Would you say something?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your child should have stopped with pointers and suggestions and not done any of the work. That is the lesson for your child.

This. The lesson is that your DD, by being a pushover, has been helping your friend's child cheat on homework and now a competition. Your DD needs to stop abetting cheating.

That’s interesting because a couple of posts above she was referred to as a terrible and selfish friend for not helping.

The OP did not paint a complete picture at the beginning of the thread which makes it hard to actually judge the situation. That is on the OP. I would guess that if the latest post about what happened had been the first post, the OP would have received different answers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s no mention on what the help consisted of. If the other kid spends weeks working on her essay (at least according to your posts) and your child ‘helps’ by bouncing off some ideas and doing minor edits, then there’s no need for additional thanks and acknowledgements. From the other child’s point of view, if the help was coming from her own parents, it would be odd to bring that up multiple times. In fact it would be more appropriate to not mention it at all since the contribution is very small.

You don’t know the full extent of how work was divided in the project and the actual impact your child help was in getting the award. It seems to me you could be overestimating it, and you only go by your possibly biased and jealous opinion if your DD.

I think the lesson you need to teach your child is that sometimes she needs to help people without expecting anything in return and just be happy for her friends success. It seems that being selfish may be the issue why she can’t make friends.

This post is rude and useless. Goodbye.

It is actually a pretty thoughtful and helpful post...until the last sentence. PP really undercut her point at the very end.

The family friend of many years is asking the daughter of the op for help with a project. The friend is ignored several times until she is reluctantly ‘assisted’ whatever that means. After the friend wins an award the daughter is upset she is not thanked publicly enough and her help acknowledged, essentially asking to undermine and understate the contribution and merit of the actual author of the essay. I’m sorry but to me this is a terrible personality trait of selfishness, being self centered and self absorbed and overall being an truly awful friend. By middle school these kids should at least know how to navigate these social interactions, and show some empathy. I don’t think age is a valid excuse. I maintain that this kind of behavior would make it difficult if not impossible to form genuine relations and strong friendship bonds with her peers.

OP here. Where did I say DD should have been publicly acknowledged? There was zero expectation of that. I was upset that DD was not acknowledged privately at the time she gave the assistance which was many months before the actual award. Here’s how the situation evolved. DD was asked for assistance for what she thought was a school assignment. DD read through essay quickly, pointed out a few changes and said it was fine. Friend kept asking for more assistance. DD then looked it over more critically and spent hours on it. At the time DD asked me what she should do because she felt like it needed a lot of work in it’s current state. I said pointers and suggestions were fine. DD tried to do that but other kid just didn’t understand what DD was trying to explain. Finally, DD fixed all of the grammatical errors of which there were many and rewrote portions because it was less time consuming. Other child repeatedly emphasized that she was trying to meet a deadline. She was not interested in doing the work herself. The situation was more complicated due to the fact that we are friendly with family. Later, when DD found out about the award she mentioned it to me in passing. She was not upset about the award but I think she realized that maybe she assisted too much. My response was “well, I’m sure she appreciated your help and maybe you need to handle differently next time”. DD said no. I asked her what she meant and she showed me the text convo. DD was not lying. I didn’t think much about it until parent of friend started talking to me about it. I’m certain parent doesn’t know anything. One thing I left out. In the past this same child would ask for assistance with her math homework. She showed DD the answers to the problems and asked if DD could double check them. DD said sure and solved all the problems. DD found out that the other child was simply looking up the answers online but she needed the actual work my daughter was providing. Once DD found out she said she was happy to explain but other child needed to learn how do the problems herself or it would hurt her in the future. This is not a good pattern of behavior. DD may be naive but she is the opposite of selfish. I want her to help others and she often does but I don’t want her to be a doormat.

There seem to be some inconsistencies in your story. First, the daughter has a hard time making friends because kids try to take advantage of her academic prowess and get her to do their homework etc. Then, in this retelling of the essay story she really goes out of her way to help. That’s only after some posters outlined that minor help with pointers and edits may not have been that critical for the award. What you are describing is your child essentially helping a cheater and being a cheater herself. Now you are upset the other child didn’t thank her enough for being a cheater together. You definitely seem to have some very questionable parenting priorities. First thing to do is to have a conversation with the daughter about honesty and integrity.

I have my doubts the new story is true. Usually an award winning essay isn’t something that you ask your friend to write, it needs to come from inside the authors experience and it’s really easy to tell when a genuine voice is coming through. Then you are saying a middle schooler would spend hours and hours of intense work just to help a friend that she didn’t want to do it in the first place. I don’t know all the details, but I know teenagers, the likelihood of this happening is vanishingly small.

Whatever the true story, you are relying on second hand information. You weren’t there to witness the conversations and the actual work being done, and you don’t know what was actually submitted to the competition. A lot of what you know comes from the perspective of a teenage girl, which I’d take with some dose of skepticism given that many of there relationships are tinged with competitiveness, jealousy, and desire to please the parents.

