dd2 was horrid to another girl in her class - did I handle it right?

[emkana]

Today it emerged that dd2 (she's 4.6) has been horrible today to another girl (let's call her Jane) in her class who she is normally friends with. Another friend, let's call her Juliet, had made fun of Jane, which made Jane very angry and cross at Juliet. In return my dd2 decided to be horrible to Jane (though I'm not sure exactly what she did), to the extent that Jane turned to my older dd1 at playtime and asked her to protect her from dd2.

I was horrified to hear this and so I took dd2 straight round to Jane's house after school to apologize. (I know the mother to speak to, and she was very nice about it.) I also had a long and fairly stern chat with dd2 about how she should be kind at all times and how she should not be led into doing horrible stuff by other people.

Do you think that was the right reaction? I was really quite , but then I might be overreacting, it's just that dd1 is such a gentle soul and nothing like this has ever occurred.

sounds like you did just the right thing to me. have 4 year old dd myself and she has this sort of thing going on every day, sometimes she is perpetrator, sometimes not. Your reaction is exactly mine, except the going around house bit. I haven't done that as incidents didn't seem serious enough to warrent it. since jan, playground antics seem to have calmed down and are more settled. I think 4/5/6 year old girls do fall in and out of friendships a lot.

Um, I'm sure it's fine, but I think I'd have found out what exactly dd2 did before going round to someone's house to apologise.

If Jane was being angry and cross, maybe there was a reason for dd getting cross, too. Jane asking for protection sounds worrying, but equally she could have been trying to find a way out of a difficult situation that wasn't actually your dd's fault.

(Mind you, I only have a boy so am thankfully not well-versed in the emotional battles of 4yo girls - as an occasional observer it all looks very complicated.)

tbh I wouldn't have gone round if the house wasn't just around the corner from us and if I didn't know the mother - but Jane has been to our house for playdates and I see Jane's mother regularly at toddler group and so I felt it was okay. dd2 was, when questioned, very sheepish about what the horridness had involved - she didn't want to go into details but didn't deny wrongdoing either.

Ah, I see. Well, it won't have done her any harm, anyway.

No, I wouldn't have gone to the other girl's house. Children are children, and tomorrow they will have made up & be friends again.

My opinions is that parents' cannot get involved in every little row/fall out their children have with others' at school.

I would have had a chat with dd & told her about treating others in the same way she would like to be treated, it's something that is talked about a lot in this house, respect, always treat others as you would like to be treated etc...

You did no harm going to the house, it just seems a bit of an over reaction to me. I'm not sure how I would react if a mum came to my door to apologise for her dd being rude to my dd. In my opinion, school disagreements should be left at school.