How do I approach the teacher with this...???

[mummynoseynora]

Right, I shall try not to drip feed but I am still trying to get my head around the situation to be honest so it will come out all higgldy!

DD is 5 - year R. She has always been a confident girl, really kind with her friends (comments from preschool teachers about taking younger ones under wing etc) and likes to be friends with / play with everyone.

So - she starts school in september, the first few weeks were split classes part time, and most of her close preschool friends were on the opposite session to her, there were people she knew and played with in her session so not a problem. During these few weeks she made a new friend X.

X is kind of similar to DD in that she is quite confident and can be loud, but she can also be very manipulative of her relationships from what I've seen and seems to prefer and exclusive 'best friend' as opposed to lots of friends ... see where this is going yet?

X lives just around the corner from us, and we have basically been harangued into walking home with her most days as she would chase us to catch up etc if we had already left - this was fine to begin with, DD and her seemed good friends so its all good.

Anyhoo - this term, DD has started to complain about X more and more. We have tried just giving her tips on how to deal with it.. explaining how if you just play with one person you can start to annoy each other so maybe go and play elsewhere for a bit etc etc, and over the weeks X appears to be manipulating DD more and more ...

as an example - DD said she was going to play with a group of boys one playtime when X demanded they do something, so X does the whole 'they said they don't want to play with you'... DD very gullible, and believes it. Then we get the whole, if you don't do .... I'm telling .... DD doesn't want to get in trouble, so does it - even if its naughty
I have explained that as long as she is being polite and kind in how she talks to X she won't get in trouble for wanting to play with someone else but its getting nowhere.

Now DD is starting to seem less and less confident, and this week at school drop off we have had tears twice... we have NEVER had tears at school / preschool / any kind of drop off before so I took the teacher aside (whilst DH dealt with DD) and explained that she seems to be having some troubles with X and could they maybe keep them seperate a bit today. Teacher is job share, main teacher back tomorrow - I need to broach it with her. We have parents evening next week but only a 10 min slot then, so was thinking of asking to talk to her after school tomorrow.

I don't want to come across as a raving banshee, or that I think DD is an angel / X a devil - as I know thats just not true, but how do I explain how much of an issue it is for DD to make them fully aware without coming across as a mentalist?!

sheeesh - I have just seen the lenghth of that... if anyone makes it to the end I would love a reply!

i think its totally understandable and im a reception teacher and i get parents come to talk to me about things like this all the time so i wouldnt worry. just explain youre concerns and ask if the teacher can 'encourage' (ie set up activities) for her to play with others. The teacher cant stop the children from playing with each other but by being aware of your concerns she should be able to help. Dont wait till parents eve just ask the teacher at start/end of day if you can have a chat

I've had similar issue with my 8 year old dd. She was being manipulated into playing with one boy and dd is a nice girl and didn't want to hurt the boys feelings.
I approached her teacher and said just that. I wasn't horrible about the boy just explained the situation was spilling into dd being upset about it at home and on tbe way to school but that she was being to nice and polite to hurt boys feelings.
As it turned out the school were aware of it but needed dd to tell them when it happened.
So just tell them what you said here. O mean the 2 girls will probably still play together but I found a bit of support from the teacher gave dd a bit more confidence to say no because she realised she wasn't in trouble for wanting to play with other people.

We had a very similar situation when dd was in reception, dd went from a bright happy little girl to a sad little thing in a matter of weeks.
I didn't care about looking like a mad banshee (maybe because i am one) and approached the school about the situation.
We tackled the problem by having lots of other children home to play, but never invited the "best friend", this worked quite well, but the best friend did get moody with DD and caused upset, the school agreed to keep them apart as much as possible and was very good at pairing dd with other children for lots of activities - which seemed to help a bit.
Our school mixes the classes when the kids move from reception to year 1 so I made it quite clear that dd and "best friend" were not to be together, this seems to have had the best outcome, during year 1 we still had a few upsets but dd made new friend as the other girl was not always there, she is in year 2 now and although she sti;; plays with the girl she is not under her spell anymore and happy to go off with other people.

thanks all, our school mix up each year too so I am hoping to seperate them next year!

mummynoseynora - make sure the teacher knows you don't want them in the same class next year, despite the fact that i was in and out of the school for weeks when it came to it the teacher was still going to keep them in the same class because they were so close. You really have to make it clear!

Ask for a special meeting with class teacher, and more or less say what you told us. The class teacher will be used to handling stuff like this, and may even have observed a little bit of it. Good luck, hope it all resolves very soon.

As teachers we can generally spot difficult "friendships" and it is no problem to encourage/arrange for the children to be doing different things during classtime. I'd have a chat with the teacher.

I agree with those above, do make sure everyone concerned has been spoken to and remembers re. keeping them appart for next year. We had a situation at the end of last year with another child, were promised from here to eternity that they wouldn't be sitting together but on the first day of the new year DD walked out with gritted teeth after a day of being elbowed in the ribs and kicked under the table. The teachers had either forgotten (I'm not hugely blaming them baring in mind the long holiday) or hadn't been told.

I don't know if I like the word 'manipulation' when referring to young children in these circumstances. Some children do attach themselves to one particular friend and find it hard to play with groups of children. Such was the case with my own dd. She just lacked the confidence to make new friends so got upset when her one friend understandably wanted to play with someone else. The school were brilliant and did 'friendship lessons' with everyone concerned and taught them that it was OK to go and play with other people as long as you weren't leaving someone on their own. My daughter was definitely not manipulative and there was no need to separate her from her friends. She now has many of them and her and her original 'friend' are still very close.

DD3 is in reception and by the time I spoke to her teacher about a particular girl that she clashes with, the teacher was already keeping them apart in the classroom :o