Re: My daughter swimming and bullying

[formidablelady]

I have posted this comment as I appear to be unable to edit my original thread and most people don't read all of it.

I just wanted to say that I been in the nursing profession for 20 years and I am amazed by how a lot of people have responded to my thread. It is truly like reading something from the 1950?s.

If one of my patients came to me with a complaint no matter how trivial or ?stupid? I thought it was I would do my level best to help resolve it as it obviously wasn?t trivial or stupid to them. In fact we welcome comments, that is how change is affected. Obviously there are times when we cannot deliver everything the patient wants but we try to come to a compromise. If the patient still isn?t happy we tell them the process they have to follow if they want to take this further.

I find this playground attitude of some of the posters who have been name calling and comments that I will be the talk of the staffroom surreal. Is it unrealistic to have confidence that my daughters teachers are more professional than that!

I also sincerely hope that the people who are trivialising bullying and name calling do not work with children.

I would prefer my daughter not to do swimming but if there is no compromise then she will be forced to do it. I still don?t agree with the lack of choice though when it is making her so unhappy and think it should be an option only. She is already good at swimming and has no plans to incorporate it into her career. She is very good at most other sports. Why can't she do one of those if possible.

I am not a teacher but if half my class sat out each week I would see that as a big problem and I would be talking to parents and pupils to seek a solution not have the attitude ?its tough?. After all I have read somewhere in some government document that P.E. should be about confidence building, self esteem and enjoyment. It is failing on all three. No child will learn anything if they are mentally that affected. Why not give the girls the option to do sport they enjoy.

I am deeply disappointed that no one mentioned the word compromise and disturbing that people felt I should tell her she must do it and that is that. I think it is important talk to the teacher about something that is having such a profound effect on my childs mental well being. I find it all very strange indeed??.

I feel really let down by this group which I came to for advice not ridicule. I appreciate everyone has their opinion and that most seem opposed to mine however there are ways of voicing them without being nasty.

I will continue to support my daughter and work as best I can with the school to find a resolution. I will try out some of the suggestions made and hope that the school has a more modern approach to this issue.

quite bundle

with that, I am off to Morrisons. My hair is tied back today and I have no make up on. I hope no-one recoils in shock.

Formidablelady, I hope your dd is OK. I also hope that if you take her out of swimming then it's for the right reasons, which are imo because she hates swimming and the school say it isn't compulsory rather than issues she may have with other children afterwards. Please tackle the bullying independently of the swimming, your dd may be happier with her self image then anyway.

she's

suffering

because

of

the

bullying

NOT THE SWIMMING

ahem

agree with soupy re: singling her out will make her even more vulnerable

good grief.

i'm off swimming with dd tomorrow and i will take nothing with me but my towel(well dressing gown actually) and my cossie. i might possibly take a tube of moisturiser just to stop my face feeling all stretched by the chlorine.

my hair, very very curly hair, will be tied back. in fact. it will be tied back when i get in the water, and will stay tied back. i won't even take the band out and dry it. i never dry it anyway. i'm waffling. my point is...my hair does not control my life.

Tigerfeet. I hear what you are saying, really I do.

BUT, were you that confident at 13?

Did you tell them all to f*ck it if they didn't like it at 13?

If you were, great good for you - and I mean that - I know I wasn't.

My points in this thread are that I remember being 13 and being made along with my friends (who felt exactly the same) to do swimming and I hated it (Loved swimming! Still do - but hated having to do during the school day).

I'm still not an overly confident person now when it comes to appearence.

