Was my daughter in the wrong ?

[Donury236]

So, teenage girls, aaargh. My head, honestly!!

My eldest has adhd with significant asd traits - this is very relevant as she has a very Very strong justice 'thing'.

If you significantly wrong her, or anyone she will let you know, and if its something that she sees as done ti purposefully hurt then shes will want nothing more to do with someone.

Today she was taken out of class by a teacher in rrlation to some goings on. She was told by the tr
eacher that she was a nasty girl, and evil bully and an embarassment...(thats verbatim btw...a 40yr old woman called a 16yr old.girl that).

Why? Well, eldest had a friend, S. S didnt have may friends anymore (relevant). eldest was really nice to S, they shared classes, sat next to each other for 1, I gave the kid lift a home with us after school on a friday.

1 day suddenly S just blanks eldest. Totally ignores her. No explanation.
Eldest is like, Ok whatever, gets on with classes, this had also.happened with a few other folk earlier that year.

It then turns out that S had been telling other kids eldest didnt like them/didnt want them in groups with them. Which is a load of bull, and explained why these people had suddenly not been speaking to her. This is what activated eldests cut them off decision. This is also apprently why S had such a non existent friend pool as this is her MO since primary.
S decided though, that when the seating was rearranged in a class to sit inbetween eldest and her best friend. So S sits there in silence, dorsnt engage either of them at all. Blanks them.
They are literally talking/working over her.

Eventually eldest had enough of it and BF took S seat - they did move her stuff off the place which I was not enamored with I wouldnt want someone touching her stuff either.
Eldest and BF were on snapchat in class (yes they shouldn't have been) messing about as it was a double and it was a brain break. They are neurospicy fools so post stupid face pics - and they also have a closed group that see these pics and stories (no one S is friends with - this is relevant!)

Fast forward to a day or so after, they get hauled in as apparently they were videoing S and sharing it with people on snapchat and S says she heard eldest say she wanted to smash her face into the desk, and calling her a bitch.

And, of course, you can't prove whats on snapchap, so they apparently have to believe S.
Eldest said she explained everything that happened. The teacher has said that S was open to having a discussion about eldest apogising for the video etc, and of course eldest said she was not interested in talking to S as A) there was no video so nothing ti apologise for b) it will achieve nothing other than S to accuse her of all sorts. I have said have the meeting, and when you apologise say your are sorry that she thinks she was videod, that she think a she should be allowed to lie, that she thinks false accusations are good things to make, ans sorry that she is under the impression she deserves an apology. But apparently that will get her into more trouble.

As eldest is also a prefect she is worried they could take that away from her. Also her BF didnt get taken out of class, which is why I know its a baseless vendetta from a kid that seems to thrice on being the victim at the centre of drama.

NgL, mama bear is pissed. I usually.let her navigate friendships herself as she is very mature about it. But we do seem to stumble when it comes to manipulative people as we cant think like them, and it gets us upset, so.ive found it hard to explain to her how to navigate that other than to leave well alone - which clearly does not work!! As here we are!

A have now decided its time I wade in, so awaiting a call back from the school for a good explanation of what they think gave them the right to say that to a kid, and how they concluded she was guilty, and ehy want i co tacted about this at thr start.

It is unreasonable of me to weigh in. Eldest is 16 and in 5th year, so legally she is the one with the enrollment/agreement with the school. But also...she is still a kid!

You sound like a teenager yourself. You need to grow up, dial down the drama and stop shielding your daughter from the consequences of her actions. And yes, I suppose it's possible the teacher used those words, but I seriously doubt it. Your dd probably embellished that conversation wildly in order to get her 'mama bear' onside.

It's all been said and I think you're (hopefully) getting the message, but;

1. Your daughter used her phone in school, against the rules.

1. Your daughter took a photo of someone in order to mock them and posted it to social media.

1. Your daughter touched someone's property without their consent.

1. Your daughter spoke across someone, which is incredibly rude.

We're the teachers words recorded? How do you know exactly what was said?

