So my son only started school in September and a little boy who he went to the childminders with between 18 months and 2 years is in his class. This was great news when we found out as the boys were super close and have seen each other a handful of times since the childminder days for birthday parties and a few play dates. Also in their class is this boys other friend from his more recent childminder, which has been a bit confusing for my son as his friend wants to play with this friend more.
It seems that jealousy may have got the better of him and our son has been telling this boy that he ‘has to sit with him at lunch’ (this isn’t confirmed but is what the other mum is saying) My son tends to be more passive and sensitive, even though he’s a big personality and isn’t shy about sharing his views but it’s still possible that he did this.
Anyway, the boys parents (one from original childminders) have increasingly been very strange with us at pick up and drop off and we started to sense something was wrong when our son was saying that this boys mum has said to her son that they can’t be friends with each other anymore. Naturally this has been causing a lot of confusion and upset with my son. My son is also very upfront and has outright called his friends mum out on this which she has awkwardly denied twice whilst looking at the floor and not making eye contact with us.
It happened again yesterday, so I decided to drop her a message in the evening and see what’s going on as enough was enough.
This is where it gets very tricky. She replied to my message and told me that her son apparently told a teacher at school that his ‘mum kicked him and sent him to bed with no dinner’. Due to the level of this allegation social services were involved. When his parents quizzed him about why he had said this as it seems to be not true, he said on numerous occasions that our son had got him to tell this teacher.
Now this stunned me and is very out of character for our son, however, we’ve started to have a few conversations with him to gently try and find the truth, among wider more general conversations about the matter. He’s said he knows the teacher that his friend had told and was very focused on how upset he is that he doesn’t want to sit with him at lunch and be his friend. We also asked if like his friends mum (among taking about other kids mums) and he said no. I’m starting to see that maybe he could have been involved in this after all to some degree but we are gently bringing it up rather than forcing it so may take some time.
We had parents evening a few weeks ago and I mentioned that my son was getting upset about not being able to play with him and about the mum saying via her son she didn’t want them to play to together, did the teacher know anything about this? She said no. But by the sounds of this mums text reply, is that they have spilt them up in class. I’ll next to investigate this side of things as I feel that the school should have told me.
Now I don’t know what way everything happened or the real truth at this stage, but I feel like my child is being punished indirectly from that mum about something he supposedly did but there is no evidence for, what’s worse is the school haven’t involved us in this at all, we have no idea when this happened and the mum is no longer engaging with us. Even though it’s been 15 hours so she could still reply, hopefully.
when my husband and i replied to her text, we did this is an 8 min voicenote saying that we are absolutely mortified to hear this and that we’d wish she’s reached out before. We asked her a few questions to try and get the full picture of the story to get to the bottom of it all, but also said we’d like to speak to our son but we also don’t want to make it worse as they are in such close proximity to each other, but she hasn’t replied.
Im thinking I just contact the school directly but also our children are 4 years old and there is obviously complexities with friendships here. I’m aware that lying is a normal development thing for 4 - 6 year olds and it’s very important to us that our son understands that lying is not ok. But we also don’t want to blame him for something that he may not have done it, so need him to admit it first.
Arrgh! Help! I’m so cross with the while situation and I feel completely powerless!