However, with age, maturity (& the same 'f*ck it' attitude as you) all on my side...I still think its unfair to enforce this situation on girls in their teens.

er I remember being 13

I wouldn't have dreamt of trying to persuade my mum to tell the school i wasn't going swimming. nor would I tell my dd's school that I wanted to exclude her from certain activities because of her hair

okay i cant help with the bullying and didnt read the original thread so this may already been covered. hair im good at.

she is getting bullied because her hair goes frizzy after swimming yes? redken do an mazing conditioner that should help tone down the frizz this one let her use it everyday after washing but as an intensive conditioner leaving it on for 20 mins once a week. it works better if you put a carrier bag over your head while its on to keep in the heat from your head as heat helps your hair absorb it. even after swimming her hair should be smoother

they also do a good leave in that she can use after swimming here or the all soft ends leave in treatment if you can find it

id also try french plaiting her hair on swimming days if you know how to do it/can get the hang of it. i nearly always frenchplait mine and dd1's if we are going swimming. keeps out of the way and will banish the frizz frenchplait

girls can be nasty little things when it takes thier fancy. id definately have a word with the school but if this is happening in the changing rooms after swimming i dont see how the school will be able to stop it. but these girls should at least be warned. imho i think stoppinbg her swimming will just make the bullying worse. they will start commenting that she cant swim because of what it does to her hair.

i knew a lot of redheaded girls in my school. some got bullied some didnt. the ones who werent were the ones who were most confident. so try building your daughters confidence. you said she does after school sporting activities but i dont know what they are. personally i think dancing and martial arts are great confidence builders.

oh and fwiw i dont take makeup swimming with me nor do i bother blowdrying my hair. i dont do it anyother day so why would i bother after swimming?

"How many people on this post would be happy to get in their cossies right now and come for a swim.....

....oh, and no hairdryers/make-up or jewellery for the rest of the day afterwards..?"

FFS we're talking about a child here who is at school - it's not an adult going to a nightclub.

You are encouraging a ridiculous obsession about her appearance rather than fostering a desire to join in.

And the real issue is bullying here, which you seem strangely reluctant to address.

Unless you're also joining in the trollery on the board?

And starting a second thread just because you didn't like what you heard on the first one is ridiculous.

At 13, I lied to my mum, told her I was having my period....had lost my costume...felt sick....had a rash...anything else I could think of...

It's not a simple as 'abot her hair'

Read between the lines

"How many people on this post would be happy to get in their cossies right now and come for a swim.....
....oh, and no hairdryers/make-up or jewellery for the rest of the day afterwards..?"

Me! And I do most days....and believe me I look DREADFUL in a swimsuit, worse out of one and have had nasty comments about my size from grown women in the changing rooms...but I still go!

What you should be doing is trying to formulate ways of making the swimming more palatable rather than absolving your dd of the need to participate.

Try the serums and potions recommended by other posters. Try coming up with quick ways of protecting her hair during the lesson. Buy her some goggles to wear over her contacts.

The fundamental thing you should be doing is if bullying is going on, get it dealt with, at the same time as building your dd's confidence. Taking her out of the swimming lessons will not boost her confidence. Teaching her to thumb her nose at the bullies will.

ilove - good for you!! Fair play (and I do mean that!)

ponderingthoughts

reading between those lines, I hear a mother who is teaching her daughter all about low self-esteem, giving into bullies, avoiding any difficult situations she may face in life instead of trying to work through them....

sorry i didnt know she had eyesight issues to they do prescription googles here and here

i am a google queen

I think your projecting your horrible moments as a teen too much onto your DD. We all had horrifying teen angst at one point.
My DD has tumours on her body I wouldn't let her off swimming or PE because of this, that would mean she is missing out on an enjoyable part of school. If somebody else has a problem with her tumours tough shit, I'm teaching her that it is their problem and their insecurities. It's bloody hard going and if the remarks don't stop or progress into bullying I go to the school and demand the pupils responsible are dealt with. My childs pastoral welfare is the schools concern when she is there and they are the one's who should stamp out any bullying or inappropriate comments.

I'm very sorry your DD is being bullied, I know how soul destroying it is, but I hope you can see there are worse things than frizzy hair.