Put yourself in S's shoes, sounds like she has a lot going on, and has had for a few years. She's still a child. A bit of empathy and perhaps understanding what is going on with her wouldn't go amiss.

Don't use your daughter's neurodivergence as an excuse to allow bad behaviour. You're doing her a disservice as that shit won't fly when she's an adult.

Perhaps also a chat with the teacher to understand the situation, rather than "wading in" with half the facts.

I have an autistic child and my other has adhd. So I get the justice thing, however your child doesn’t get to be mean because of her conditions, and she has been mean here, you list at least 2 things she’s done which she shouldn’t have.
the teacher shouldn’t have spoken to her the way she did, but she has been displaying bullying behaviour.

Thank you for the summary :) I got bored and bogged down with OP's convoluted post!

I work with (challenging) teens. One thing they find nigh on impossible to do - when reprimanded by teachers - is to take responsibility for the actions and behaviour that got them there in the first place.
So I wouldn’t necessarily take your daughter’s word as the gospel truth.

Your daughter doesn’t sound completely innocent. It sounds like she’s in a bitchy group of girls who all talk about each other & cause drama. The fact you daughter admitted to being on Snapchat in class is to beg the question why. It’s suspicious behaviour. She’s already next to her bf I can completely believe she was videoing S. I would make that assumption & if she pleaded she didn’t I would suggest she take the lesson in life if you do things you’re not meant to be doing your vulnerable to accusations. S could have easily of just grassed them up for being on the phone. That alone would have seen them get in trouble if that was the intention. The fact she says a video was circulating is easily proven. They can ask the person who told S.

As for the teacher. If she did say those things I doubt they materialised out of thin air on one situation. I really wish more teachers would call out this behaviour.

shes a prefect & is concerned she’ll lose that role. Regardless of anything she should lose it & it’s her own fault. Classrooms aren’t social events. It doesn’t matter where you sit because if you’re not listening you’re doing the task that’s been asked. Getting your phone out & moving another child’s seat isn’t what I think a prefect should be doing. So despite everything she’s responsible for her own behaviour & reactions & she fell well short of the responsibility she was given. Life lessons are good

Typical teenage girls, handbags at dawn. I have no idea who did what to who or who said what to who or who is telling the truth, but it all sounds pretty normal bickering and squabbling between girls.

Do you know for certain what the teacher said to your DD? Have you heard the teachers side of events? I suspect they will be two different stories and the truth will be somewhere in between. If you want to wade in in support of your DD fair enough, but I would hear the teacher out first before going in all guns blazing.

Your daughter broke rules and was incredibly rude to a classmate. She is 16, she needs to learn to be civil with people even if they maybe ignored her one time.

She used her phone. The chances are that she did get S in photos or videos she posted, but she won’t ever admit to it as it can’t be proved. She’s been deliberately hostile to S and has another classmate joining her in this. This will come across like they are ganging up on one sole girl. Any consequences she faces for her own rule breaking are her own fault.

You’re too over involved. Supporting your daughter also looks like being honest with her when her behaviour is not okay.

Again if the teacher actually said that!
Am quite sure if the teacher or S used a similar stance of and said “well daughter of @Donury236 said “S you’re a fucking cowbag and we want you to fuck off out of this school and Miss everyone in class thinks you’re an ugly idiot who can’t teach” ?

Would you continue your stance of ‘well it was said you said it so it’s true’?

Im actually more focused on the Ops daughters shitty behaviour than whether the teacher said something or not though?

I seriously doubt teacher used that vocabulary.

NGL? Bless 🤣 The entire thing sounds like it’s written by a teen. Your daughter needs a better role model.

