspective.

DD is 17 and on a trip to London this weekend with her dance school. They are at a dance convention for the weekend and are doing touristy stuff on Monday and getting back on Monday evening. Since December DD has been bullied by a group of girls in her year at school who unfortunately are also in her dance school and some of them in a drama group she goes to outside of school. The bullying consists of them calling her fat in as many creative ways as they can come up with, admittedly she has put on weight this year after dropping some dance classes, her schedule was just getting unmanageable. Gp says her bmi comes out at the heavier end of healthy, we suspect she was underweight before this and since the bullying started she has been restricting on and off so I really do not want to outright encourage her to lose weight, although we have been talking a lot about healthy eating at home. That seemed to be working until last week a group of girls at school moved her clothes whilst she was in the shower after PE, since she spoke to one of her teachers about that there has been various name calling incidents in the canteen to the point that DD now won't go in there. I went in to speak to her head of year a couple of times last week but so far she has been supportive but more or less useless. My plan was to try and rebuild her confidence over half term and take it up with her teachers again next week. I was a bit apprehensive about this trip this weekend but her dance teachers promised to keep an eye on her.

I've had a call from one of DDs dance teachers tonight and she has been in floods of tears all evening, has refused to eat. They suspect something has happened but DD will not name anyone and the girls who have been involved in the bullying up until this point insist nothing happened. DD has refused to tell anyone about the bullying going on at school- which came out because another parent found nasty messages in their DDs Facebook, so she does have a history of not wanting to speak up. The girls on the trip were allowed to go around the convention in groups today, so plenty of opportunity for things to have happened away from the teachers.

DDs teacher has promised to keep an eye on her tomorrow and sightseeing on Monday, but they knew what was going on at school before today and promised they would look out for signs of anything happening that shouldn't be. I'm just totally at a loss as to what to do to stop this at this point and want to drive down and collect her tonight- we're in Lancashire. DH thinks I'm being ridiculous and she will survive until Monday now her teachers are more aware. DD sounded distraught on the phone but insisted she doesn't want me to drive down. Would it be totally unreasonable to go and get her anyway?

Mine are 20 and 23.
We call it the Thunderbird ticket in my family, that if a child needs rescuing, then they are. Wherever they are and however old it's valid for life. It doesn't mean that they don't have lifeskills, it means they have a lifejacket for when they can't keep afloat on their own.
DD used it a couple of times at uni. Well done OP.

'DH and I are going to go down to London tomorrow morning, so she has the choice. If she wants to stay, we can sightsee and come back tomorrow evening, but at least it gives her the option. '

That's the perfect response to an older child in trouble, you gave her the power to decide and you would have gone home without her if that's what she'd wanted. She hasn't failed at anything, she made a mature desision about how much she could deal with on her own.

As an ex dancer/teacher and now a dance mum I'm bloody horrified at the dance school not reading the riot act to these girls.
Dds dance teacher would lose her mind! The girls are terrified of her.
During panto an older girl was being nasty and the teacher went balistic!
Your poor dd tho. My eldest is 30 and if he needed me id do my utmost to get to him.
I hope u can sort it out.

School gave a talk to the whole year about bullying and asked people to come forward, still nothing. They don't want to push it and punish those who weren't involved apparently.

That's so sh!t of the school. I remember your other thread and think I said the same thing. I she still on 'report?'
Your poor DD. I hope she will be OK. Keep us updated.

If any of the girls are threatening your daughter or acting in a threatening way towards your daughter please involve the Police.They're all old enough to know better and should be punished for they're behavior.Anything horrible they send to your daughter online or about your daughter is cyber bullying and the Police do take that seriously now.

If it was my child I'd be telling the school and her dance/drama school that I was involving the Police because they've been bloody useless so far.Watch them bloody jump and sort it out then.

I'd also be speaking to the parents of the girls as well.They're they're children therefore it's they're responsibility to sort them out!

Op if that was my Dd I would be getting her out of the school and the dance school immediately.

What she is going through is so damaging she may well end up with an eating disorder and other problems for life.

Her life must be miserable.

There are choices in education - just as an example - one of my Dc dropped out of school half way through year 12 and enrolled in a 6th form college to do completely different subjects. It was a good decision.