If your daughter was to do another sport instead- where is the teacher going to come from? Don't know about your school, but in ours this would be impossible: there are simply not enough teachers to organise extra classes.

I do feel very sorry for your dd who is being bullied, but at the same time I don't think you are helping her. If she got let off swimming and the other girls didn't, they'd be angry and be even nastier to her.

My son was bullied at school because he was bad at reading. The school's solution was to deal with the bullying, not to let him off learning to read. Frankly, if they had, not only would he missed an important skill, but I bet you anything they would have started bullying him because he got let off. Instead, the school acted quickly, dealt with the bullies ashamed of themselves and helped the other children to stand up for my ds.

Incidentally, I don't think you're going to get far by hinting that most of us would feel terribly unhappy and unable to concentrate on our work if our hair was disarrayed. We wouldn't. To most people, work is more important than how you look.

You still have not explained why you think your daughter's hair is so central - would the bullying really stop if her hair looked tidy? - or, if this is the case, why you will not accept all the helpful hair care suggestions made by posters.

And if you think young children should have options, does that go for the rest of the curriculum too? Chances are that for every part of the curricuculum there will one child that hates it: they can't split every class into mini-groups so that the children are offered options. Who would pay for it? Another sport taught at the same time, means another sports teacher.

have read the other thread now and i see its very curly hair. redken do a fresh curls range. but i would still recomnd using the intensive conditioner i linked earlier. but the fresh curls leave in would be better at redefining the curls without the need for gel and lots of time. you can get it here honestly i sear by redken. i have tried loads of the best haircare products and none come close to redken. its expensive but well worth the money.

re the glasses look into getting some funky designer ones that she can wear on swimming days or get her to practise putting in her contacts so that she is quicker with them. you can get cheap designer glasses on the net.

honestly stopping her swimming will make it worse, i seem to remember being a rather nasty teen myself at times and keeping her away from swimming would have made me comment more. your dd needs to have more confidence in herself bullies target the ones who are most likely to be upset/react in some way.

How are half the class getting out of swimming!
Anyway, my feeling on this is that if you pull her out of swimming classes, the only thing she will learn is to run away from her problems.
That's not supporting her. How about a big hair band for after swimming?
I wouldn;t want to think of my daughter sitting watching the swimming thinking that her mother agrees that she looks so bad after swimming that it is to be totally avoided - you are siding with the bullies in doing that!

I went back and had a look at your original query because it had generated such a heated debate. I have to admit that I haven't been able to trawl through the hundreds of posts but I'm going to be brave and post on this thread anyway.

I think that there are 4 issues here:

Your daughter's appearance - take her to a hairdresser for professional advice regarding managing her hair. Her hair is always going to be red and curly and it sounds like she needs some help in managing it/making the best of her appearance. Make sure she has similar clothes to the other girls so that she's not singled out for this. She could keep her contact lenses in if she wears goggles for swimming.

Her self-esteem - this would be helped by the above & a decent swimsuit (if you have any discretion with this).

Bullying at school- is serious and unacceptable. This needs to be addressed by the headteacher. Some teenage girls can be vicious.

Swimming skills - are very important. Even if she is a strong swimmer, these sessions are good for improving her technique as well as having general health benefits. Personally, I wouldn't allow my daughter to opt out.

I'm not a teacher btw but I very well remember what it was like being 13.

Sort out the bullying issue because once she stops swimming it will be something else, her shoes, her cardigan, her lunch - are you going to teach her to give in to these people or bloody well stand up to them and make the school take some responsibility for her welfare whilst she is there.

By letting her off of the swimming you are also giving into these mean vindictive children and that is something that is bad as a parent - do something about the issue by all means get her to a decent hairdresser who can give her some advice on products and haircare but if you let her off swimming you are teaching her that she should modify her behaviour because of someone elses meanness and that is losing in my book!

Oh fgs - why start another thread: do you really expect different responses?

You are being totally ridiculous, you know.