AIBU to tell mum about her daughter’s texting and voice note behaviour?

[walker1211]

I am really struggling to decide what to do in a situation.

My DD has had a friend since early years, her mum I’ve also known quite well. She has always been a nice little girl, but did always have something to prove. In y7, she has completely turned into just a really unkind, attention seeking almost caricature of a mean girl. This is affected my own DD in that she likes to cause drama and other people involved in the drama and turn people against each other, which she did to my Db including sending her non stop messages one day with random allegations ‘like I heard you said x to this person, why did you do that’ etc etc why are you lying etc and despite my daughter asking her to stop messaging her, she just didn’t stop so we blocked her. I also found out, things she has sent to other people in the year, including voice messages, where she’s shouting f off to people and saying that she wants them to go away etc. just really unkind and targeted behiour. Also heard about really bad behaviour in the classroom and again almost silly levels of back chat.

her mum was fairly strict previously and I am sure she has no idea what’s going on and I actually feel concerned about this girls behaviour HOWEVER I feel really lost with senior school and what is normal and not especially with y7/8 girls. I feel a lot of advice at this stage seems to be not to get involved, but I feel really I should tell the mum the behaviour I am seeing? My daughter is also pretty well behaved and tells me everything which I know (from my own experience of being 12) is probably quite unusual!

is this normal levels of behaviour?

Dont get involved but encourage your daughter to move away to a new friendship group

This is so hard and I'd want to speak to the parent as well! My son had one instance of this at around age 14 so older which was apparently just a joke by a friend, unfortunately for the friend it got intercepted by me. My son asked me not to speak to this friend's dad or the school and actually ended up speaking to his friend who was mortified and that was the end of it. So it kind of worked itself out but not in the way I thought it would. What I'm trying to say is I think they do awful things not thinking about the repercussions. My friends son realised this could be serious and the idea other people knew made him stop.

I think the time to tell the mum has probably passed... When she sent the messages and voice notes that probably would have been the correct opportunity. You did the right thing in blocking her and I'd suggest your DD needs to keep well away.
She'll probably grow out of it. Year 7 and 8 is tricky for this and then it calms down.

And sorry I meant to add I was actually concerned for the other child that this was showing some mental health issues, as my son actually couldn't care less about what happened, just rolled his eyes.

Ive been through this. I didn't approach the parent as I knew they would only back their daughter. School did get involved mostly because my DD refused to go to school over it. There were other girls who the bullies targeted both in and out of school activities. It amazed me how these parents never checked the phones. Because it was all on there.

Anyway my DD blocked them. The friendship group split. Bully group told the other group not to speak to my DD or else they'd be kicked out of the friendship group. Luckily most of the girls stood up to the bully girls and walked away saying they would not be told who to be friends with. Bully group ended being a group of 3 girls alone and the others splintered off to their own group including my DD. One of the 3 apologised after about 4 months and has swapped groups as the other 2 turned on her. She's now back in the fold. It grates on me a bit but my DD managed it her way and is happier now. It was a horrible time.

I agree. Block and move on. I'm sure it's not the last of the friendship issues and I have a younger DD coming up to Y6 and she's going to be worse. I can feel it. I'm bracing myself now 🤣.

There's lots of good advice on this thread already, but essentially I would ask yourself honestly, what do you want to achieve by telling the mum? Your answer will tell you a lot about whether you should say something. If it's that you want the mum to intervene or you are feeling like you are helping her, then honestly, do not say anything. You can't change other people's behaviour so I would focus on helping your daughter protect herself and navigate the situation. It doesn't sound like this girl is actively bullying your daughter, so if your daughter has blocked her and seems happy to go to school and has other friends, I would step back and monitor the situation. If your dd starts getting moody, withdrawn or changes in some way then that might be a sign that she is being bullied or not coping. But that doesn't seem to be the case right now.

My daughter says her dd just tells her mum to shut up. So just not sure it’s really going to help speaking to her is it?

So the mother is fully aware of her behavior and tolerates it. No good will come from getting involved.

I wouldn’t tolerate anyone telling me to shut up, never mind tolerating it from a 12 year old. Children need boundaries to feel safe. She has no boundaries and is begging for them to be made but every behaviour is being tolerated.

This. Just ignore abd/or block

I'm saddened at the replies here

It takes a village to raise young people and I have in thr past been told about one of my own kids behaviour on WhatsApp and I was so pleased to be told.

It's protecting a child of this age to ensure adults around them know if they are behaving like this

my question is more about what level of behaviour would you have to see in someone else’s child to tell them [the other parent] about it.

The answer to this (speaking as a secondary DSL, and Mum of 4 inc 3 teen/young adults) is that parent-to-parent "advice" of this manner should only ever be a last resort, when there is no possible alternate.

