Judging children on their family

[dontstopthat]

My step daughter is now a young adult but during secondary school was severely bullied (physically, verbally and emotionally), by one girl in particular and then also the rest of her friendship group. Really unforgivable cruel, sadistic stuff.

We didn’t have any direct contact with the bullies parents but I know her mother caused multiple scenes at the school, defending her dd anytime she was punished for her behaviour.
And from what I was told by either other parents or kids, gave the impression the whole family were unpleasant.

Dd(11) is now at a different secondary in the same area and has lots of friends and doing well. I’ve now realised that one of the girls she is starting to become friendly with is the younger sister of the girl who bullied DSD. From dd this girl seems to regularly get in minor trouble but nothing extreme.

My immediate reaction which I do feel slightly guilty for is not wanting dd to have anything to do with this girl and wanting to tell her who her friends sister is. I definitely wouldn’t want dd going round this girls house where I believe the sister still lives.

Is that unreasonable? How do I manage this situation?

Yanbu at all

I was bullied and my mum and step dad brought the bully into my home and encouraged a friendship with my younger brother and her younger brother. Among other cruel stuff, it was nasty and i felt unsafe.

No advice on how you'd handle it without problems with the mother for the entirety of secondary school though 😔 xx

Seems like a teaching opportunity.

"DD Jenny is Anne's sister. Anne was terrible to your sister and I don't want you around her, so you can't go to her house. But Jennie is her own person and as long as she is nice to you, we don't judge people by other's behavior."

What sadistic stuff were they doing?

I can understand your initial reaction, mine would probably be the same but only initially. My brother could be very nasty growing up, so was my best friends older sister. I also had cousins who were vile, one a well known and feared bully. My friend and I were nothing like them, we were kind to everyone, behaved well at school and and are doing well as adults, so from my experience, children aren't always like their siblings and/or parents.

That sounds like a fair idea, Thankyou. I was worried about putting the info on dd and her feeling like she was forced to chose between her sister and friend

How silly to feel guilty of this? This child was vile, why would you want your child interacting with any of them? They are both raised by the same woman? How awful for your SD to know that they are friends and possibly doing play dates etc. it’s completely fine to speak to your dd and tell her that you don’t want her to be too friendly with her. Also ‘regularly minor trouble’ kids are the ones I discourage my own dc from. Plenty of kids don’t get into trouble regularly.

I think I was feeling guilty because I know from experience being raised by the same women doesn’t mean she is anything like her sister or mum but it’s not worth taking the risk and not fair on DSD either