My 10yr old was in a friendship group with 3 other children. Two of those children were twin sisters. The other child joined them in Year 2 (though she lived some distance away) and had apparently moved to our school due to bullying in her old school. In many ways she was quite similar to my daughter. They got on to start with but then started arguing more and more. Mother of this child contacted me in the January and said the girls weren’t getting along and wanted to meet me the next evening. In a lot of cases I would have been happy to do this with some mums, but this lady was a bot of a handful and not good ar listening. I suggested that we should speak to the school to see if they could help the girls friendship as we didnt want to do it ourselves and wnd up going around in circles. She was quite vocal at this point that it was basically all my daughters fault so there’d be no going around in circles. I approached the school and asked if they had noticed anything. They hadn’t but they said they could work with the girls for a session. The girls never really did gel again, sometimes things were ok, sometimes they’d clash, a lot of the time the other girl would be playing with the rest of that friend group and would tell my daughter that she wasn’t allowed to come near her, meaning that my daughter was excluded from playing with the rest of her friends . I presume this had come from the parent as it was not something the school had not told them they werent to play together. Things were quiet by the time they broke up for summer hols. During last years summer holidays the mother made it known to some members of our class parents and to some of the mums from her other daughters class group that she was removing her child from the school (to one that was close to her home 8 miles away) because of my child’s bullying. I was sent a threatening message by the woman saying that of my daughter ever ‘harmed’ hers again she would call the police and basically saying some horrid things about my daughter. As it was over the holidays I emailed the chair of governors and our headmistress to inform them of the email and to check that nothing could have been missed in terms of any possible bullying by my daughter. There was due to be a change of head due to retirement a week after this, so it wasnt great timing, but it was passed onto the new head who met with is, but assured us he had investigated and there was nothing to reort other than to say that at times the girls clashed, but 6 of one etc etc. i asked if there was anything that could/should be done about the message and/or rumours, bit was told that there was nothing that could be done as she jad left, but to not worry about it because she had gone and it would all blow over. The news that she had left because my daughter bulloed her child had been sufficiently spread by her and other children now avoid my daughter and have blamed her verbally for this child and her sister having left. Parents are no longer inviting her to playdates (despite the children themselves saying they want this, and despite these particular girls still playing with her) nor are they accepting my invites to play, parties are held and 9 out of 11 girls in class are invited, with mine being 1 of the 2 that wasn’t. The girl that left is still socialising with some children and so my daughter is still having to deal with children blaming her for the girl leaving. My daughter is chatty, funny, but bossy, but is just not a bully in anyway shape or form. I have had people over the years approach me and ask me to pass on their thanks to her for being so kind.
My question is, what, if anything could the school have done about what the woman has told some parents about my daughter? Could/should they perhaps have put an email out to say ‘there have been some rumours that a child has left due to bullying, but there was no evidence to corroborate this, despite our investigations’ or would this not have been possible? It just doesn’t t seem right that my daughter is still facing difficulties and now to an extent bullying as a result of false accusations and its so upsetting that her character has been tarred by this person.