Basically, DD is in year 1. She’s really well liked by both her teachers and her peers. She has lots of friends and gets on with pretty much everyone and anyone.
She has this one friend who she’s been pretty much inseparable with since day one. We’ve done the whole play date thing in the beginning and we had days out and we spent time at each others houses, but eventually we stopped doing that as her mum likes to do things 24/7 which I find a bit exhausting. There was also a few spats between the girls but it was never anything major. I put it down to kids being kids most of the time, there was only really one occasion where I had to mention something to her mum as DD had come home from school quite upset. I thought we had got past that and I still considered her as a friend… until today at least.
So I messaged her last night and asked her if she knew anything about an event school had on. Like I said we weren’t meeting up as much as we used to but we’d still talk regularly and we’d chat in the playground and stuff, so it wasn’t out of the blue.
So she went from saying she had no clue about the event at school to “oh btw your daughter pushed my daughter a few weeks ago and made her cry”. DD was asleep by then so as taken aback as I was I said I would bring it up with my daughter in the morning and try and get to the bottom of it.
After speaking with DD I found out she didn’t push her maliciously, they were lining up and another student accidentally banged into my DD which resulted in her knocking into her friend and her friend falling. DD is tall for her age and her friend is quite small so to me it sounded plausible, plus she’s not very capable of lying on the spot so I had no reason not to believe her.
I messaged the mum this morning to explain that this is what DD had said and I couldn’t stress enough that I don’t think she did it maliciously as that’s really out of character for her.
The mum came back and basically accused DD of lying, and also accused her of bullying not just her daughter but other class mates. She said she only felt like she could bring it up with me today even though I have always said to anyone, if there’s ever an issue with the kids just talk to me.
Now I know DD is not perfect but she is far from a bully. Like i said, her teachers speak really highly of her and have never raised any concerns about her behaviour towards other kids. The school is pretty good and I know if there was anything they would’ve mentioned it.
The thing is, this isn’t the first time her daughter has told lies about people and they’re not just little white lies that you’d expect from a kid. She has told lies about her teacher and accused him of being appropriate towards her (this was another reason I decided to take a step back). I also found her to be quite sneaky at times with DD where she would whisper in her ear and encourage her to do things that were naughty.
Knowing my daughter’s character I just explained that I was finding it really difficult to believe that she would intentionally hurt her daughter. I’m not one to make out like the sun shines out of her… but I know she isn’t a bully and I think she may have gotten it completely wrong.
I then dropped DD off at school and spoke with her class teacher about what I had been told and she was quite taken aback that somebody would accuse DD of bullying. She said she had never seen anything but she also knows DD is not that kind of kid. She said she couldn’t understand why the other mum felt the need to raise the issue now when she’s never spoken to the school about it and her daughter is actually off sick at the moment so she’s not even in school.
I then went back to the mum explaining I’d raised it with school and if she wanted to do the same she was more than welcome to.
She then got really nasty with me, called DD every name under the sun. She said she’s manipulative and has everybody believe she’s a good girl when she’s not. She accused her of being a compulsive liar and said she does nothing but demand attention off her daughter and she had told her daughter not to play with DD but DD apparently begs her to play with her. I said it’s probably best they don’t play together anymore but suggested she should raise it with the school as it’s difficult to keep them separated in the play ground. She then called me every name under the sun and said she was going to bring everything up with the school at parents evening.
Fast forward to when I picked DD up and she said they had been best of friends today and her teacher had spoke to both her and the other girl, explained what the meaning of bullying was and when the other girl was asked if she felt like DD had bullied her she said no 🙄 so after all the false accusations and the issues caused between me and her mum she’s now admitted to lying.
My question is where do we go from here? The mum had her parents evening tonight and judging by the lack of apology and me now being blocked I’m guessing she didn’t get the answers she was looking for. I’m really not an argumentative person and I would never make out like DD is perfect because I know she’s not, but I’m not having somebody accuse her of being a bully when I know she’s not.
Long winded… apologies.