To not know how to deal with this?

[Teachtolive]

My eldest is 4 and in creche. Shes confident and chatty with other kids and adults. I've always taught her to be kind and I dont want her to be too babyish and give too much attention to every little childhood hurt. There are kids in her creche , one in particular whom she considers her friends, who say things that are a bit nasty. One said she lives in a rubbish tip and picks fights with her and then comes back to her saying "okay you can still be my friend." The other tells her he doesn't like seeing her every day (she went from 3 to 5 days in creche recently. ) I'm inclined to just ignore it and reassure her that they're just being silly and not to worry but I honestly don't know if that's the right approach. Anyone have any advice? Thanks

Teachers should be dealing with the unkind chat - DD's would have come down on it in an age appropriate tonne of bricks way.

I don't think the teachers have heard any of the chat. If they have, they haven't mentioned it to me. I've told Dd that she should tell her teachers if people say unkind things but I cant be sure shes doing it. She has a tendency to internalise these things too, so I'm honestly not sure if shes all that affected by it or if shes ruminating on it.

Have a word with the teachers and ask them to keep an ear out, but definitely just keep reassuring DD and remind her that it x is mean she can always go and play with y.

Thanks for the replies. I may have a word with the teachers. I'll definitely remind her to play with others. Hopefully itll pass

Being kind is all well and good but they need to be able to stand up for themselves too. I would tell the staff and also make sure your dd knows she doesn’t have to be this other child’s friend just because they say so and I’d encourage other friendships.

In my experience this kind of thing can’t easily be controlled by staff and you don’t want your child to end up being controlled by another who thinks she can do and say what she likes and then “allow” your dd to be friends again afterwards. This happened to my dd at a similar age and the other child is still the same albeit in a less obvious way and they’re in yr5 now.

Being kind is all well and good but they need to be able to stand up for themselves too

That's it exactly. I want to give her the tools to deal with this herself as much as a 4y/o can, I just dont want her to go too far. Its tricky because she has an activity outside of creche with this other child too so obviously creche teachers have no awareness of that.