Playground politics and year 1 girls

[Themermaidspool]

Apologies in advance for the backstory. My daughter attends school with only 22 kids in her year. Shes always got on with this one girl, lets call her kelly. Kelly has always been popular with all, shes clever and polite and a favourite with the teachers and school. Her family have an older gifted child and are themselves clever and ambitious.
My daughter has always loved being this girls friend and gone along with whatever. In herself she is a kind stubborn girl but has some traits of adhd and dyslexia (picked up by school but no intervention yet). Recently shes reported kelly is being a bit sarcastic with her and sometimes is a little bit cruel. (Ignoring her etc) she also described wanting to cry at school but was unable to articulate why.
I witnessed this today and kelly is indeed using sly sarcastic put downs.
We have always said walk away but my daughter is unwilling to do this and is seemingly unaware of all but the most blistering of put downs.
How can I help here?
Teacher has reported not seeing any problem between her and anyone. (Although i have yet to name names).
This is complicated by playground politics. Kellys mum is very social throughout the school and is unlikely to be approachable about this, espiecially since i have now noticed she shares the trait. Its complicated by myself - i unwisely thought id found a true friend before realising that kellys mum befriends everyone by making them feel special and gets them to confide but actually its mostly politics.
How do i approach this with my daughter and are there any techniques to use?
Do I let school know?
Do I do say anything to mum or stay well away?
Thank you for your time and advice.

DO NOT APPROACH MUM.

Let school know that you have noticed some low-level unkindness and ask them to keep an eye on things. I am currently working on exactly this issue with, admittedly older, children but it's good to have helpful information about social issues of this kind.

I’d let the teacher know but definitely not the mum!

Your main priority though has to be helping you daughter learn to navigate these situations by herself because there will always be ‘mean girls’ around. You could use books to help her think about what it means to be a good friends and get her to consider whether Kelly really is a good friend or not. She might come to her own conclusion that she wants to walk away. Practice things she can say if others are being unkind to her. Reassure her and help her see that the things Kelly is saying are just not true.

Little girls can be absolutely foul to each other - I am sure I was never like that! Knowing when and how to intervene is very hard, but a quiet word with the teacher would not be out of place.

Bump. Hopeful.

Agree with @MelchiorsMistress - good advice. Never fight your kid’s battles for them but empower them to fight their own.

And kids are resilient - make sure you’re responding to what your daughter is bringing to you, not what you feel about the situation.

Expose your kid to good friendships, and model a good relationship to her/between you and her. That’s how you empower her to go for who she likes and move away from those she doesn’t get on with.

Ahh! Thank you so much. Im always very pragmatic about these things but now its my little girl all sense goes out the window and im so worried. It feels like reliving all my own childhood insecurities and Ive tried so hard to protect her from that but I can see the same patterns repeating and i feel like ive failed her because shes not the favourite and its so obvious who the favourites are.

Mention it to the teacher but they obviously can’t be hovering over them the whole time your DD is at school. This is a big problem at small schools as there just isn’t enough children for them to find their tribe.
Being both a TA and a mother I definitely don’t recommend small schools for quiet/shy children. They often can’t make friends as there isn’t much choice, there is also less chance of difficult behaviours being diluted by the number of children - a challenging child will dominate the class for the whole of their primary school life.

I think empowering your daughter is important - but I would flag this with the class teacher over email too. DD1 had similar issues in year 2 and I thought it was important for her to fight her own battles and deal with it herself. By year 5 it had become untenable and it was a battle to sort it out as the ‘Kelly’ in our situation was so plausible and there was no paper trail.