Being ignored

[Jennybeans401]

My middle dc is in a year 5 class with only a few girls. Dd approaches the group at break and lunch, the Queen bee ignores dd and walks away with the other girls following behind.

Dd says it hurts her feelings but she endured worse at a previous school and says she tries tho play with the smaller children instead.

AIBU to think it's still mean behaviour? Or is this just the way it is with girls of this age?

That must be so painful for her, and for you to know it’s happening.
It’s a form of bullying so I’d have a word with the school. Perhaps the duty playground manager/staff could keep a watch over her and be helpful to her?
I hope this gets resolved.
My daughter was bullied at secondary school but the school sorted it out, the girls in question wrote us a letter of apology and from then on all was well.

I have a friend with a dd the same age and she is at a different school going through similar things. It was worse at the old school but it seems to be the way the 'clique' behave

I do think it's mean though and a way of excluding someone

I think it's hard if it's a small school. Is there another year 5 class ? Do they have any lunchtime clubs? I would definitely go in and have a word with the teacher. Being left out at school is horrible.

It is mean and it is a form of bullying. Talk to her teacher.

There's only one year 5, there are a lot of boys and not many girls. It's been happening a while, I spoke to the teacher about it after Xmas and she had a word with the girls but it hasn't had much effect.

There aren't any lunch clubs, it's a small school and not much on at lunchtime.

There's so much a school/teacher can do. Go back to teacher, read the school's anti bullying policy.

It’s called relational aggression and is definitely a form of bullying. Books we found helpful - The Friendship Maze by Tanith Carey, No More Mean Girls by Katie Hurley and Bully Proof Kids by Stella O Malley. We also found the teacher didn’t help but the school did put things into place once we had escalated it to the head. Sorry to hear your daughter is going through this.

We moved ds in year 5 from a v small school (12 dc in a year - only about 5 boys) when 1 boy took against him and sought to exclude him - even online his friends would be playing and when this lad joined ds was kicked out - his friends told him this lad did not want him playing.

We had also moved house a couple of years before so his new school was actually closer than the old one anyway.

He moved to a bigger school, made friends and moved to high-school with a new friend set .

I was glad it was year 5 as it gave him time to find his feet. It was not bad doing a move then as when he moved into high-school I think he was much better prepared for that.

Does she do activities/ clubs outside of school? If not then you should try to get her into one so she can make friends/ be around other children and not be bullied.

Move school

@Jennybeans401 having read your other posts I seem to remember you had moved schools but had very little choice in your area.

It is relational aggression and it happens all over (my own dd has experienced this). I think it can be hard to stamp out, sometimes if there are so few children to play with it's harder to find other people to 'gel' with. It may be that the girls have little in common with your dd. However, the idea of ignoring someone or excluding them is nasty and the teacher should be able to help.

Are there any bigger schools if you were prepared to travel further afield? It could be brilliant for your dd to be in a much bigger class with more friendship choices.

We have moved from another small school where the bullying was vicious and went unresolved for years. Our problem is that we are in a rural area with small church schools on our doorstep.

There are larger schools a bit further away but they were massively oversubscribed when we looked to move schools. I spoke to the Heads about appealing for a place but they were so far over their quota that they said there'd be no point.

The current school has a poor ofsted rating (inadequate) and dd has struggled academically there (learning is a bit disorganised). The social side of it ghough is what concerns me, I don't want to see her go downhill like she did at the other school.

I should also say that the current school is the only school in the area with places.

I think you need to go in to the school. My DD had this in Y5 and teacher waa crap basically saying she couldn't force the girls to play with DD. Considering my DD was bullied all through Y4 I firmly told her I wasn't putting her through another year of bullying.
I went to SLT and said I would keep escalating it until something was done. They began encouraging kids to play together and putting them in pairs for class work. They also began a lunch time club.
It wasn't perfect but better.

They have a point though. You can't make people want to be your friend and it gives a child unrealistic expectations of what the grown up world is like if you allow them to believe all mummy has to do is tell teacher and they'll magically be her friends. Yes it's a subtle form of bullying and damages self esteem, but you really can't force children who just don't want to play with you to play with you - that would also be a form of bullying surely?

I think what DD could take from the experience is that the girls she is invested so much in wanting to be friends with are not the right ones for her, but others could be. There must surely be other girls in the school apart from this small clicky group that she could integrate with. In new terms new children will also come into the mix. Of course it will hurt her feelings but what could the long term outcome be if she persists with these girls? Picking on her as an outsider in the group? Routinely getting her in trouble because they don't really want to be friends?

I'm just not sure it is wise to push for these particular girls to allow her into their circle if they are already being so hurtful?

I think it's both a bit mean, but also normal behaviour. It probably would meet today's criteria for bullying.

I'm probably going against the grain here but I can remember kids I really didn't want to play with as well as kids I didn't get much out of the interaction but I was prepared to be kind/decent. I still feel the same with adults whether it's work colleagues or guests at a party. I don't think a person (child/adult) should be forced to be friends with someone.
Could it be that 'mean girl' isn't so mean as such...she just doesn't want to be her friend and she's a nuisance. She's not teasing or going out her way to hurt her is she. Sounds like she's just saying go away. The other girls are a bit more tolerant, but let's be fair, none of them are chosing to be her friend either.
As a child, the kids that I didn't want to be friends with were occasinally agressive/entitled/bossy/a cheat....but generally they were whiney, clingy, timid or cried a lot.
I'm not implying your daughter has something 'wrong' with her, but do you recognise any of those traits. Is there anything you could help her with to be more 'desirable', so work on her self esteem or resilience, or perhaps not lie.
I don't know what the answer is as it doesn't sound as if Queen bee is really the problem. Would she consider playing with the boys? If there's more of them there might be one or 2 she might form friendships with. If there's a child that you suggest and she says no it would be interesting to know why SHE wouldn't take to someone.

I think the teacher should have a word with them and ask the girls how they would feel if they were the one being left out.

No offence intended, but 'only school with places' does make it sound like a bit of a 'sink' school, and you get what you get. Pretty much the same as my area, to be fair.

I went to a Roman Catholic school, out in the suburbs, with a good reputation for grades, but never knew how to deal with that 'relational aggression', and it impacted on my life after school, I think. I told myself that if I had kids, I'd be a hands on parent, and challenge the teachers if there was even a hint of bullying, but it's like that Andrew Gold song, the pattern just repeats. I guess I told myself that I'd be 'interfering', and just make matters worse, as I'm sure other parents did. Probably a good guess, considering how much aggro I picked up just for querying the use of the grass PE area to park cars (car sharing was not encouraged amongst teachers, because 'someone might have to leave early in an emergency').

But looking back, I think how kids relate to each other is a better grounding for life than grades, even if it smacks of 'all shall have prizes'. Probably also a bigger challenge, for educating children, beset with 'growing pains', in a multi-racial society, but if you can crack that...

I trail off because I'm not sure how to do so, but if anyone knows of a school that does manage it?

@JoeKilker they had a bad ofsted so it has made the school less desirable, having said that there are so many things that are better than the 'outstanding' school dd previously attended and where bullying thrived daily

I felt that dd was better somewhere that cared more for the person, at first things went well but the problem seems to be a lack of girls and v small school.

I'm sorry to hear how you experienced relational aggression, I can't understand why children behave like this and it's very upsetting.

The school lacks resources and I think this also impacts on behaviour. A coding and touch typing lesson was 1 computer shared between 4 children at dds school.

@JudgeRudy dd is a normal, fun, kind girl. She's not got social media so jot sure if that's a factor too.