If the child is at school - let school mediate. If the child is electively home educated, I'd suggest the school of the non-EHE child deals with it. If both children are EHE, police (if there is harm evidenced) or involved community groups might be good, but this might be a time when parents have to manage minor fall-outs.

Ill re-state what's been said multiple times: nothing positive will come from this kind of parent-to-parent advice. It would be different if you and the parent are close, good, respectful friends, so the advise is "friend-to-friend", as long as not framed as unsolicited advise (which a good, respectful friend wouldn't do anyway)

Tell the school and the mother!! This nasty little brat needs sorting out!

What was said in the voice notes?

Was it racist? Homophobic? Misogynistic? Other prejudice?

Was there a threat of violence?

Did this happen after the school had dealt with a previous incident between the same two and directly warned one child to stay away from the other?

my dd didn’t want any of the mitigation type things they offered

Its good that school offered your daughter support. Has she changed her mind about wanting more support? Its her right to decline it, her voice in this does matter. Even without support in place, school will still have logged this and be monitoring for any further issues between the two that are reported.

This is so common, more than you think. It would suprise you how many parents dont check their children's phones. When my DD first got hers I checked it daily- EOD and my god, so many kods calling each other all kinds of c*nt in group chats were insane. There was so way their parents were doing any monitoring.

Since you know the mum, I might say something to her along the lines of "I don't know if you still check DC's phone, but if not, you might want to take a look at her messaging/What'sApp/whatever she using." Not a complaint about how she's talking to your DC, just a suggestion to look.

But if things keep going and the school aren't really dealing I'd talk to her more directly as a step before going to police.

Because parents don't parent anymore. Everything is dumped on schools.

Isnt this why everything is so fucked up. Coz little shits dont get put in their place....or, if they are mentally.unstable, dont get early intervention. Iscthis why nobody isvever accountable for anything innthis country andvwhwnever anything goes wrong nobody ever wantscto take responsibility. Wet wet wet..

Why don’t you block the number? Just block it. And anyone else who behaves this way. Teach your daughter boundaries and safety. Block. Move on. No drama.

I have all boys, but I hear from friends with girls that (very sadly) this is par for the course - they said more year 8&9 but we do live in a very rural small community so teens are a little behind / more immature I would say generally than those in cities or towns etc.

We did have something vaguely similar with a ‘friend’ of our youngest - he sent nasty voice messages to our son basically because he is jealous as our son is clearly much more athletic and better at a sport that they both do (our kid isn’t a boaster and has never even seemed aware that he is so good, but has recently been selected to represent England). Anyway, this other boy sent really awful awful voice messages and then deleted them as soon as he could see they had been listened to. Luckily I was in the room and listened to the second one, and I chose to contact the parents (I thought I knew them well enough for them to want to know). It was a mistake. Even though I heard the voice notes myself, and we had screen shots of some texts, they refused to believe their little prince
would do anything like that, and now they don’t speak to us at all, and worse almost treat us as though we have done something wrong.

I would suggest supporting your daughter but not mentioning to the mum. Maybe let the school know so that there is a clear picture of what’s been happening in case it escalates.

As a mum of a DD14 I would want to know if my DD was behaving like that.

how would you support them to work out their own issues? Would you let parents know if you were aware of these messages? Would you investigate?

genuine question as I’m quite shocked this is a what secondary do… the approach in y6 would be direct and involving parents. In my experience anyway!

If you're now claiming she's about to be suspended then the school would have informed her parents.

Always let the parents know. That's the start point, because ultimately this is for the parents to deal with. But always better coming from school than from another parent.

From that, some parents just want to know so they can deal with their child as they see fit. Others might ask for help / advice on what to do. Others may actively seek support to deal with their child's needs. Then some will listen to what school have to say and ignore it.

My experience is that is changes completely in secondary school and most of the feedback seems to be just ‘intervention doesn’t help’ and ‘there are two sides’ etc but I think it leaves it very hard to see how bad behaviour particularly in girls is really addressed.

Yes honestly I agree. I have alway had checks on my daughters phones and thought most people would as well. Especially at 12. But it seems a large amount of this age group are completely free to use their phone how they like and when they like and you can easily see those who just don’t have the maturity or understanding of what’s acceptable or not, or are mean or rude to people etc. Another mum and I even had to intervene at one point as another girl was posting suicidal messages on her class what’s app group at 11pm at night. Again she is 12. Control your kids phone usage!!

If I was the other mum I would want to know
if this girl was standing outside your door saying these things you would definitely tell the mum.
because it is a phone issue people put up with a lot more unpleasant behaviour.
Don’t.