Am i over reacting?

[Littleblue]

My little girl was held down while a leaf was forced into her mouth and she was made to swallow it by 3 other girls..all 6 years old.
Shes weepy,and complaining of tummy aches and nausea..obviously very upset by this..
I intend raising hell about this monday morning..i want the other girls parents told etc..

I'm glad to hear that it hadn't been glossed over. I hope this gets sorted out satisfactorily very quickly and you can all move on secure in the knowledge that these children will be watched and will never dare do anything like this again.

I?ve been reading this thinking ?oh, I hope there?s an update by the time I finish? and there is! Thank goodness it?s being dealt with now. It?s alarming (but not entirely surprising or unusual!) that the teacher knew nothing about it, but it would have been worse if she did know and it hadn?t been treated seriously. It?s one thing for bullies to pinch, pull hair, call names etc, but shoving a leaf into someone?s mouth and forcing them to swallow it is disturbing, I don?t think that?s an overreaction at all. Thank God it was a harmless plant, I wouldn?t like to imagine how serious it could have been.

Your dd really needs to know that she can and should go straight to her teacher if anything like this happens again - she and the other supervisors can?t watch everyone all the time!

Glad you got some satisfaction at the school today.

Hope they follow through on it all and that dd can feel secure and happy there for the future.

I am so very sorry that your DD was treated that way, it is true that children can be very mean, but that isn't an excuse not to deal with the situation. I would definitely follow the advice given to involve the SLO if they don't address the situation appropriately.

Do let us know how it went with her teacher.

Thank you so much everybody..the teacher called all the relevant parents in,we got apologies from very distressed parents of the girl who did the forcing..she was made to sit in the Headmistresses office today and lost her breaktimes..she was also made to apologise to my child,who is mightily relieved that it got stomped on so hard..the school asked us if we wanted them to do anymore at this point..we are happy that it has been recognised and dealt with appropriately..still feel well wobbly though.

Hi Littleblue. Glad you got it sorted and the school was so supportive. We had an incident recently where a particular girl was "picking on" (I use the lighter term deliberately) my dd and two of her close friends. We three sets of parents discussed it and each saw the teacher separately (I think the poor woman was totally stunned). It ended up with the school talking to the child concerned and explaining the consequences of her actions. Luckily this was with older children (they are all 8) and it was all verbal except for one minor incident, but the school implemented their policy and the issue was resolved.

It did help that there were three of them who could band together. I know your DD has lost her closest friend and is having difficulty - is there a club or social group locally that she could attend to build up some friendships out of school or would that not be her scene?

thinking of you, glad it was resolved.

Shes joining a couple of clubs...yes,but now you mention..Brownies might be good.
Thank you

Feel sorry for the mum...she's obviously deeply mortified!

Glad its all sorted out, hopefully the other girls will have learnt that this was unacceptable behaviour.

BTW Sarah, I agree that you need to give the school a chance to sort out any incidents of bullying first of all, however I don;t agree that bullying is trivial and not a police matter, it was assault, if this were adults involved would you agree?

Anyway, a good outcome.

I have never said that bullying is 'trivial'. Definitely not. I just don't believe that, in this instance, it was a matter for the police. I think I mentioned before how horribly I was bullied for a long time.

If it was adults, it would not, of course, be acceptable. However, it become assault when each of the parties becomes fully aware of the outcome of their actions and I don't believe six year olds are always fully aware of the consequences of what they are doing.

Really, I asked my 6 year old if she thought it was OK or naughty if someone put a leaf in someone else mouth and they didn;t want you to - guess what she knew it was wrong.

OK I got it wrong you didn;t say that bullying was trivial, but you did say that the police had better things to do.

In this case it looks as they the school are dealing with it correctly and you are right the police shouldn't become involved, however not so long ago there was another story on MN of a child being bullied where the school did nothing.

Well you are very lucky that your six year old daughter doesn't have learning difficulties, aren't you.

What I was saying is that I don't believe that you should just rush in and report a matter to the police when the school will deal with it the following school day. Going above the school will simply cause confusion, and often blow an incident out of all proportion when all that is needed is a quiet word with the children and their parents.

I have seen the other thread about the child who is bullied so badly that the police have had to be called in. However, in that case, the child has been bullied repeatedly, and the school have failed to act, despite numerous attempts on the part of the parents to prompt action. That is a very different case to this, where there has been one isolated incident of this nature and the school have been quick to act.

I actually agree with you Sarah, I suppose where I couldn;t believe where you were coming from is that you didn;t think that bullying was a serious enough thing to bother the police with, maybe I read your post wrong or it didn;t come out in the way you intended it to.

I'm just pleased that all is OK for the OPs DD and hope that there are no other incidents, though it sounds like the school are on the case about this.

Yeah, it's good that everything's been sorted - I'm not very good at expressing myself, so I reckon that it was probably just me being not very clear

I think when I said that bullying wasn't serious enough to bother the police over, I meant this incident, not all bullying. Goodness knows, I wish I'd had the courage to tell the police when I was being bullied.

Yeah, I wish I'd told my parents but I worried that it would get worse. I finally faced up to my bullies and they left me alone!

A couple of years later saw one of them walking down the road and the people I worked with at the time were taking the piss out of her (not that she heard) and made me feel a whole lot better!

I've never seen my bullies since I left Primary school. There were thirteen of them, so it's quite surprising.

I'm glad that you found the courage to face up to them - I never did, and the school never listened to me when I mustered the courage to speak to my teacher. It's something which changed my whole life and how I feel about myself.

Hi Sarah

Thats so sad to hear that, the girls who bullied me (secondary school) also affected me, however when I saw other people who I really liked and liked me(and were very cool - well they were to me and I was never in with the cool crowd!) slate her it made me realise that she couldn;t hurt me anymore, she was insignificant and nothing to me.

Of course I'm still the way I am in part to the bullying but decided to take back the control (god this is sounding stupid - I know what I mean though!)

I'm lucky that the bullying I received was not that bad, didn;t seem like it to me at the time though - was done in front of teachers who did nothing about it!