If a kid is being mean to your kid, do you talk to the parents about it?
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Anonymous
I hate this "kids will be kids and some kids are mean" attitude. It's our job as adults to help kids learn how to treat each other! There is nothing inherently mean about kid/kid interactions, other than when parents refuse to care or get involved. Kids are just smaller, less formed adults. And if they are taught how to treat one another with respect and kindness and empathy, they will! |
Anonymous
NP here. Do you go to the kid's house after school for this conversation, or what? |
Anonymous
Are you even reading the OP? This is occurring in the classroom at school. Are you in the classroom at all times? But yes, I suppose this works if you directly witness the event. Most times that won't be the case and is not what the OP is asking about. |
Anonymous
It's probably more feasible to teach my kid to deal with mean kids than to help all the potentially mean kids learn how to treat my kid. Control what you can control. |
Anonymous
+1000 It never goes well and you never know if you're getting someone like the PP who thinks directly confronting other people's children is normal behavior. |
Anonymous
NP here. If you want to break up a playground fight PP, or address mean behavior you see in front of you at your house or in the neighborhood, please have at it. But OP did not see a kid being mean to her kid. She heard an account that allegedly took place in a classroom. Your experience isn't really applicable. |
Anonymous
(Knock knock) Is Billy home? (Billy comes to door.) This is Mrs. Smith, Fred's mom. I heard about what you said to Fred at recess today. If I ever hear about you doing that again, you'll be scared to walk out of your house the next morning. Something like that maybe? |
Anonymous
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When my dd was being bullied in 1st grade I did speak with one of the girls’ moms because 1) the school wasn’t handling it well and 2) she was a close friend and her child up til that year had been my daughter’s best friend since 3s. She was really grateful that I spoke about it with her and almost immediately the bullying stopped and her child apologized to my daughter. They are no longer close friends and the mom and I aren’t as close but we are friendly and have collaborated on a few things over the years. She’s not the friendliest person but we had bonded when our girls were small and we also had newborn second borns at the time. Her daughter now seems to be generally apathetic and unhappy and doesn’t have a lot of friends.
Her daughter was 100% the instigator along with the other girl - they are both nearly a year older than my dd though in the same grade and they were teasing her about how “babyish” they thought she was. Interestingly, the other girl who was mean to her is now a pretty out of control kid at almost 14, and her parents don’t seem to do anything to help her. When they learned about the bullying they asked if they could bring their daughter to our home to apologize to our dd. We agreed to it but it was super awkward and it didn’t seem like either the parents or child really cared. Fast forward to middle school (they’re still all in the same school) and this girl is sneaking out of school to smoke, stealing from other classmates and generally pretty self destructive behavior. Fortunately after some therapy and finding a new friend group my daughter is a super happy and thriving kid at almost 13. 8th grade may bring more drama but she’s been lucky in her friends til now. |
Anonymous
100%. If you ever approach my child directly to fix their behavior, you will be hearing from me and from the school, and I will be telling everyone else that knows you to avoid you because you are nuts. Totally inappropriate. It happened to me once when my kid was in preschool. The preschool ended up counseling that family out because they recognized how messed up it is to think you can approach a child and try to intimidate them based on hearsay from your own child. There is a 50/50 chance that your child is not telling you the whole story. And even if they are telling you the whole story, it is still not appropriate to get in the face of a child, when they see you as a stranger, and give them your advice on how they should shape up. Holy $hit. |
Anonymous
It is different if you are there as opposed to something your child reported to you. If I am there, I say something to the other kid directly. If I am not there, I contact the teacher. Other parents do not care if their kids are being mean; they only care if their kid is the "victim". |
Anonymous
| Ask child to tell teacher and ask for help. If it doesn’t work then email teacher. If it doesn’t solve the problem then email principal. |
Anonymous
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Really depends on the behavior. If it's just normal kid stuff and is low level (saying "I don't like you", teasing, excluding on the playground) I'd talk to my kid about how to handle and also make sure to do my parental duty and focus on their self esteem and make sure they understand that someone treating them badly is not evidence they deserve to be treated that way. That's just parenting stuff though. I view it as inevitable my kid will encounter people who do things like this in life (I'm an adult and I have experienced stuff like teasing and excluding as an adult even). You have to figure out how to handle it and it's part of my job to work with my kid on that.
But sometimes if there is a behavior that really is not acceptable and also where the teacher might have the power to do something, I might involve her. My kid had an issue in Kindergarten where another child kept touching her hair. They were not "being mean" but they kept coming up and touching my kid's hair and my kid said she repeatedly told her not to but the kid kept doing it anyway. That was an easy one where I reached out the teacher and did not even mention the specific kid but just said my child had reported being touched by other classmates (in a non sexual way) even when she'd asked that they not touch her, and asked if the teacher could just review the rules about not touching others without permission. The teach I think immediately knew what the source of this was and it was addressed in the classroom and the behavior stopped. Without singling out a child who likely had not been taught that you don't do this, and also without escalating an issue between my kid and another kid. That's where teachers can be really helpful. Don't drag them into some interpersonal drama between your kid and another student, but they have a lot of power to set baseline behavior rules and to remind kids about them. |
Anonymous
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No, don’t approach them parents. If it’s an issue in school then bring it up to the teacher.
A mom contacted me once when the kids were in elementary to say my son was spreading rumors about her kid. I told her I would talk to my kid, which I did. My son said they weren’t even close and he had also heard the rumor but that another kid was saying it. I left it at that and didn’t report back to the mom. What would was it to then blame someone else? None of us were at school when this was occurring. |
Anonymous
Plus, they might not believe you. Your kid might be wrong -- you're only hearing their version of events. And unless they are getting consistent complaints about their kid, why would they believe your kid over their kid? |
Anonymous
Like the Sopranos? 
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