Discussion Board: March and April Letters to Susie

Hi Susie, I have a four (nearly five) year old daughter who is being subjected to some fairly insidious bullying at her kindergarten. The bully is quite dominant and basically just chooses on what terms she wants to be friends with my daughter. One day she'll be her friend and the next day not and then there's all the "you're not coming to my party" rubbish. My daughter is quite confident in her own right but seems to get sucked into this relationship and inevitably ends up upset when she gets dumped and has no understanding of why.

Anyway, my daughter is due to start school in about 6 weeks and the bully starts shortly before and of course they'll be in the same class at the same school. I was planning on talking to the school about the possibility of keeping them in separate classrooms - I'm not sure how much they can do though. But I wondered if I need to go further and perhaps find some child counselling to help teach my daughter some strategies to disempower this bully. My main concern is the potential damage this is doing to my daughter's self esteem which could effect her further down the track.

Does some sort of service exist to help kids with this?

Hi Negrita,

Many thanks for your message.

This behaviour is so common!!! - There will always be children that "test" others.

It definitely is a good idea to talk to the new teacher and explain your concerns.

Hopefully once this "bully" starts school she will be so busy and I'm sure will get put in her place by older children in the playground - she will be a small fish at school!

Keep explaining to your child that this girls behaviour in unacceptable and she needs to make friends with other girls who make her feel good about herself.

See how you go once your daughter starts school, if it continues you can talk again to your childs teacher and they can do "restorative justice" which is where the girls sit down together and discuss their feelings - how your daughter feels when this other girl makes nasty remarks etc....

Good luck and I hope it all sorts itself out!

Susie - Kiwi Families

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