Mild bullying, little girl politics, please help!

[hellymelly]

Background: My dd is 7, year 3. This is the start of her second year at her current school, prior to that she was in another school where she was bullied in year 1, after losing her confidence being frightened of her teacher.
Last year went well for dd socially, she made new friends, had the expected hiccups (when a new friend dropped her after she was off ill ) that she dealt with well, and I felt positive that her confidence was building after a big confidence crisis in year one when we had removed her in the end and home schooled for two terms. She made friends of both genders and seemed to be enjoying school again.
This term she has been put on a table with the more able children in the class, she is a very bright child, but wasn't able to shine last year as the school is not in her first language, so she was learning the language pretty much from scratch, having only been full time for a term in her old school. One of the girls on the table started being friendly but got increasingly what dd refers to as "bossy", telling dd what to do, telling her off for things, and slightly putting her down. This has now turned into more of a bullying thing, as she is excluding dd from playing. She has a "club", that the others on the table were allowed to join, but not dd. She has now got dd's main friend to join, but still won't let dd. When one of the other children protested she said that "only four where allowed" and dd sadly went off to find someone else to play with. DD is particularly upset now her main friend is in this group, she is hurt that her friend will play with them even though they exclude her, but doesn't want to say anything as she thinks they won't like her anymore if she does. .
DH spoke to her teacher today without naming any child in particular, and her teacher is going to talk to the class as a whole about being kind etc, but is there anything I can say to dd? She seems much more insecure again, is afraid of the "leader" girl getting cross with her, and is acting out at home, being stroppy and rather mean to her smaller sister. She is a kind little girl and I feel so sad this is happening just when her confidence was really on the up. She has a lovely best friend out of school but half an hour away so we only meet up every two or three weeks.

bumping in hope.

Tbh I'd name the child. Not in public obviously, but why do you not just want to tell the teacher what is happening?
I had a similar thing with DD, spoke to the teacher who spoke to both DD and the girl in question. I think if you handle it calmly - say that you understand that friendships come and go but that this is ongoing and causing problems at home - the teacher should want to keep an eye on things.
I told my DD that people sometimes want to hurt other people and the favourite way of doing that seems to be to say 'you're not my friend' or 'you're not coming to my party'. She laughs about it now - she came home and said 'xxx said 'you're not coming to my party' to YYY but that's just because he wants to hurt him with his words, isn't it?'.
I hope things improve for you.

Thanks. Dd has come home from school and her teacher had chatted to her privately after Dh's call. DD did name the child to her teacher but underplayed it somewhat by the sound of it. She is generally worried about it , I hope the teacher keeps an eye out. I know this sort of stuff is fairly standard for girls, but it does seem as of more of it goes on now than when I was in school. I remember in the playground outside school someone's mother would always wade in and tell anyone off who seemed to be excluding someone, that doesn't happen now. Both my dds get really upset by it, but with dd2 who is 5, it seems to only ever last a day, whereas with dd1 this has been going on for weeks now.

I feel your pain! (DTs, Y4)

in our school this is very much the teachers' concern (rather than up to parents to intervene- it's definitely not ignored, iykwim), and the children aren't (generally) afraid to tell. In fact there's a Learning Mentor on duty at lunchtime, and this seems to be a big chunk of her job ie sorting out little girls' friendship groups

I remember this from my time at school- it was ignored by the teachers who focussed more on boys fighting- this sort of stuff wasn't important as it didn't involve actual violence. Now- ime- teachers do seem to have more of a radar for it and are much more proactive

good luck!