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?

There are not two extremes of parenting, one extreme where you swoop in and bring her home even if she is 17 and she asks you not to come, and the other extreme where you ignore her and leave her to fix her own problems all by herself without any support.

I think parenting is about finding the right balance in between there somewhere, helping the dc to be independent and to find their own feet and at the same time offering them the support they need. It has to be both.

I really think the dance teachers should expel those girls from the classes. Or don't they have any limits? Apart from the suffering they have inflicted on your dd and suffering they will inflict on some other poor girl, dancers who are conflictive are worse that useless.

My dd is a professional dancer and a good working environment is extremely important. Girls like them could destroy a show or a dance company.

I agree with Coyo - they should make a stand both in terms of opposing bullying, and in showing that people who lie about and undermine other dancers are not welcome. I would push the dance school on this as, at the moment, they are not providing a safe environment for their young students. Plus the bullies need to see some consequences to their actions.

That is awful OP. Your poor daughter, so the friends she thought she had in Dance class turned on her too. I would be fuming, I certainly hope the Dance teacher is.

That's a really useful perspective coyo, thank you. The girls involved have been banned from attending half term classes, DD didn't want to go anyway because of them and a drama thing she's in at the weekend so she will still have to face them when they're back next week. In the mean time she's worrying that her costume for her drama performance won't fit her and the same girls are going to make fun of her for that- some of them are also in this drama group. Part of me is tempted to call her drama teacher and explain what's happened but then I don't really know what I want him to do since he can't exactly ban them from performing :(

I'm confused about what's school and what's extra curricula. Is she doing A Levels at school and the dance/ drama separately or a BTEC at a fe college? If her future education isn't riding on the dance / drama I'd pull her out right now for 2 reasons- the stress it's causing her and the utterly inadequate way the school is dealing with the bullying. She might be relieved.

We haven't had a great end to half term, the upshot is DD will not be going back to school tomorrow. Camhs has been suggested but I'm not convinced they'd be interested since she's nearly 18, so we're looking into finding private counselling. Doctor we saw on Friday has suggested gradual reintroduction into school but I can't see the head going for that with A levels coming up. I'm going in to speak to her school tomorrow.

She's doing A levels and then dancing and drama outside of school, although she is also doing Theatre Studies A level. The trouble is she's off to drama school next year and that's more down to the theatre group she goes to than the A level, and the other problem is DD absolutely wouldn't consider it, I've already suggested that. Once she's actually in dance classes she's fine, it's the hanging around in between that's causing all the problems.

Oh I'm so sorry to hear that things have turned out that way, OP.