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Bullying

Find advice from others who have experienced school or workplace bullying on our Bulllying forum.

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Original poster

Online Harassment on Y6/Y7 Whatsapp Groups

52 replies

Lilyfairy · 02/08/2025 05:13

My daughter has just left primary school and is due to start high school in September. One of her classmates started a Whatsapp group for the primary leavers and a second Whatsapp group for them and any others they know from other schools who are going into Y7. That group now has around 100 members.

One of her old classmates (who she never really got along with) has started repeatedly sharing unflattering photos (what they call 'mugs') of my daughter on the leavers' group and refuses to stop, despite my daughter asking her to several times. My daughter has blocked her and has stopped engaging with her on the leavers group (as she still wants, and deserves, to be part of the group) but she is continually harassing her on there with the repeated sharing of her photo and now, nasty comments to boot. As my daughter has now stopped rising to the 'bait' the other girl has now started doing the same on the upcoming Y7 group which my daughter is finding very upsetting and she feels she's being humiliated and belittled in front of all of her new peers.

My instinct is to just get her off both groups but there are people she likes in there and she very much wants to feel part of those groups, which I can understand. Should that one girl have the power to force my daughter out by harassing her in that way?? I really don't know what to do or how I can help.

OP posts:

Lemniscate8 · 03/08/2025 20:02

take screen shots. take her out of the groups. ban her from whatsapp. contact parents of the bullies and show them. Don't get involved in a discussion, jsut say your daughter was upset by this behaviour, and leave it at that

drspouse · 03/08/2025 20:12

GettingFestiveNow · 03/08/2025 12:03

"Already there are 4 year 6s in her friendship group who only use WhatsApp (i.e. their phones are only set up to use WiFi) and two of them have refused to give her their number and I've had to point out this is Not Kind."

I'm wondering if I've misunderstood this - it seems to me that it is completely fine to refuse to hand over a phone number. Quite a few families will make this a condition of a child having their own phone. I would certainly want my own dc to feel entirely comfortable saying "No thanks" when asked for their number.

These are close friends, or they were - these two boys are going to the same secondary school as each other, with none of the rest of the friendship group. They've said "we aren't friends with the rest of you now and we're only going to message each other".

If the main way children are contacting each other outside school days is via their own phone numbers (in other words, no longer via parents) then this is fairly excluding - it's like them saying "we don't want to hang out with the other 6-8 from our group any more, you aren't good enough for us any more" when up to this point they were happy for parents to arrange park playdates etc.

These two are both going to the boys grammar school - one girl from the group is going to the girls grammar and is still friends with everyone. They have form for telling other children they are cleverer than them but I thought this had been put to bed - I'm guessing this is part of the same thing though.

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