Help needed with 8 year old DD

[Prinpo]

OK, this will be long and a bit garbled but, if you can, please do stick with me because I can't see the wood for the trees and would really welcome some input.

DD (oldest of 2) is nearly 8 and in Year 3. Things have been getting progressively harder for her at school to the point where she's utterly miserable about it and really doesn't want to go into school. I know that children often don't want to go in and I don't expect her to feel happy all the time but this has been going on for about a year now and just seems to be getting worse.

The main problem seems to be with friendships. She feels that the other kids see her as weird, which I think they probably do. She lives in her head a lot and has a great imagination but it clearly is marking her out as different and now that it's been picked up on it seems to have stuck. She doesn't feel any sort of affinity with the other children at school, although she has some lovely friendships out of school. Although she doesn't always show it, her emotions are always bubbling away not far beneath the surface.

In addition to the friendship problems, it's been a bit of a crap year in terms of teaching and next year will not be good either (teacher in next class widely seen as being really dreadful but the school has done little about it). DD does reasonably well academically - great at literacy, not so confident about maths, ok with everything else. She worries about her work a great deal and gets quite worked up if she finds something difficult.

So far, the obvious things we have tried include:

inviting friends over after school;

talking to her class teacher about areas of work that she's struggling with and asking for worksheets to be sent home (which hasn't happened, despite repeated requests);

talking to the head who has helped a bit with maths and has given DD a special role of looking after school pets so that she doesn't feel so lonely at lunchtime;

asking DD to write down things she's worried about so that they're not in her head but down on paper and, therefore, more manageable;

asking DD to write down good things that have happened too so that she doesn't just focus on the bad.

Things at home are pretty stable, with no major changes in the time that this has been going on for. Can you help me to make sense of the situation? As I said earlier, I know that kids get unhappy and I know that part of a parent's job is to jolly them along sometimes but I really do feel that this has gone beyond that stage and that she's so unhappy that she needs me to help. I just don't know what to do.

All ideas much appreciated. Please fire loads of questions at me as your questions might help me to see things in a different way. Thanks in advance.

Dinah, the teaching this year (year 3) has been poor but next year's teacher (mixed year 4 and year 5 class) is the really appalling one. She has been complained about by a number of parents, although I'm not sure whether these are counted as formal complaints by the head. To be fair, it may be that some action is being taken behind the scenes but, if so, there's no evidence of it. It's an interesting point that the poorer teachers are put in the middle of the school. Certainly, the two strongest teachers are in the SATS years.

I'm going to look at another school, one we were interested in years ago when we were first looking. I'll take your advice and be very open with the new school and get their input on the pros and cons of a move. I would love to be able to see how she feels after the summer holiday but I feel that, if we're going to move, they both need to be able to go into the new school at the very beginning of the next school year. I think I've discounted home-ed. It's not for us for a variety of reasons.

So, the plan is this: I'm going to keep a really close eye on things over the next couple of weeks, combined with visiting the other school and talking with other parents. Once I feel I've got all of the information I can, I'll talk very carefully to DD and see where we go from there.

Thank you all once again. Wise women, the lot of you!

I think I would certainly consider a change in schools.

One thing that hasn't really been discussed is activities outside of school.

We found that our middle daughter seriously improved her confidence, and therefore happiness once she got involved in horse riding. It gave her other things to concentrate on, so school life became less important.

That may not be the right activity for your DD, by the sounds of it theatre or something creative could be more suitable, but by giving her a group wher she doesn't feel wierd you may give her more confidence.

Thanks, frenchfancy. She does do drama, which she absolutely adores and which gives her the opportunity to go completely bananas in a brilliant, creative way. She also does a few other out-of-school activities, although now I come to think of it these are quite solitary (piano, French and swimming). I had thought about her doing Brownies but worried that she was doing too much already. Perhaps, though, it's worth her doing something more group-oriented for the reasons you give. I'll give it some thought - thank you.

I think I'd sack piano or french in favour of brownies, tbh