Thinking DD is being really nasty here? or am I over reacting?

[Enchilada81]

DD and her friend went to the same primary school for years but then different secondary schools. They have kept in touch though via texting and facebook and occasionally go to each others houses.

Anyway they're in year 8 now so have been in secondary school for around 2 and a half years.

Last week, this girl came around to our house for tea. They had fun, played on the wii and it was a pleasure having her.

DD is supposed to be asking her to stay overnight in a couple of weeks (as DD has stayed at her house overnight a few times).

Anyway, I've just been on facebook to see DD and her mates from school ripping the piss out of this girl saying she's a lesbian and "it's always been obvious" etc. It was in response to one of those quiz things but the worst bit about it is it will actually be published on the girls own fb wall.

There's about 3 of them, including DD laughing and jeering about the poor girl. DD at one point says "aww i'm only jking chaz" but then a bit further down says "do u really think she could b a lezza? lol"

At the end of it, one of the girls says "she will b able to c all this lol"



I think its awful. DD will no doubt say it was just a joke and "chav" will know that but I think its really bitchy. I can't imagine her wanting to come here to sleep over when she reads all that either.

Am I over-reacting? is this just what kids are like now?

[Jamieandhismagictorch]

that should have been "not being bullied", not "bot being bullied"

[gonnabehappy]

Your daughter is NOT a bitch. I am afraid to say this is utterly unacceptable but horrifyingly normal behaviour. You and your daughter are so lucky. I would not ban from facebook or any other social medium. I would be furious and take this opportunity to make her think about how it feels to see something like that in writing and be able to read it again and again.

Hopefully she will suggest deleting it and making amends.

If you know the mum I would also ring her - to warn her that her daughter might be unhappy and explain why. Obviously also explain what you have done in order to try and help and ask the mother to let you know quietly if there is anything else you can do to help for example asking school to speak to class.

I would hope that your daughter and her friend will sort themselves out - I find it hard to believe from your posts that she is anything other than a basically decent kid who has done a crap thing, perhaps as a result of peer pressure, certainly utterly careless and horrid, but I do think she will be mortified when she thinks about it properly. Of course, if she is bolshie to you and does not seem to empathize with the erstwhile friend then I would be removing privileges like the use of computer etc like no one's business!

Good luck - and let us know what works. I reckon ,most of us have either been where you are or will be.

PS I also agree that 'gay' and 'lesbian' etc should be removed form teens vocab as an insult. It drives me nuts. Might be worth mentioning this too if not overloaded.

[GetOrfMoiLand]

Enchilada there are some really good bits of advice on this thread. I thik it's really good that you are looking at this seriously. It's a shame that your husband isn't - perhaps show him (and your dd) this thread.

I wouldn't say that Enchilda's dd is a bitch or a nasty piece of work. From what I can see girls are idiots at this age, and what sense they have goes out of the window for a time. When dd was being bullied her year head said that years 8 and 9 at school are notoriously when kids start behaving like this, a real pack mentality and immaturity is prevalent. It calms right down usually in years 10 and 11.

So as angry as I am with dd's bullies - I think that they were bloody nasty idiots. I am actually angrier with the school who said all the right things but in practicality just pussy footed round teh whole issue in a nicey nicey way, and didn't actually do anything to stop the issue.

The new school is a different kettle of fish - I suppose it is because it is a 'rough' school it is a lot better disciplined, there is a zero tolerance for any of this kind of crap and it is enforced.

Yes I totally agree that calling someone a lesbian is out of order in this day and age. One of the reasons that dd was bullied (there was a thread about this at the time) was that we have some lesbian family members, dd spoke about them in some citizenship lessons saying that her aunty was gay etc, from then on she was viewed as some kind of lesbo poison. Ridiculous levels of homophobia. I ptu it down to teh fact that the school'd catchment area was a village, therefore had a load of narrow minded kids, however I found out that there were a cvouple of out and proud sixth formers who were not bullied. Again suppose you could just put it down to stupid 13 year old behaviour.

[GetOrfMoiLand]

I meant calling someone as an insult.

