Please help me get some perspective on a problem we have been having with DD for some time but which has now reached near crisis point. She's been getting distressed about apparent playground issues - repeated exclusion and meanness - on and off since Y2 (now end Y4). The last period of this has lasted approx since Xmas, with her being extremely distressed repeatedly at home, and generally difficult to manage, depressed and resistant to doing anything much - especially, but not only, going to school. She has also this year become v dependent on her class teacher - who has been generally caring and supportive - and unable to cope with a supply teacher (eg can't go to school or spends day in office crying). Meanwhile despite our repeated discussions with class teachers and head this year and previous, nothing was ever done about what was happening or even simply to investigate what we/DD were saying her playground experience was (lunchtimes being supervised at DD's school by casual staff not teachers). About 5 weeks ago we were so desperate we finally went to the governors (the Head was keen to tell me how very 'hurt' he was by this). As a result the lunchtime supervisors have had more training and are a little more observant and for a while we have had a home-school notebook, though this has now been stopped. Nonetheless, the head told us in his view it was DD's problem/in her head, as this is a nice school with nice kids where things like bullying don't happen.
Meanwhile, DD was also telling us she was getting more and more stressed in the classroom and more and more confused about her work. We have always wondered if she had a mild dyslexia issue, though until now she seemed able to compensate ok, so we did commission an independent ed psych assessment at half term - it did indeed diagnose dyslexia, albeit mild. This, combined with DD's own description of increasing stress in classroom/with learning as well as in playground, plus the fact that her NC levels at end Y4 are 3as when she was 3cs at end of Y2, led us to ask for meeting with next year's teacher and next term's acting head (current head about to leave). We had that meeting yesterday, and acting head had pre-concluded, from fact that we had commissioned a report and were bothered about progression of only 2 sublevels in 2years (he said it was fine), that we were pushy parents and that this was the cause of DD's stress!! He also interpreted report to indicate a child who simply dislikes reading and has some minor phonic and comprehension problems, and interpreted this in turn as being because I must have forced DD to tryvto learn to read pre-school (which I certainly never did!). I am v upset - I don't think we are pushy parents at all. We never do academic stuff at home, bar supporting school reading and homework, and when we do have rare time to be with the kids properly, try to do creative and fun outdoor stuff. Our concern isn't about her performance in itself, but her happiness and wellbeing - and she is very stressed and unhappy, socially and in class. We wanted to work with the school to workout why and help her, but instead we get told it must because we are pushy anxious parents! But this girl was well above average and happy 2 years ago. Now she is average or so and very stressed and miserable. Am I right that the school ought to be asking with us why that us? But they are not listening. We are so close from moving her - but are we overreacting? I am a bit too stressed right now to see this clearly, so any perspective most welcome! Thank you so much!
Rose