7 year old girls falling out...any advice?

[toadstool]

I think it's normal to bicker and fall out/make up daily at this age, but DD1 has just started having serious problems with a firned at school. They are quite similar. It escalated when DD1 (whose impulse control really is not the best) hit her during an argument. Since then, I have witnessed two altercations [other girl steadfastly refuses to do what DD1 wants, DD1 starts to shriek and - once - to struggle until I took her away]. I have now signed an accident form for some 'accidental' thumping between the 2 of them. I'm getting daily complaints from DD1 that this girl is 'bullying' her verbally (the examples are petty 7-yrs-old stuff but it's clearly unpleasant).
Frankly, I'm not convinced the other girl is the bully in this, especially given the violent incidents. I'm not sure what to do, as I don't want to reinforce DD1's belief that she is being victimised - I want her to realise that verbal aggression is not OK, but hitting/lashing out is absolutely not OK either.
So:
Do I talk to the teacher?
Do i talk to the other girl's mother?
Any advice?

I ahte to over-generalise, but isn't this what girls do?

Well, yes, it is, in the sense that I remember some horrendous incidents when I was 7 yrs old too - I suppose we live in a more sensitive age re. that rough-and-tumble, and I think DD1 is labelling as 'bullying' what is plain old aggro... but I don't want her (precisely) to think it's OK to be aggressive.

Our school has a strict policy on any kind of aggressive behaviour, no matter if the kid is right to respond or not (and i must admit i do agree with them). So what we try to teach our DD (6yo) is that no matter who is aggressive towards her she just needs to go and report it to the teacher, instead of answering back. On top of that we have the daily chart, at the end of a good day, with no conflicts (no matter who started it) she gets a star, otherwise not. It worked for us. We do keep explaining to her that responding to agressive behaviour with the same is wrong. She needs to go away, and play with somebody else who is friendlier, but an aggressive response is a no-no, no matter what!!!! We also made sure to explaine over and over again that the 'guilty' one will get his/her consequence from the ones entitled to apply it, and not from her!

I think you need to speak to the teacher.

Petty falling out and making up is one thing. Hitting and lashing out, especially regularly, needs to be checked by the teaching staff when it's happening at school.

Sorry I completely disagree that this is 'what girls do'.

I would definitely talk to the teacher - my dd (also age 7) doesn't have great social skills and struggles with sharing playground equipment. She doesn't hit, but she does tend to 'blow up' and shout, or alternatively to run away and hide from everyone.

Our county has a 'behavioural counsellor' I think she is called, who specialises in helping children with these sorts of things, dd is meant to be having an appointment with her later on this term. (I've heard from others that she is very good, so I'm hoping for great things . . . . )

So I guess I'm saying that the teacher / school will be used to dealing with this kind of problem, and will probably have some strategy for helping children improve their social behaviour.

BTW is your dd having trouble with school in general? DDs problems are made worse I think by the fact that she really struggles with some of the work - when she is doing better with that, other things seem to go better too.

Thank you - I'll probably talk to their teacher, as there was yet another incident at a party this weekend. I think I'll ask the teacher to reinforce the 'no aggression' line. We've told DD1 to accept that this girl probably doesn't like her these days, and that she should play with other friends - but she doesn't listen. DD1 already has had a referral to an anxiety clinic for her other problems (OCD-type), so I don't think anyone at the school is going to be surprised to see new problems emerging (in fact, we asked in November if someone was bullying her, as she seemed suddenly to worsten - it's a very 'non-bullying' school, so no-one thought it was likely). I think she's struggling with herself rather than work: only one aspect of her school work is a [quite big] problem (maths...).