Also, agree with others that removing laptop and/or facebook privileges for a time is a good idea. In my experiemce this is the best teenager punishment. They bloody hate it.

[MilaMae]

God that's awful I'd be absolutely horrified if my dd did that . I think you need to lead by example. She needs an absolute rolicking,facebook down the whole works. If that means she gets grief so what,you just can't go along with pack mentality somebody has to take a stand. You then need some quiet time where you talk about the whole thing.

One day she'll thank you for it.

I remember coming home and bragging about how everybody in my class was calling the new boy "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" he was black. I was 6, it was the 70s and a forces school in a very white area but still very wrong.

My mother was totally horrified,marched into the school,threatened to wash my mouth out with soap, the full works. She was the only one and I was mortified. It worked though. I felt awful the next day thinking about what upset I must have caused.I just didn't realise at the time and had gone along with everybody else. To this day I really respect my mother for doing it and I'm quite proud of her actually. I also think it helped to shape my actions later making me often stand up for the one being bullied at school as a teenager.

Sooooo dreading when my lot are teenagers.

[Oblomov]

steelfairy, i am very upfront. i never say anything that i haven't or wouldn't, given half a chance, say to their face. never have. I am totally un-two-faced.
Just the way I am.

[PandaEis]

well done OP for being proactive against this kind of behaviour

i was bullied VERY badly in primary school and my parents knew but did nothing about it my reasons for being bullied were different to the OPs but i would hazard a guess that the girl who is being bullied feels just as bad as i did back then

i would agree with the suggestions of taking away the internet priviledges (if she cant behave like a mature adult she shouldnt have use of an "adult" priviledge) delete her FB account. check any other 'communication' means she uses like email/MSN as she may be taking advantage of any method she and her friends have got. take away her mobile phone and ground her for at least a month. get the other girls' parents involved and show them that you are taking this very seriously. make her apologise to the girl she was mean to. show her that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable and hopefully if she is inately a good girl she will try to be nicer in future.

this is exactly what i would do if my DD were to turn out a bully and what i would expect from the other parents if she were bullied!

[KimiGaveUpStarbucks4Lent]

fiveisanawfullybignumber no luck with getting copies of scan photos, one cash converters said person matching description had brought in a laptop on Saturday but they would not buy it as it was clearly stolen so why not call the police? [aaarrrggghhhh]

Sorry for hijack, as you were

[fiveisanawfullybignumber]

Sorry to hear that Kimi. Did they not have CCTV records?

[mrsruffallo]

Bit young for facebook aren't they?
They are bullies

[CheerfulYank]

YANBU, Enchilada, and I'm proud of you for not buying into "my child is perfect and would never" crap that floats around so much these days. Good on ya!

[mrsruffallo]

So, no you are not overreacting. I don't think it's excusable to say 'oh,that's kids today'.
I am not bringing my children up to be like this and neither is enchilada by the sound of it

[birdworthington]

No yanbu. How nasty of her and her friends. This is bullying and she should be punished. I would also make the other parents aware of what their darlings are doing.

It may not seem like much but if you don't sort it now it will get really bad. I have to deal with girls who are too frightened to go to school because of facebook and msn.

[KimiGaveUpStarbucks4Lent]

Five, he is CCVT taking it, and the cash converters said they will pass their CCTV on to the police too.

[cocolepew]

Saying oh girls have always did this, doesn't make it right. It was bullying then and it's bullying now.

[oldenglishspangles]

I dont think you are overreacting. Ban face book, mobile phones etc. contact the other girls parents too and her friend that is being bullied. I feel strongly about bullying, your daughter has made a very poor choice. This is an opportunity for your dd to learn that her actions have dramatic consequences. Hopefully by nipping this behaviour in the bud you can ensure that if this situation arises again with any other child your dd has the strength of character to do the right thing rather than join ineven 'just for fun'.

Kimi - I am sorry for your dd but that is just plain nasty.

[fiveisanawfullybignumber]

Hopefully good news Kimi! CID helped me get back DS1's car seat many years ago, was for sale on a market stall after car had been stolen. I knew it was DS's as a trim was missing, had it in the change bag.
Sorry for the hijack.

