To feel disturbed that DD (4) received this through the door?

[Greenginghamdress]

I got home tonight to find my partner with something to show me. He said " I didn't want to tell you this at work but two little girls put this through the letterbox for DD". (She is 4). It is a nice looking card with DDs name on, but with a nasty note inside, signed from a name of a little girl who lives round the corner.

We have a google doorbell and can see two girls dropped it through this afternoon. The 2 girls are from our estate, aged 8 and 4. The girls are good friends with each other but lately the younger one has been playing with DD. She even came to our house last week to play briefly! When they were playing I heard little girl say 'so you known DDs name I don't want to be friends anymore' . DD didn't seem bothered and later on they seemed fine.

The handwriting is good, I don't think the 4 year old has done this.

We haven't told or shown DD on anyone else.

What to do about it? I do not know the mums well. It seems very nasty and can't believe this sort if thing happens so young now!
Tell me if I over reacting. What would you do?

Maybe the 4 year old is nearly 5 and the 8 year old just turned 8. There's not a chance my DD would have been 'tween' like when she was 8. And besides, it's an invented time of life - some 8 year olds are more like 6 year olds, some more like 10 year olds. Kids develop differently and if there's nobody of her own age, maybe the 8 yo is fine with the 4 yo. It really isn't that weird

You cannot deal with this over WhatsApp you need to speak to the parents face to face , also do not tackle the 8 yo alone as she will likely just go home and make up a pack of lies about you hitting her / being nasty . I also wouldn’t leave it for a few days , this should have been dealt with the minute it came through the door .

My nearly-8 year old and just turned 5 year old are super close. They have loads in common (mainly barbies) and play together brilliantly (they also fight like cat and dog at times, but that’s sisters for you).

Also, when nearly-8 has pals over they are so kind to just-turned-5, and they do include her in their games.

i don’t think the age difference is strange or sinister.

Also nearly-8 is in no way a “tween”. She is a child.

I would say it's typical behaviour for an 8 year old, kids can be mean. I would be straight over to her parents house and showing them before it leads to more bullying, I wouldn't talk to the girl herself. I'd also send the 4 year old's mum a whatsapp message so she knows the kind of person her child is hanging around with and what she's getting up to.

Does it really matter whether an 8 year old is a tween or not?

This is a child, who is old enough to know what bullying is and why it’s not ok, who is sending nasty notes to a younger child in her street and encouraging other children to avoid her.

Classifications and semantics are neither here nor there. Her parents need to know about it. The other child’s parents need to know too. And the OP’s child needs to be protected from it. All calmly and matter if factly.

My 4YO has older cousins and a couple of my friend's kids are a similar (8-10) age and they play brilliantly with her kiddie games like hide and seek and 'dolls'. I think they're under such pressure at this pre-teen age to be too cool for school and don't feel able to play like this with their peers but haven't really grown out of it. Younger kids can sometimes give them the 'permission' they need to play this way. I don't think that these kids playing together is sinister but I do think an 8YO basically babysitting a 4YO and goading them to act like a 'mean girl' is wrong and I'd be putting an end to it if it was my 4YO

@Greenginghamdress
That is very disturbed, unpleasant crabbed handwriting.
The message it conveys is cruel.
What a nasty little madam that 8 yr old is.

Keep well away from that toxic family.

Overreaction of the day right here

No, in terms of this story the tween classification is not important. It does however add to this general narrative that kids of this age should be/act older than they are.

Some of the girls in my elder girls class are very grown up for 8. Wearing make up to parties, roaming the streets etc. The trend in the shops for cropped T-shirts and hoodies etc for that age group. that sort of thing.

what’s the hurry to make them into mini teens? Why can’t we just let them be children?

what did the parent/s say?

Not nice at all.

I would be straight to patents door

The irony of a grown adult who thinks it's reasonable to write an 8 year old child off as a wrongun based on their handwriting describing anyone else as "toxic".

I’d go round to parents house and discuss calmly (take the evidence incase they question you) That’s not on! Needs to be addressed and nipped in the bud asap. Good luck!