There’s alot of excuse making & almost applauding of her D characteristics which in truth don’t come across as particularly endearing to me. The mom appears to like the gossip the drama causes but will not have it negatively impacting her own child who by all accounts is victim of it & yet causes some of it.

there is lack of culpability. Like her daughter losing her prefect status will be some miscarriage of justice. Nope regardless of peripheral reasons she still broke the code of conduct I would expect a prefect adheres to.

"Evil" is too strong, but I think 'nasty' and 'bullying' were fair comment, and a 16 year old should be embarrassed at making unpleasant videos of her classmates, whatever the precise content.

They had enough of talking past this girl in a place that isn’t meanr for socialising I can’t get my head round the deafness of it all. I’m sure that girl in the middle of 2 friends loved that happening. The fact the entitlement her child has to dictate someone moves for her own preferences & this is legitimised by mom. Then to think that no bullying had taken place & they merely moved this child’s seat & non of it was done with any malice or intimidation after even acknowledging how vocal daughter is when she feels wronged she needs reigning in because some life lessons are going to be very hard for the daughter. At 16 it may already be to late

Sounds like your Dd and her bf were ganging up on and generally being nasty about S. they were deliberately excluding her and trying to make her feel that way.

so this strong sense of justice is it only for others? Or does it apply to herself also?

Oh totally agree @Blades2 it’s just that is what op and the dd are focusing on! Making out that the dd is a poor, beleaguered victim in this!

Regardless of your daughter’s friendships, personality and/or additional needs- your job as her Mother here is to sympathise that she’s having a hard time, but then to reinforce her understanding of social norms in respect of social behaviour and respect for authority.

I know some posters will come at me for that but I promise you, you will do her NO favours long term if you don’t. We have an epidemic of young adults atm who cannot hold down jobs in the real world because parents aren’t doing this.

I did vote YANBU because it’s very hard to see your child upset by another child’s actions or to feel bullied by them or by the teachers. You have to take your DC’s word for it that she’s telling you the truth. So if the teacher did say those appalling things then you’ve no option but to call the school.

I just hope you don’t find out that your DC is a liar.

Not 1 time...this girl was actively hanging about with DD at lunch. They sat together on the bus from 1 campus to another. Sat in the library together.

S was super friendly, whilst telling DD's other friends that DD was saying they couldn't hang about with them any more, only S was allowed to. So these other girls then blanked DD as they thought DD was talking crap about them.

Then when S decided to completely blank her (its repeated as she has not spoken a word to DD since just before she blanked her) she asked a few people if they knew what was wrong. They did not, but then one girl asked her if she has said that she didnt want to hang about with her any more, to which DD said no that wasn't true and she had in fact been wondering why they had been avoiding her. Then this girl revealed that S told her DD didn't want to be friends with her.
And it seems it was 3 or 4o other people that DD hung out with at lunch and break that were told the same thing. So its as if S was trying to make sure DD had no one to sit with at lunch when her best friends were at the other campus.

But yeah, My DD not wanting to speak to someone who did this to her is rude I guess.......................................

DD's BF did speak to this girl when needed for class work if needed.

A lot of the girls in their year have been at the receiving end of bitchy or devious behavior by S - which is why barely any speak to her. S hangs about with her younger sister and some S3's at lunch as she has alienated so many of her year.

They showed me the videos... no way to get S in them unless they were so obvious that they would have been seen by the teacher.

Your daughter’s behaviour would have caused intimidation if she intended to or not. If people gave their phones out around me taking pictures and videos then I would be paranoid I was in them. Especially being surrounded by people who dislike me & have made that perfectly clear. You’ve been shown some videos which I assume were hand picked from her. I think you have some pretty big rose tinted glasses. You’re outspoken don’t give a shit daughter who will not be wronged doesn’t marry up sitting next to her enemy & being completely nonchalant. She needs to grow up, learn boundaries & so do you.

You only have one side of the story. You would be a fool, neurospicy (what a stupid word) or not, to interfere.

