Daughter is 4 yrs old, in reception class, and generally happy, funny, annoying - all your typical 4 yr old things.
She has a close friend at school who we have been wary of for a while - she reports differences of opinions and clashes (described as 'X being mean again') quite a lot, so we've stopped inviting the girl over and encouraged other friendships. Never said anything bad about the other child (who we have seen act out quite a lot, but she's still very young as well, so didn't think too much of it), but offered advice - 'if she's mean to you, go and play with someone else' - that sort of thing.
About two weeks ago, she was reporting the latest incident (where she ended up in tears and other girls came along and looked after her) and mentioned that the girl got physical with her. It turns out that if the girl is unhappy with her for whatever reason, she gives her 'hard hugs' and then makes aggressive faces at her. It made us a bit more concerned, but we explained that if people are touching you or being physical in any way that you don't like then the first thing you should do is tell them to stop, walk away and tell someone in charge. Figured that they're only 4, so likely to be tired, emotional, exaggerating, etc. And they do need to learn to deal with these things themselves...
Anyway, this weekend at another child's party, I saw girl in question shove and make a horrible face at daughter, who then cried for about ten seconds. I was too far away to do anything about it, and she recovered quickly so I was going to leave it. Then during the food, I was standing nearby chatting to girl's mother, and girl hit my daughter. Daughter didn't cry or react or anything - other girl was shouting at her and getting very agitated.
The mum just said 'oh no we don't do that do we', knelt down with her daughter and tried to calm her down and find out why she hit. At no point did she tell her off or make her apologise - I could feel myself getting really angry so I didn't really say anything as I didn't trust myself to. The girl kicked off a few more times during the meal for various reasons - so she was obviously having a bad day, but still...
The whole time this went on my daughter just sat there passively. Very strange. Later on she asked me to look after something of hers and to hold it up high 'because x is trying to take it and I don't want her to.'
The strangest thing is that daughter hasn't mentioned it since, didn't tell DH, etc. So does that mean she's used to it and only bothers telling us when something really bad happens?
Sorry for long post, but basically I want to know if I'd be out of line to ask teacher to keep an eye on them without talking to the mum about it first. As - quite frankly - she seems to be a bit pathetic when it comes to discipline so what's the point?