Hardly.
A disturbed 8 yr old playing with a much younger child, Older child’s mother “Wears pyjamas all day “and 4 yr children allowed to roam without adult supervision?
OP says she doesn’t want to sound “ Judgmental”, but many parents would be alarmed at this, and if a child is cruel, often the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Not a shining example of responsible parenting.

I wonder if you should let it go this time, as no telling how things might escalate, once you confront the parent/s. It may just be a one off, especially if you keep your DD away from them, at least in the short term, as it may've been fueled by jealousy from the 8 y/o, who may see your DD as a threat to her friendship with 4yo, BUT if something else happens, or it escalates, do then speak to the parents, as will have happened more than once.

You forgot the crabbed handwriting. Definitely a sign of psychopathic tendencies or worse in someone who's been writing for 3 of their 8 whole years!

@oakleaffy

How is she disturbed?

You're aware children do shit like this all the time right?

next thing you'll be feeling her head for psychopathic bumps (or horns). It looks like the handwriting of an 8 year old who hasn't yet grasped cursive script

I'm not sure about that writing (credentials: i have an 8 year old DC and 3 older DCs, and spent 8 years as a TA at primary).

Anyway - it's just a hunch it's not the 8 year old's.

So, just to echo pps, don't talk to either of the kids.

Go to mother of 4 year old first. See what she says.
Then go to mother of 8 year old.

Be fully prepared for the mother of the 8 year old to say that's not her daughters writing.
Or bat you away with something else.

Either way, do your bit by telling 4 year old mum, and keep your DD away from now on.

That's how my ex's daughter used to write when she was around 8. If I remember rightly I was around 8 when we started learning to do joined up writing and write with pen's.

I wouldn't say to either mum whose writing I thought it was, it would be best to say that your ring doorbell showed that the two girls brought it round and you wondered why they had done it.

Oh def they're learning joined up at around 8. Earlier in some schools.

It doesn't matter and I wouldn't swear it or anything, there's just something a bit ... odd about it. Like lazy, quick shapes in places (as opposed to careless or inexperienced). As if the person writes often and that's their usual rushed U and Y, for example. More like a bad habit bad shape than a child's bad shape.

Anyway - no i wouldn't get into any convo. about who's writing it is OP. I'm jst thinking out loud.

She wasn't being dramatic. Bursting out with 'I hate you' is by no means something that is totally unusual in a child; nor is even writing it out in a note, as the PP above confessed to doing when her friend moved away. To rationalize the difference between these two situations, whether consciously or otherwise that poster probably felt some resentment that her friend had 'left' her, therefore wrote it out in a typically childish manner. Kids are not good at articulating their emotions, and they tend to manifest in these sorts of ways. Luckily the parents sensibly nipped it in the bud, and that PP is unlikely to have grown up into a psychopath.

The scenario the OP describes is different. The likely author is the 8-year old, as confirmed by her appearance on CCTV, and her behaviour is disturbing on every level: from the procuring of the sort of pretty card which typically contains a positive message (where from?) - but in this case delivers entirely the opposite - to the deliberate setting up of the situation so the younger child would get the blame. This level of calculated manipulation is sophisticated to the point that I also might be inclined to suspect an adult, were the message not so childish and the messengers clearly revealed on the footage.

If this (the 8-YO) were my child, I'd want to know what on earth was going on with her so I could get to the bottom of it, address whatever was driving the behaviour, and put a stop to it. Were I the mother of the 4-year old, I'd nix the friendship entirely as such a dynamic is not healthy and could lead to all manner of trouble for that child. In either case, I would want to know.

Seeing the disturbing connotations of this sort of thing is not melodramatic. It's best to deal with these things as early as possible rather than let things fester and potentially develop into something much more serious later on.

Kids do some really stupid things and it doesn’t make them “dangerous” or “sinister”. They usually don’t understand the feelings of others too well at this age. It’s still a really horrible thing to do and if it was my 8 year old, I’d want to know and she wouldn’t be playing out for a while.