Bullying daughter

[doesntmatterwhoiam]

I have namechanged.

I have just had a phone call from my dh who has been phoned by the headmaster.

My teenage sixthformer dd and a friend have been accused of making another girls life hell. She handed a note in today from my dd and her friend and it said basically 'you are dead this evening, bitch'.

I am shocked and horrified.

I know that there are problems in the class - that there are two distinct groups of girls and my dd is in the 'I'm so popular and so cool it hurts' group. I have talked to her and her friends having heard them talk and bitch about the other girls and 'how much they hate them'. I was shocked at the depth of nastiness and deep feeling and told them in no uncertain terms that 'there for the grace of god go I' and that they should be kinder and if they cannot bear the other girls they should just bloody well leave them alone.

I have heard my dd gossiping on the phone about this and talked to her afterwards - her supercilious attitude (she has been offered a cleaning job for pocket money by a neighbour and turned it down because she is too good to be anybodies cleaner; she sneered at my new pjs because they came from matalan) is unbearable and she and her friends think that they are just the bees knees.

What do I do? I will have to talk to her, obviously, but holy cow. I cannot beleive a child of mine is behaving like this. I am ashamed and angry.

The headmaster said he may well take it further (police,) and if it was my child being bullied I would be all for it. Perhaps she needs a short sharp shock.

She is too old for a bloody good hiding or stopping pocket money (can do this but will not hurt as has money in bank).

I can take away her mobile or laptop but it all seems so petty.

I want to shake her till her teeth rattle to make her see sense.

Reading the last comment makes me think that I sound like an evil cruel corporal punishment (thus learned behaviour) mother. NOt at all. Am just at complete loss.

Ideas please.

I agree with what the others say about changing schools.

I went through a very similar thing (though I was younger) but was taken out of the school and put in a much more 'rough and ready' one where I had to sort out my attitude sharpish and I thank goodness to this day that I was moved schools.

As some have said, some selective/private schools just become too cliquey and horrid.

Second dd in the house (similar age). We will not be out hours.

Will she stay in while you are out?

I presume you have done the lecture about how thoroughly ashamed you are of her and how this is a low point of your life, that the most precious thing in your life has become the most disappointing. How you feel that all the hard work you have put in to providing a happy home has been for nothing because you have produced a person who is flawed, who has no compassion and who picks on the weak. ect, ect?

Your poor knee.

I can't believe that she's 18 either, I thought she was 16 too. This sort of bullying is usually the province of girls much younger than her. I'd tell her that.

As for this:

'I apologised to C this afternoon in front of everyone without being prompted - but because of you I can't now go out to the reconcilliation lunch that she and her friends offered because YOU wont let me go out....'

She's getting lunch from them for being a bully? Nothing to do with you of course but it sounds like there is something a bit weird in their community if that's what ends up happening. Maybe she would do better at another school if these are the values that have been imparted to the girls. It sounds like you are dealing with it really well though, all the name-calling and stuff is her trying to pretend she doesn't care, but of course she does.

Yes, did all that and she just started yelling and shouting me down about how I was being unfair and that I should ring x,y,z 's mothers and they would say that I was not being fair and she kept sneering and shaking her bloody head at everything I said with a supercillious look as if I was scum.

Sometimes parenting teens is a divorce-type experience.

I don't think you should feel the need to namechange - this is not your fault, by 18 we are responsible for our own actions, you have clearly done right by her in the past and are determined to do right by her now. You are thinking through all the options and you have the support of your DH. You have no reason to feel bad - just angry and perplexed!

Call the other girls parents so that they know you are trying to do the right thing.

Tell her that you'll pull her from school - write a letter to the head and let her know that he has it and if she steps out of line again that is it, she's outta there. Also remove access to money that she hasn't worked for.

See how she likes it in the real world

go out - have nice time - get shitfaced

don't speak to her tomorrow.

can she drive?

At 18 I really think that the school should get the police involved. She is an ADULT!!! How does she think that people at uni or in a workplace would react if the threatened them and intimidated them?

At the moment she appears to be entirely protected from any real consequences that are significant to her and somehow this needs to be addressed.

I agree that not only is her treatment of the other girl outrageous but so is her treatment of you. I think that you need to address these seperately but together in a way ie have clear courses of action for bad behaviour at home and at school which are different.

Poor behaviour at school/repeat of any bullying = withdrawal from school and enrollment at local comp/college. I realise that you might be thinking that you risk messing up things for your daughter's education if you do this but these are the consequences of her behaviour and at 18 she is old enough to understand that bad behaviour at school could have repercussions for the rest of her life. Go along with whatever school suggest at the moment in relation to apologising to the other girl.

Poor treatment of you/behaviour at home leads to withdrawl of all priveliges. Stop doiing washing/ironing/cooking. If she is nasty to you then ignore her ehtirely. Resist the temptation to argue back/get embroiled in a slanging match as it sounds as though she would thrive on this. Give her no money. If her attitude continues to be poor, treating house like hotel etc then present her with an itemised bill each week and demand money from her to pay it. If this fails then take her key from her.

she's 18 and she thinks she's "too old for punishment" - she's actually an adult now and old enough for a far nastier kind of punishment than having her ipod confiscated --- that of the police/courts/etc. Does she realise that?

