To think my friend should have spoken to me first?....

[MeetmeinParis]

I'll try to cut this down as I have a tendency to ramble!. I have a good friend whom I met through DD, she is very opinionated and extremely confident in herself and her opinions, she has a tendency to dominate conversations with her opinion and it is difficult to challenge her on these opinions. That said, she is generally lovely and we get on well, I haven't seen much of her in the last 6 months as we dealt with illness and subsequent death of a close relative, she didnt make a huge effort to support me through this as she is always busy, volunteers for every pta activity, local group etc etc so in short, I haven't been as close with her as we were.
She messaged me last night to say that there had been some issues with my DD messaging her DS and that it had got nasty, stated that there were various issues with the class snapchat group and some nastiness (kids are just turned 10). She told me she had her DS phone and had replied to my DD herself. I saw the message on my DD phone this am and it was very to the point, please stop this etc etc and not threatening in any way but I am really angry that she did this rather than message me weeks ago (she says this is how long it's been going on) telling me there was an issue so that we could sort it out before now. I have told her I'm not happy at how it was done and feel as we are friends I would have preferred the chance to deal with this myself. For reference, my DD had asked her DS to be her boyfriend, when he said no, she persisted and then at one point called him a weirdo then said she hated him, nasty and will be dealt with but silly kids stuff really. AIBU in thinking she should have come to me rather than messaging my 10 YO?.
When I challenged her she said, "believe me this is not how Bob (the boys Dad) wanted to deal with this, I found that a bit threatening?. I need perspective!.....

@NotALurker2

Am I the only one who thinks it's a shame children can't be children? It's really not a parent's business to monitor every interaction between peers. I hardly think this scenario, as described, warrants direct parental involvement. A ten year old girl had a crush on a ten year old boy, she expressed her interest, got rejected and called him a "weirdo." And for that his mommy has to intervene on his behalf?

Have you never heard of cyberbullying?

Take this as a life lesson OP. Children need age appropriate boundaries and supervision. That will apply for the next 8 years. You need to be checking on her SM and not allowing her to do anything you can’t supervise. Thank goodness the boys mum was keeping an eye on him and stepped in to put a stop to it.
This time you found out your DD was overstepping the mark before too much harm was done. In a few years time unsupervised internet access could have much more serious repercussions.

I asked for opinions on whether it was appropriate for a 40 year old to text a 10 year old when she could have spoken to me about it.
It was.
What would you prefer for your own child, were she upset over a messaging-spat? That it was shut down immediately, as it had already gone too far, or that she was given vague assurances about speaking to the other child's mum?

I have repeatedly explained her phone is policed.
It isn't. I suspect you have a different interpretation of 'policing' than most.
We all THINK we are better at security than we actually are.
You absolutely need to make some unpopular decisions for your girl here, & set up a system where she cannot send or receive any text, image, video or file without your knowledge.
At this point I'd be confiscating the phone until I'd learned how to clone it to one of my own devices - because she also needs to understand that you will see EVERYTHING.
And that you are not doing this because you are angry - altho' you are cross about how she behaved toward friend's son - but that you are doing it because you know the real world & its dangers, & she does not.

I have never had issues like this with her before and I'm horrified, she is a quiet child who does well at school, it's got out of hand.

Aaaaw OP, don't be horrifed.
Be glad this unfortunate episode has given you the heads-up, & an opportunity to ramp up security & watchfulness.
No need for upset, no need to fall out with your friend -

I don't really get this 'talk to the parent first' mentality. If I see a kid doing something wrong and hurting/upsetting my child, I'm stepping in and telling that child to stop. If you don't want other adults reprimanding your child, keep a closer eye on your kid so they don't have to.

DD has snapchat, I admit I dont know how to use it and I do police my DD phone however snapchat deletes so I cant see those
I'd have dealt with it before it got to this stage, had I been told about it
why not bring this to my attention immediately rather than let it get to this stage?
*
I didnt know it was a messaging platform, I thought it was just filters on photos*

I can see how THAT conversation would have gone considering your DD deletes her messages - and you didn't even know it was a messaging platform!
Despite your 'monitoring' you still never noticed or clicked what she was up to!
You would have defended your DD because there was no 'evidence'.
It's actually pretty irresponsible of YOU to allow your 10 year old to access and use something that YOU are ignorant of!

She did exactly the right thing - your DD knows exactly how to fool and play you.

Who signed up up for Snapchat in the first place? It might have a 12+ on the Apple store but I had to rig the age for my older children. They do understand the repercussions on SM.
The age thing is there for a reason as your DD has unfortunately proven

I'm afraid this is the digital equivalent of useless parents at softplay getting arsey when another parent has to step in and discipline their DC.

If you had been on the ball enough to parent your DC properly, she wouldn't have had to send the message at all.

She's done nothing more then held up a mirror to your own ineffectual parenting - its not her fault you don't like it (although to be fair, nobody enjoys being called out like this)

Take it on the chin, learn from it, and never again let your DC use anything that you don't understand at least as well as they do.

I think you need to direct your displeasure at your DD. You need to check her phone more often and have a good talk to her about what is and what isn't acceptable on social media. If it were my DD, I be taking her phone off her for a while too.

Yes, the other mum could have contacted you first - you can't do much about that now. You seem to be quite indignant that you have been wronged by this woman's actions when in fact it is her son that has been wronged. You should be the one who is apologising not her.

OP my 10yo DS was called 'mental' and 'demented' over a PS4 game by someone at school.

