Hi, this is long but i'll try to keep it as short as possible.
DD2 is 15 and has just started Year 11. She has always struggled socially, she is a bit of a tomboy but also a bit of a geek (her words) and is quiet and shy. Not an ideal scenario for fitting in amongst a predominantly girly and confident year group although she does have an excellent but small group of friends. Throughout her time at school she has had difficulties with a particular group of girls in her year group. We've had name calling, teasing about clothes and incidents of being tripped over in the corridor and in PE. Unfortunately these girls are clever and nothing is ever seen by teachers, general talks about behaviour are had and then things settle down for a period before starting up again. The main issues have been in PE lessons where she is frequently called fat and useless. DD is quite sporty but has gradually removed herself from all participation at school except for compulsory PE. Her confidence is wrecked because of these girls.
Before term started DD decided that she would just battle through the relatively small number of PE lessons until the end of the year, she is adamant she doesn't want teachers involved because she thinks it will make things worse. Unfortunately the main PE teacher is a stereotypically shouty type who openly favours and is 'matey' with the popular girls. DD is terrified of her but also I think idolises her as she is everything - popular, sporty and cool - that DD wants to be.
Things seemed to be going ok. 1st PE lesson on Friday and DD and her friends were allowed to go off and play football, this is her absolute favourite sport so she was pretty happy. Unfortunately the girls who are causing the problem decided yesterday to join in with football and proceeded to torment her. The group were unsupervised and DD and her friend walked away and went back to the changing room. They were hauled out by scary PE teacher half an hour later and given a very public dressing down. They have a lunch time detention tomorrow for truanting a lesson.
I have no problem with the punishment as such, although I'm frankly amazed that obsessive rule follower DD walked out of a lesson. This is her 1st ever detention. My question is what do I do now? She really doesn't want me speaking to her teacher and would prefer to take the punishment but I don't think we can let this go. These girls have made her school life miserable and now she's in trouble. Any tips for approaching the school and how I can help DD to speak up for herself more and/or survive the next 8 months?
Thanks for reading this far.
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Secondary education
How to help DD. PE and bullying.
2 replies
Smerch · 07/09/2016 14:05
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