Starting school and toxic friends

[Treeparent]

My 4yr old is about to start school with a girl I can’t stand. I’m worried about her behaviour and it’s making me extremely anxious about the sort of girls she’ll be surrounded by.

I’m friends with her mother, they seem like a nice family and she’d rather convinced me about the private school we’re about to send our girls to. Their daughter is mean, rude and has often made my daughter cry whilst her mum insists they’re great friends and tries to arrange more play dates. Lots of “I won’t be your friend if… you’re not allowed to play with me now… you can’t be friends with XYZ…”, acts like a spoilt brat and parents seem to just shrug and say “oh these girls”. My DD is not perfect but she’s friendly, joins in and is a happy girl when not around her. Worst of all her behaviour really seems to influence my daughter who copies the whining and rudeness and even recently acted like a totally bully with her against another child. Even DH was shocked when picked her up recently and rarely notices this sort of thing.

DD is bright and about to start reception at local independent girls through school with this friend. We turned down the outstanding state primary school ( a really hard decision and I have regrets - she had nice friends from nursery going there and all just normal local kids). We went for this school as offer a very nice and nurturing environment and option of avoiding 11plus drama later if DD isn’t up to it. We decided to see how things go seeing as we’d already paid the deposit and convinced ourselves it’s giving her a great start - but now I’m even more worried that she’ll be surrounded by privileged mean girls and I’ll spend the next 6 years picking this apart. Her happiness is the most important thing to me.

Can I do anything to make this better or shouldn’t interfere? They’ll be in class together, should I talk to the teacher now? Hope she’ll just make new friends? Is this the start of private girls school hell that I’ve been so worried about? And if so, is pulling your kid from private school during primary years terrible?

Thank you if you’ve read this far - really appreciate outside perspective and advice.

All of this

There are dc like this in every school. Part of developing is learning how to negotiate a variety of people. I'd read some friendship books with dd and encourage other friendships. She'll meet lots of people.

You’re spiralling massively and making it sound like you’ve picked a school because of your friend rather than having confidence you’ve picked the right school for you. If that’s the case, that’s on you tbh. You’ve picked a school you’re paying a lot of money -you must have researched it. The grass is not going to be greener- your outstanding state primary is likely to have a massive class size and most likely some very challenging children.

The other little girl is 4. They are all learning how to be good friends and haven’t grasped that at that age. You’re being massively unreasonable to decide the whole peer group are going to be vile because you don’t like one tiny child who might be very different at 7/8. You can legitimately say to the teacher you’d like a bit of separation and to keep an eye.

You are going to be in for a rough ride if you’re already freaking out about friendships. Girls can be absolutely horrible to each other in the primary age group if you judge their behaviour by adult standards but they are learning and develop empathy as they age.

your child will make other friends in school setting and teachers will be there to oversee behavioural issues including refusing to share or blackmailing to play etc so i wouldn’t worry about her at school - plus likely the other kid will be in her best behaviour at school. i’d worry about the smaller settings like play dates - why don’t you just start to refuse them? and slowly move your child away? however at end of the day, kids are kids and it’s not out of intentional malice as they learn to push boundaries etc so i would speak to my daughter about how to deal with situations when others ask she does something she doesn’t want to etc

Wow - can’t believe this is about 4 year olds and not 14 year olds

This thread is remarkable . We are talking about a child who has just finished nursery
They still have lots of learning to do.
Encourage lots of other friendships and keep instilling in your child appropriate ways to behave.

Only you know the specific school but my experience of a GDST school (if relevant) is that they have zero tolerance for mean girl, bullying behaviour. I found their approach hugely reassuring having attended an all girls state school in the 80’s.
If you already have concerns, simply ask if they can be separated where possible. At this age they will be mixed up several times a day for different activities but a good starter is to not be on the same desk of 6 for the start of day.
Girls do start this early with this sort of behaviour, particularly the indulged ones. Ask the school about their programmes and how you can reinforce their anti bullying teaching at home. If you get blank faces then you have picked the wrong school.

You get nice kids and nasty kids at all schools, state or private - kids are kids. This is just one child, and whilst this child may be a little terror at the moment she is only 4 and will hopefully improve, her behaviour doesn’t sound entirely age inappropriate. Your daughter will meet new friends when she starts. We are about to make the move to private from state (my daughter is 9) and I too have reservations for various reasons, but hopefully she’ll benefit from the small class sizes, and if at any point it’s not working we can always change the path.