Yes OP - learn to screen shot on a phone or computer. Teach your DD to screen shot anything online she doesn't like.

17 and still bullying? These girls sound vile.

Your poor dd, she's 17 and almost an adult and still having to deal with stuff like bullying. There should be serious consequences for the bullies.

I agree with screen shotting
Cyber bullying is a crime.

There was an incident some years ago at a local school and police were involved and some girls expelled.

The school and the dance school are handling this very badly and are therefore complicit in the bullying.

Thanks everyone for the support. DD doesn't want to raise the issue with her dance teachers because it will only 'make things worse'. I'm half tempted to go in and name the bullies myself, but DD won't tell me what they did this weekend, so I don't know what I'm accusing them of.

She's in year 13 so only has a couple more months left, absolutely no point moving her at this stage. She doesn't want to move dance schools and tbh I think we would struggle to find one locally that offered the styles she does on the nights she doesn't have her drama group. She's in a production there at the end of the month and wants a career in this, so leaving that isn't really possible at this stage either. Sadly, the girls involved in the bullying seem to have learnt their lesson from last time and it's all been verbal since, but DD does know to screenshot if she is sent anything nasty. The trouble is she doesn't want to make a fuss :(

kiwi the 'report' thing is technically still happening, the idea is that it forces DD to go and speak to her head of year once a week. The reality is that she wouldn't and hasn't been telling her head of year about any of the bullying incidents that have been going on during the last two weeks, so a total waste of time. She is meant to go for these appointments at the end of the day on Friday but she left for London before the end of the school day last week, so really it hasn't been happening at all. Just another way of the school pretending they're doing something about it, unfortunately

Her dance teacher is going to phone me when they get back home from the trip tonight.

One of her dance teachers has texted. She will call me later when they are back, but three girls on the trip have accused DD of bullying them this weekend. These aren't the same girls who were involved in the facebook bullying, though they are friendly with them. I have no idea what to think any more.

I think you are lovely. My mum outright refused to do this for me once when I was very distressed. I haven't forgotten it. I would have been a couple of years older than your dd and I have no way of leaving on my own or I would have.

I don't know about the latest update but you sound like you're doing all the right things.

It may be a pre-emptive strike if they were the ones upsetting her this weekend (most likely)or she may have lashed out at them verbally if the others were getting at her. The important thing is getting her to talk to you about what happened. Promise her you wont do anything about what she tells you, she is afraid to talk to you for some reason, I'm not saying you've done anything wrong but this secrecy and not eating does suggest she is a little immature for 17. Keep the conversation light but persistant, you really need to know what happened, she is probably embarrassed by the bullying by the sound of things too.
Take a step back and a day or two after you persuade her to confide advise her on what to do rather than rushing in to fix it for her.Unless it was physical then I'd take a very different approach.

You don't actually know why your DD was crying and not eating.You don't know for sure it was bullying .The best thing is to try to have lots of unpressured 'hang out' time and hope she raises the subject.

She may have hit out to try at the weaker members of the group of she thought they were going to join in / were already against her.

The trouble is with bullying is that you can feel under attack from everyone affiliated with the main attackers, and then hit out and have those people say in all honesty they never said a harsh word. With a lot of wide eyes faux innocence, as onlookers are just as bad as the bullies themselves. Bullies tend to be fuelled by onlookers so they have a part in it. I firmly believe those that don't refuse to join in or walk away are just as nasty as the bully themselves, though they would claim all innocence!

Accusations about the bullied person are just another way of keeping the victim trapped and helpless. It works too, especially if teachers are happy to fall in with the bullied person being the trouble maker - means they themselves don't have to feel guilty about their lack of action.

And then of course are the times when the person just flips and that's perfectly understandable.

You need to talk to your dd though, her strategy of shutting out and blocking out obviously isn't working, and is now making things worse for her. Maybe reassure her you won't take any action unless she agrees?

I totally agree it's perhaps not mature behaviour for an almost 18 year old, she was much more independent than this until a few months ago. We've been putting it down to being extremely unhappy and her confidence taking a huge hit. She can't sort it all out for herself at the moment so I do have to fix it for her as her mother.