The school took this extremely seriously and dealt with it. I will never forget the look on DS's face when he told me what the bully had said. He was distraught. Thankfully he knows he can talk to me.

I mean this kindly, please educate your daughter on SM bullying.

What is really wrong about this is that two small children are messaging each other. You really should be protecting them better

I don’t understand the issue with the friend just replying to your DD and saying “stop”. If they were playing at her house and she saw your daughter being abusive, she would do the same. Her method worked. She was probably a bit irritated with you too, since your daughter was bullying her son and you were no where to be seen!

I would have absolutely no issue with how she felt with it. I'd imagine getting a message from the childs parent telling them to stop would of given her a kick up the bum to realise her behaviour was not acceptable. You said yourself she wasnt rude.

That's why 10 year olds shouldn't be on social media or have unsupervised phone access

I'm sorry but this is what happens when children have phones far too young. they are children so therefore can we really expect them to be mature about things on social media or on Snapchat or whatever they are using. my child is 5 years younger than a 10-year old and she's literally barely out of being a toddler so I can't really picture having a mature child in 5-years time that will have access to a phone and chat apps.

I don't think your friend has done anything massively wrong here,perhaps she could have spoken to you first about it but I suppose she was just trying to sort it out so her son didn't continue having issues. I think children have far too much freedom now. phones and having constant access to your peers at such a young age is not in my view a good idea.I mean come on you see it on Mumsnet how vicious people can be when they don't like somebody's opinion or somebody challenges their view. People can be very different on a keyboard to what they are in real life. nobody really knows the context your daughter meant her words in as it's literally just on a screen. I've often received messages from my mum and not been sure what she meant by it because it could be sarcastic or it could be genuine humour. my honest advice would be to stop your child using these things and encourage her to speak to friends properly and in person or through a house phone. that way they can't get themselves in a situation like this where their innocence has got them into trouble.

when I do the school run I see all these young 11-12 year olds on phones earplugs in not concentrating,they have really grown up hairstyles and really fancy looking makeup and I just think it's too much too young, I'm in my early 30s and and we were nothing like this, we were playing out and hanging out with her friends at 10 and any tormenting that happened stayed at the park or wherever. I'm not even sure that what your daughter has done is bad, I think it's actually just how children are at this age and she's just tormenting him because she was hurt at rejection. They have got to learn to manage these sorts of things. Also same for your friend, if she's not happy with her son's experience of being on a phone then she needs to also take the app or the phone away and let him be a child without being hassled in his own space.

YABU for allowing your daughter on an app that is not appropriate to her age. She’s too young as CLEARLY not able to understand the etiquette/implications involved in using it.

Delete the app and any others she has which are not appropriate to her age.

I'd assume your friend thought you were monitoring your 10yo use of SM. Just has she monitors hers.

You are focusing on your friend not telling you earlier (when you were accountable to keep an eye yourself!), as a way to avoid thinking about how badly you've fucked up by allowing your DD to use Snapchat with no oversight.

Sort it out OP, dont fixate on your friend. Take responsibility for parenting your child, teach her about bullying and relationships, educate her and hold her accountable to better behavior, and hope that your friendship survives.

I think the main issue is your 10yo having a mobile phone, unsupervised access to things like Snapchat, you having no knowledge of how things like Snapchat work etc. These things are not suitable for children so young. Plus they require supervision (I know you can't really supervise something that deletes itself, hence why it is highly unsuitable for a 10yo). You can't just plead ignorance and think it's all ok or someone else's fault.

Secondly, you need to talk to your DD about this, and about what is appropriate behaviour with regard to boyfriends/relationships/harrassment/etc. AND you need to take this seriously, not discount it as 'silly kids stuff'.

Thirdly, I too would be upset if a friend let this go on for weeks without telling me. But maybe she didn't realise it would continue/escalate, and reached a point where she told you. Maybe just be glad she didn't involve the school.

Your dd is using Snapchat unsupervised?
The only person you need to have a word with is yourself!

PS: "Snapchat has a minimum age requirement of 13 years old, and users who enter a date of birth under 13 can't set up an account."

Your daughter has behaved badly.

I've explained the snapchat will be deleted. Repeatedly. I've also explained why my eye was off the ball, some of the comments are helpful and I asked for opinions but some are downright nasty. MN will not delete this for me as requested do please, I get it, I'm a crap parent. I've taken comments on board and admitted I'm in the wrong, my teenage son put snapchat on her phone whilst I was dealing with the death of my mum, (literally, we were in the hospice with her and the kids were in the relatives room). I should have deleted it sooner or educated myself but I didnt.

Why the feck have they all got phones. Let them be kids

OP has she seen all the messages? They disappear on snapchat don't they, I'm old as well, older than you. If she hasn't seen them all she doesn't know who started the nasty stuff. My grandson had something similiar happen but not on snapchat, the other child selectively deleted his nasty posts so it looked like grandson was randomly being abusive. Problem was he was with me and I worked out what was going on and took screenshots which got sent to his parents when they predictably phoned his mum to complain. They soon changed their tune.

Could this have happened, in GSs case the other child was quite calculating, as an adult I could guess what was going on, goading to get a nasty reply and I guessed their post would disappear. A child wuldn't figure it out.

You seem more concerned about your friend 'betraying' you than your daughter being an abusive bully but crack on.
I will be deleting snap chat from her phone
LOL.

What on earth is a just turned 10 year old doing with a phone. Not to mention being part of a snapchat group. For goodness sake take the phone off her.