Agree with everyone, you are really going to have to go the ZERO tolerance route and NOW. I wouldn't even give her a second chance. As usual Custy's advice is brill.

I also thought she was younger originally.

You're doing really well, hope you manage to relax tonight.

Would it help to speak to the head? Presumably he/she has plenty of experience of little madams?

One thing that helped me to grow up (I wasn't in any trouble or anything though) was volunteer work - in my case with Downs syndrome adults. Since personally I wouldn't take her out of school, I might try something like that to teach her how lucky she is. (If you could somehow make her do it - not as a punishment for this, certainly, but as a separate issue once you have grounded her/ given her lots of talking to etc)

She may not realise quite how horribly supercilious she's looking - I do it sometimes without meaning to (or so DH tells me )

fab advice my custy
my dd was 13 last week and a supercillious bint

boys rock!

how are things today whoeveryouare?

been thinking about this since friday, then read she is 18!!! just who the fuck does she think she is? this behaviour is only just worthy of a 12 yo

i really would tell her to shape up or ship out, i haven't busted my balls being the best parent i knew how to be for the last 18 years to be let down, embrassed and publicly humiliated by some sneering little cow now!!

remind her that when kids get to be 18, we are getting our lives back on a firm adult footing, she can either join in, or piss off!! IF she can afford to! if not, grow up and BEHAVE

hope your dinner party went well BTW

ps. bollocks to a reconcilation lunch, a true and proper apology is the only way forward

Unfortunately, a lot of kids these days say a lot of nasty things. I blame a lot of it on TV imports from America which are full of smart-arse, one-liner put-downs.

I presume that DD is in Year 13. Don't ruin her education at this stage, don't move schools. But do tell her that, since she is an adult, she can sort out her own Uni finances.

However, if she does get expelled then you shouldn't worry about finding her a new college / school place. She got herself in this mess so it's up to her to sort out the mess

Has the school written her Uni reference yet? That should be a huge stick to beat her with, metaphorically speaking.

What PHSE type stuff does the school do? I agree with charity work to give her a better perspective on life.

Consider the impact on her sibling(s).

I really feel for you. It is a horrible situation because you feel that it reflects badly on you. Remember that kids are not 100% 'nurture', there is also an element of 'nature'. Keep your cool and show her how a reasonable human being behaves.

tHANK You all. She has lost mobile and laptop and is grounded for 6 weeks....

The sulks and comments continued all yesterday and she was not invited to eat at dinner party last night.

Have had sulky weekend but she is better today and actually came out of her bedroom and chatted and helped this morning and then apologised and we all talked after lunch.

She is still feisty - why the hell I cant just have gloriously submissive offspring I dont know - but realises that she will gain nothing by continuing the out and out conflitct and that she has ended up in a mess here and at school.

She is to go before a disciplinary hearing at the school (the third child implicated in bullying has a letter from her parents stating that they are against their child being at such a hearing as they don not think it is fair as the victim is n ot being heard at the same time ) and as a result of this hearing she will be on probabtion and needds to knuckle down and work and forget the bloody airs and graces. I actually do not know if the other girl - who apparently wrote the letter - is even being punished. According to my dd, they were all equally implicated - 6 of them, but that just dd and the letter writer were named by the victim.

Lets just hope she gets sorted out.

doesn't matter, just wanted to add my support. I was bullied at school - a tough comprehensive. Never took it further as I was a) mortified, b)terrified c)humiliated at the thought of teachers and parents geting involved. I used to have fantasies about killing the ringleader of the gang. As it was, I took an (unsuccessful, obviously!) overdose. I am not a weak person but at 16/17 it was all too much.

If my kids ever behaved like your daughter, I would do everything Custy and others have said. Show her this thread for starters.

Best of luck - you sound lovely

Incidentally, I am now 41 and until pretty recently, if I had ever had the chance to put a gun to this person's head and pull the trigger, without being caught, I would have done so. That's how much of a scar it has left

There are 4 girls going through the disciplinary hearing with this - dh and I are the only parents who have punished our dd.

well the victim has either named those two because they're the worst, the front-runners in the bullying, or possibly because they are the ones she is least afraid of (but I doubt the latter tbh)

I agree with showing your DD how disgusted most people (strangers but human beings) are with her behaviour and how differently others might handle it ...

I hope she learns a lot from this lesson

I am by the other parents and all of it really

Good on you for doing something to try and sort this out now.

The fact that the other parents are not punishing their daughters says to me that a) they probably are but their dd's are bigging it up infront of yours
b)It is no wonder that they have raised a pack of little bitches if they think that this kind of victimization is acceptable.

You are doing the right thing.

Apparently the other parents have said "it is a school affair and the school are dealing with it and punishing thme - the punsihmenet is apparently the disciplinary hearing.

She has gone stomping off to bedroom again - I asked her if the others were being punished and she went off on one about how unfair we were and she was 18 and being treated like a baby.

Give me whisky strength.