Sheba there was an incident a couple of weeks ago where her clothes were hidden whilst she was in the shower block after PE- I don't know for definite because DD won't talk about it but I do suspect there was an element of physical bullying there. That was the incident that school tried to 'resolve' by placing DD on report, but that's a whole separate issue.

I don't know for sure it's bullying, no, but given recent events and some of the bullies being on this trip I would be very, very surprised if that wasn't at least part of the problem. The ironic part is DD found out today she won a summer school scholarship from one of the dance workshops she attended over the weekend, so she clearly enjoyed the convention classes themselves to be picked out for that. Which makes me think whatever upset her went on in between classes when they were all walking around together.

Just read this, first of all, congratulations to your dd on her scholarship and on having a lovely mum.

Secondly, sympathies. I was bullied from 11 to 16 at secondary school and still have minor emotional scars to prove it. But it will get better as soon as she gets away from these girls.

At best they sound like a group of easily led teens under a queen bee. Your poor dd :( did she perhaps retaliate to their winding up ?The changing room incident would not have gone unpunished at dc school, all those who stood by were culpable directly involved or not. Was the dance school trip through her school? Again if so such behaviour would be formally recorded and investigated, trip or no trip. I hope the dance teachers take a similarly tough stance.

I wasn't going to reply until I saw the claim that your daughter had allegedly bullied some other girls.

This happened to me. The bulling at my old school got so bad I literary walked out and refused to go back. A few weeks later after I happened to speak to a 'friend' (who was still attending of course), I was summoned back. Apparently, I had been verbally abusive about another student during that conversion, teacher took great pleasure in ripping me a new one and accusing me of bullying. Of course I hadn't said anything, I barely knew the student I had apparently 'bullied', but they were all waiting for an opportunity to get to me.

Being bullied is vile. You can't win with these people, they are assholes who get off on other's suffering. I hope your daughter realises she will be the one laughing at them one day, these things always come back around, even if it doesn't feel like it now. HTH.

The trip was organised by her dance school which is separate, and thankfully seem to be taking this more seriously. Just spoken to DD's teacher who wants to come round and talk to her tomorrow and see if she can get out of her exactly what happened, trouble is atm it isn't even their word against DD's because she won't say what happened. Reassuringly she thinks the bullying DD has been accused of is total crap. She also thinks DD has been self harming over the weekend, which is going to be difficult to bring up with her. Not sure how to handle that one.

Coyoacan, thank you, we're very proud of her :)

I want tp say you sound like a fabulous Mum

If she were my daughter i would say how proud i was of her scholarship, how pleased i am that she is coping so well and refusing to ve beaten by these bullies by still dancibg and performing etc. BUT i would firmly tell her that she needs to talk and open up.

I'd tell her, strongly, that silence is toxic. It's internal, it can eat you up. You expect better from her, she needs to be vocal, honest, forthright and talk through her problems. No one has all the answers and if she doesn't get a fresh perspective and only hears the bullies - they win.

If you carry on as you always have, things will be the same as they always were.

Your poor, poor girl. Really hate bullies. Hope things get better for her soon xxx

Well done on being supportive parents. I was bullied all through school. Like most kids I tried to hide it from my parents... but I was actually relieved when they found out. But... if it's coming out now, I would strongly suspect it's been going on a while. My best friend at that age was heavily into dance. Always slim, the dance team started bullying her about her weight. Looking back, I am ashamed I didn't realise sooner, or say something sooner, as she was pushed into an eating disorder. The most important thing is for your dd to know you are 100% on her side, love her, and think she's amazing and worth it. Which your trip to London proved. Let her know she can tell you anything. And that nothing will shock you. Then see if you can set up some girly time together.

The rescue... my parents did that for me 4 times - twice at uni, twice later on for serious illness. Didn't stop me becoming an independent minded professional. Actually, it probably helped. So I applaud you for doing the right thing.

Your DD is going to have to be very brave and tell you/teachers what has happened. Staying silent isn't getting her anywhere. She owes these girls no loyalty. I know it's tough to do because I have been there.

Sorry, also meant to say well done for supporting her.