[mrsbean78]

maryz, I was really quite badly bullied at senior school so I appreciate the torment your child has gone through

BUT

as I said elsewhere on a thread today, it may be [the bullies] fault, but it's [your daughter's] problem. Enchilada has said she is going to punish her daughter and that is the right thing to do, so your sense of outrage is misplaced here. In these types of bullying situations, it is not as simple as reprimanding or punishing the bullies: the child who is being bullied is usually making it worse by their own reaction and behaviour too. It's NOT their fault but they do need to learn skills to enable them to deal with the situation, too. Parents of both the bullied and bullying child can intervene and can do a great deal to help, but for the dynamic to change 'on the ground', both sets of kids need support to change their behaviouralso. Enchilada is simply going to do the best she can, play out her role.. but hers is not the only part to play.

I say this as someone who was that girl who cried herself to sleep and threw up on the way to school in the morning. I didn't know how to laugh things off or ignore. I also say it as someone who works with kids with communication issues at both primary and secondary levels who are frequently bullied (and that I see walk into these situations time and time again).

I don't have much sympathy or empathy for many bullies, so this is not about the morality so much as the reality of the schoolground dynamic. Parents can't solve these situations for their kids, they can only guide - by punishing/admonishing/pointing out a different way to the bullies or, in the case of the bullied child, working hard to ensure they don't give in passively to the situation. There are bullies at work too, and online and in social groups and boards of governors and just about every walk of life.

It's all very well to jump on a high horse and be outraged with a parent who is honest enough to admit that her child is being unpleasant, but it won't change the fact that every child needs to learn to navigate the social jungle. There are many shades of grey here and Enchilada, like all of us as parents, is just trying to work out the best way forward.

[mrsbean78]

I'm interested in your choice of words here.

This is not about blame. It is not even about your daughter's personal qualities. It is about the reality that learning to deal with nasty and bullying people is a lifelong social lesson.

To try to illustrate, I had a boss who was a terrible bully. She was one of the indiscriminate bullying types: she would (and did) turned on different members of our staff on a whim. I don't think anyone escaped entirely. She lied, she was unfair, she set people up against eachother..

The people she bullied ranged from timid, shy types to extremely assertive types. However, in the dynamic of that workplace, she had tremendous power because our union is weak and at the time it was very difficult to get jobs in our sector. When it was my 'turn' in the spotlight, I tried to involve the union and it caused nothing but stress and I ultimately 'lost' the battle I was engaging in.

Given that she caused the same problems to a variety of different people, it wa clearly more about her than it is about the people she is bullying. However, she was never going to change. I couldn't, at the time, leave my job. I didn't want to. And so the only alternative was to learn to cope with it, get support and sympathy from others in the same situation, and challenge her as best I could when it was important to me to do so (but otherwise try and fly under her radar so to speak).

I left when I wanted to, to go to a better job. By the time I left, I had learned to laugh at her silly power battles. However, I was the one who changed.. not her.

It was her fault, but it was MY problem.. and I was the only one who could change the situation.

It is no different for adolescents. You can't expect other people's parents to solve he situation. They can do what they can, much as my union did, but ultimately, your daughter - like all people in these situations across the lifespan - has to find a path out of the situation that is suitable for her, keeps her safe and doesn't compromise her integrity.

The exception I would make is where a bully poses a physical threat or where it is affecting the mental health of the child who is being bullied to the extent it poses a serious threat. If I had tried my child in counselling to help them problem solve it and they were finding it hard, at that point I would remove my child from the school, in much the same way if it was that bad for me at work, I would leave the job.

[mrsbean78]

By the way, it sounds like your daughter has coped very well and learned a lot of life lessons I wish I had learned as well at her age. And the bully has moved on.. so your daughter has gained all this social understanding and the bully hasn't. She's won the war with dignity and maturity with adult support vs as a result of direct adult intervention.

[KimiGaveUpStarbucks4Lent]

Five (sorry for hijack) my sister called to say that the low life that stole her laptop has been picked up, seems he is very well known to the police.
He does not have it and as yet has not said what he has done with it but it is a start