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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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to be upset for DD!!

137 replies

donners312 · 20/12/2017 21:54

DD13 been a bit fragile lately and this has led to bullying at school.

School have been pretty good but it has been tough.

There was a party tonight and DD had a friend coming over to get ready before so they could go together.

Low and behold she didn't turn up and then started posting photos rom the bullies house of them all getting ready together.

DD has still gone to the party I didn't want her to go and am on tenderhooks until i pick her up at 11.

How can they be so horrible?

OP posts:
Hopeful103 · 21/12/2017 07:04

Well done to your Dd!! She's 13 and is also such a mature, insightful individual. If anything she will know that she stood up for herself and she believes in herself. Glad she had a great time. Nasty bitches those other girls and their mother.

Pengggwn · 21/12/2017 07:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

KarlosKKrinkelbeim · 21/12/2017 07:05

Made my day hearing how your dd has dealt with this. Great strength of character at a young age. She’ll go far in life while these bullies will stay in the gutter.

Ohyesiam · 21/12/2017 07:10

Your girl sounds like an absolute star, you must be so proud of her.
I would have loved to have a mum who had my back like you have hers. Star

AuntLydia · 21/12/2017 07:21

I agree pengggwn. The op's dd has dealt with it with an incredible amount of maturity and no name calling. Perhaps a lesson to us all....

steppemum · 21/12/2017 07:27

well done your dd.
rubbish as this situation is, she will have learned a huge amount last night, not least that the bullies don't have th epower to decide if she goes anywhere or has a good time.
She has learnt to find new people to engage with, and has discovered that she can make new friends in a new situation.

While I hate bullying and feel sorry for your poor dd having to go through this, sometimes we forget that it is dealing with this stuff that helps our kids to mature, develop some character and huge skills in resiliance.
well done your dd

sweetsomethings · 21/12/2017 07:29

I agree the name calling of children on this thread is disgusting .

SummatFishyEre · 21/12/2017 07:32

Id call them nasty bitches to their face if I knew them. Maybe if people told these kids what they are they might think twice about their behaviour

Tottyandmarchpane1 · 21/12/2017 07:44

I semi agree with Penggwn but I think it is absolutely fine to say this is nasty behaviour. Unkind is too weak a word for this type of behaviour and I would certainly be happy to say to the girls that it is nasty.

pilates · 21/12/2017 08:00

It does seem worse nowadays unless my memory has faded.

Good on your DD, she did the best thing by inwardly sticking two fingers up to the mean girls and enjoying herself at the party. Hopefully, she can find a new circle of more level-headed friends.

Pengggwn · 21/12/2017 08:05

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

bzz7 · 21/12/2017 08:15

Well, as other people have said, the other mothers' responses to being told that their kids are involved in bullying go a long way to explaining why the kids are bullies. Even "nice" kids make mistakes and childhood is the time to correct them--not pretend that they don't exist.

If your daughter has gone to the party anyway, then it sounds like she is doing exactly what she needs to be doing--not letting these people dictate her social life. She needs to keep doing that.

I used to have similar experiences when I was a kid, but they soon ended. I now do volunteer work with kids in my free time and have often wondered why some kids end up having such a horrible time, whereas otherslike megot away relatively unscathed. My parents were the town eccentrics, I was chubby, we were poor, and my father refused to buy me new clothes because he didn't want me to be vain. All of this should have added up to sustained bullying, but didn't.

I think there were two major reasons and one was that I was an arrogant kid! People talk about things like encouraging your kid to have "self worth," but that's just another way of saying that you should make sure your kids knows she is better than these people! They are petty and immature and she isn't.

The other was that I was lucky enough to live in a small town where there were many opportunities and little competition. It was easy to get involved with things like art and dancing and sports because they were cheap and everyone could get on a team. It did me a lot of good to have hobbiesand improving at themto occupy my brain. The friends I met through those hobbies focused on the hobbies instead of on petty drama. I think that when people are bored, that's when they start creating social drama. And when we have only one group of people in our lives, whether it's family or friends or work colleagues, any drama/unpleasantness within that group takes on a lot more importance and is much more distressing.

So my advice, if you are looking for any, is to continue telling your daughter not to allow herself to be kept away from parties and other events by these girls. Keep telling her that their attitude is not normal or worth getting worried about; they are just immature, nasty little **s who haven't been taught any better and who don't have anything more interesting to do with themselves. For yourself, vent on here, but don't get emotional around her because that will rile her up and make her feel this is more of a disaster than it is. Take a calm, pragmatic approach. It may not seem like this is sinking in, but it will be. And encourage her to develop at least a couple of hobbies that will get her out of the house, away from these girls, and into contact with other kids who have interests.

You will be teaching her a very important qualityresiliencewhich will stand her in good stead throughout her life as she deals with horrible people.

Good luck!

BadFeminist · 21/12/2017 08:16

I actually feel that there has been a huge level of assumption on the thread about the 'girls' as a group. ONE girl arranged to get ready with the OP's DD and failed to turn up. Did the other girls know/encourage this? We don't know. We don't actually even know the one girl's perspective or whether she did it to be 'nasty'. We don't have enough information. But because the OP's DD is (understandably) upset, there has been an outpouring of completely over the top vitriol about the whole group.*

I never understand why some people knee jerk reaction is to white knight a bully.
Schools do it too.