I do agree sort of.
I am a big advocate of the believe that you DO NOT have to be friends with everyone.
That no one can force you to be friends with someone, but you have to be civil and that is it - you owe them nothing else.
That also helps take the emotion out of work scenarios' as you just focus on the tasks, not the emotional tag that someone else has put on it.
Also don't do anything to anyone that you wouldn't want done to yourself.

As for the respect for authority though...sorry hill I will die on is that respect is earned. There is a lot of going on regarding this particular teacher (numerous complaints about her lack of teaching (she sat on her phone for part of a class and ignored kids needing help), pandering to/excusing away the boys disruptive behavior, sexist remarks (told 1 girl that she should focus on getting a rich husband as she didn't have many prospects - that girls mum went nuclear about that comment!), letting the ex of a girl in her class sit 1 desk away from her, despite him having some police caution/order that he is to stay away from her as he was abusing her (This one is a bit mental they are even in the same class to be honest, but apparently down to the class scheduling).
A good few of her class mates have made complaints to the head of year about her and its being looked into.

Just because someone is a teacher they don't instantly get respect, but what they do deserve if that pupils don't disrupt classes and do the work that is needed and jsut ride it out. Unlike a job that you can leave if your boss isn't someone that deserves your respect (I have had a few of those sadle), kids cannot chose their teachers.

I would maybe believe that my kid was badly behaved if we ever had any report of this from any other teacher. Her parents evening it is like the sun shines out her butt. She is praised as helpful, kind, friendly, supportive of her classmates and hardworking when she focuses.
She wouldn't have gotten past the 1st stage of the prefect process if she had any concerns from any teacher regarding her behavior. It was like a 4 step interview process they had.
The worst that has been said is that she is easily distracted. When we had her parents evening it also wasn't this particular teacher we had, it was the other main one as 2 teachers share the class (Same pupils).

She had a pretty miserable S1&2 at that school where she was ganged up on by a lot of the girls as she was very alternative and didn't fit in very well to begin with (the teachers said that year the S1 intake was feral and blamed the pandemic).

She and her current Best Friend actually came to blows as BF was just going at her constantly over any little difference, and that has been the only incident in her 4+ years there.
So she fully understands what it is like to be bullied, but is also why she doesn't give many second chances to people who purposefully try to hurt her, and she is even more critical of people being cruel who have experienced it as they should know what it is like.

And I get that I do seem very mama bear...but as I have said...she hasn't had any issues where she has been accused of bullying in the whole time she has been there. At primary school we did, but that turned out that what was seen was the reaction to her being set upon (that was a whole thing and I got an apology from the school!).

I think it's right to support your child but be wary of getting too involved. When my eldest was about 8/9 he told me a kid at school had tried to throttle him in the school toilets, another friend was apparently a witness to this. I complained to the school as I was furious and after an 'investigation', my child admitted he had embellished what happened greatly and the fallout from this was horrific. My son was known as 'the liar' and the mum of the kid who allegedly throttled him somehow got hold of my phone number and rang me constantly for days, trying to threaten me. It was a huge mess and I regretted it for years. Funnily enough I spoke to my son recently (he's 20 now) and he admitted that it actually DID happen as he'd initially described but he'd been pressured to deny it in school at the time. So I'd keep a level head and try not to get too heated about it or overinvolved.

They do instantly get respect. You can disrespect the person but the role they have must be respected. You can complain & whistleblow but to be disruptive in the class which is what your daughter was doing is a disrespect to every other child in there. Your daughter is the centre of your world not everyone else’s. To play around in class is to impact everyone there especially the ones who want to learn. Your daughter messing around shows lack of empathy. Again something I think is ridiculously immature for her age. If there are worries about teaching standards/behaviour doesn’t mean your daughter behaviour is then acceptable. There are procedures to follow. Messing around in class breaking what I suspect is a school rule isn’t justified. Your daughter has had a spat with another girl which is seen up and down all schools in the country. There is nothing unique about it, if we all let our kids behave this way the state of education would be worse than it is now