Wouldn't it be cool if authorities and such tried to protect the victim first? Hmm

Pengggwn · 21/12/2017 08:21

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Chocfingers · 21/12/2017 08:28

The gendered name calling on this thread is awful. And don't kid yourselves that boys can't be equally mean or even vicious. It's not a "girl thing".

OP - I told my DD to remove most of the people on her snapchat and just have a few genuine friends.

FullOfXmasCheerOfCourse · 21/12/2017 08:28

Teenage girls can be so bitchy at times. Horrible little witches, I hope they have a crap Xmas whilst your lovely sounding DD has a fantastic one.

steppemum · 21/12/2017 08:28

badfeminist - pengggwn wasn't white knighting a bully at all.

She was simply saying that calling them bitches etc doesn't help.
They are behaving badly, they need calling out on that.
It is not helpful to demonise 13 year olds, that doesn't lead to solutions.

Pengggn is right that we don't know the full story from this group.

That doesn' tprevent us suporting OP, and her dd, and helping her dd deal with it, which may involve the school dealing firmly with these girls.

FullOfXmasCheerOfCourse · 21/12/2017 08:32

But enough with the gendered insults of children, eh?

You're right. It just makes my blood boil when I see children being so horrible to others and it's easy behind a keyboard to react with name calling when they are anonymous children who are basically hypothetical to us as we will never meet them/know them IYSWIM?

Chocfingers · 21/12/2017 08:33

teenage girls can be so bitchy at times. Horrible little witches, I hope they have a crap Xmas

I wonder where they learn this behaviour from ...

BackBoiler · 21/12/2017 08:38

My DS who is in Y5 has had some trouble at school recently all stemming from an argument with his best friend. It escalated and it got to the point where a few children in his class were leaving nasty notes in his drawer and trying to get him into trouble. He wasn't upset but determined on getting his own back!

We asked him to no longer retaliate to them and DH and I clicked for him to leave the group chat on a game he plays online so he could no longer have out of school contact with these children.

I know this is not the same as your situation and DS is a few years younger than your DD but I am confident that we seem to have nipped it in the bud before it escalated further. I am glad that he spoke with me about it - I doubt the other children's parents are blissfully unaware. He even came home with a Christmas card from the best friend. I did explain however that he does not have to be friends with this child if he no longer wants to be but that does not mean that they should be warring at school.

Trampire · 21/12/2017 09:03

Your Dd sounds wonderful OP.

My dd is coming up for 13. I've been 'lucky' so far in that she started Secondary knowing no-one and has very gradually and slowly made a good hotch-potch of friends from across different tutor groups. She's mainly friends with the nerds, with quite a few gay friends. They're a nice group (so far)

However dd has said she's witnessed the drama circles of the 'popular girls' for a while. Every few weeks there seems to be someone they're excluding. In fact their 'popular' girl group is getting smaller and smaller all the time. My dd's head of year actually asked dd and done if her friends to help one girl 'move on' from that group. I think it's a very common situation for lots and lots of girls.

Your dd is doing the best thing - she's holding her head up, bravely getting on with it. These are the people that attract friends to them in the long run. I think your dd will be much happier very soon.

mirialis · 21/12/2017 09:14

Sadly this behaviour isn't limited to teenagers. As an adult, it's painful but ultimately you have the choice to walk away (though bullying in workplace doesn't make it easy). I would encourage exploring alternative options for your DD so she knows they are there if SHE chooses to take one. I understand not wanting to encourage .running away' or letting the bullies win, but I personally feel that giving her the sense that she can choose to stick it out or choose to leave gives an important sense of empowerment. I don't underestimate how hard it can be for some to find a new school though if there aren't many in the locale.

BellBookandCandle · 21/12/2017 09:33

Glad to read that your DD was ok last night. Years 8-10 seem the worst for girls, bullying/bitching seems at its peak then.....things seem to calm down after that.

It surprises (and saddens) me the over involvement some mums/parents have in their children's life (not you Op, the other mums) engineering friendships/condoning bullying etc.

Wotrewelookinat · 21/12/2017 09:39

I have just bought the book ‘Queen Bees and Wannabes’
by Rosalind Wiseman which apparently is a good read (only just started it so can’t comment). I’m hoping at the age of 47 it gives me a bit more insight into cliquey behaviour as my daughters are 12 and 13.

LagunaBubbles · 21/12/2017 09:47

These girls are being very unkind. Their behaviour is unkind. It needs to be raised with their parents or your DD needs to distance herself from them

My son was badly bullied physically and psychologically , called gay boy and son of a paedophile because my DH was a childminder. We went through hell, school were hopeless. The bullies behaviour was appalling. He was 11. We tried to raise it with his parents - that went down like a ton of bricks. My son did distance himself, made no difference. The reality of living with a bullied child is not as easy as saying "raise it with the parents". I find calling bullying "unkind" behaviour patronising at best.

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