Last, this whole story seems to be mainly a you issue. You are the one grated by the lack of appreciation, the boasting of the other parent, the digging through your child texts, the investigation of what happened, etc. To answer you original question, you don’t say anything to anybody.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your child should have stopped with pointers and suggestions and not done any of the work. That is the lesson for your child.

This. The lesson is that your DD, by being a pushover, has been helping your friend's child cheat on homework and now a competition. Your DD needs to stop abetting cheating.

That’s interesting because a couple of posts above she was referred to as a terrible and selfish friend for not helping.

That's because there is no good scenario for the OP's daughter. Either the help was small and she looks petty for wanting extra gratitude, or she wrote the essay instead of the friend and they are both cheaters.

[Anonymous]

You can think what you want but the story is true. Kids who are quiet, kind, approachable and bright are often asked for “help” from less motivated students. It’s very common. DD is learning how to navigate this type of thing and she doesn’t always get it right. I know adults who struggle with this so why would a tween respond perfectly? I have no idea why this struck a nerve with you but I have my suspicions. Have a nice day!

[Anonymous]

OP, you really go out of your way to portray your daughter's friend in a bad way. By your account she's not capable of writing the essay, doing her math homework, ungrateful, cheater not very bright, taking advantage of others etc. You mentioned your child has difficulties in making friends and at the same time you seem to be overtly critical to one she has. Maybe the issue here is not how thankful the friend is, but rather your own perception and approval of the relationships your DD has.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can think what you want but the story is true. Kids who are quiet, kind, approachable and bright are often asked for “help” from less motivated students. It’s very common. DD is learning how to navigate this type of thing and she doesn’t always get it right. I know adults who struggle with this so why would a tween respond perfectly? I have no idea why this struck a nerve with you but I have my suspicions. Have a nice day!

It's the first time I hear that bright students being asked for help by unmotvated students is both common and an issue. Hope your DD won't be bothered again by her friends so she can focus on pleasing her mom.

I'd sugest you demand the other girl admits that the award actually belongs to your daugther because it's a fact she wrote the essay. If she doesn't budge, you write a letter to the award committee detailing what happened and include the text screenshots to prove it is true. You aso go to the 'boasting' mom to put her in her place and tell her pride in her child accomplishment is totally misplaced as evidenced by your daughter doing the work and the countless examples of her being a terrible person. Anthing less, your daughter was treated poorly and you didn' stand up for her. In the future you need to protect her from less motivated students, so she can only make friends with kids having GPA's greater or equal to that of your DD's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can think what you want but the story is true. Kids who are quiet, kind, approachable and bright are often asked for “help” from less motivated students. It’s very common. DD is learning how to navigate this type of thing and she doesn’t always get it right. I know adults who struggle with this so why would a tween respond perfectly? I have no idea why this struck a nerve with you but I have my suspicions. Have a nice day!

It's the first time I hear that bright students being asked for help by unmotvated students is both common and an issue. Hope your DD won't be bothered again by her friends so she can focus on pleasing her mom.

I'd sugest you demand the other girl admits that the award actually belongs to your daugther because it's a fact she wrote the essay. If she doesn't budge, you write a letter to the award committee detailing what happened and include the text screenshots to prove it is true. You aso go to the 'boasting' mom to put her in her place and tell her pride in her child accomplishment is totally misplaced as evidenced by your daughter doing the work and the countless examples of her being a terrible person. Anthing less, your daughter was treated poorly and you didn' stand up for her. In the future you need to protect her from less motivated students, so she can only make friends with kids having GPA's greater or equal to that of your DD's.

Please go get some therapy.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the pp but only regarding contacting the award committee. No need for drama with the friend and her mom. I don’t think the other girl winning the award is fair to the 2nd placed student who would have won the award if the op dd’s was not there to help with the writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can think what you want but the story is true. Kids who are quiet, kind, approachable and bright are often asked for “help” from less motivated students. It’s very common. DD is learning how to navigate this type of thing and she doesn’t always get it right. I know adults who struggle with this so why would a tween respond perfectly? I have no idea why this struck a nerve with you but I have my suspicions. Have a nice day!

It's the first time I hear that bright students being asked for help by unmotvated students is both common and an issue. Hope your DD won't be bothered again by her friends so she can focus on pleasing her mom.

I'd sugest you demand the other girl admits that the award actually belongs to your daugther because it's a fact she wrote the essay. If she doesn't budge, you write a letter to the award committee detailing what happened and include the text screenshots to prove it is true. You aso go to the 'boasting' mom to put her in her place and tell her pride in her child accomplishment is totally misplaced as evidenced by your daughter doing the work and the countless examples of her being a terrible person. Anthing less, your daughter was treated poorly and you didn' stand up for her. In the future you need to protect her from less motivated students, so she can only make friends with kids having GPA's greater or equal to that of your DD's.

Please go get some therapy.

Laughter is the best medicine, thank you for the generous dosage.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I'd slip in there somewhere "I'm so glad Sarah was able to help Maria win this award, I know they worked really hard on it!" or you want to be a little snippy, say "Maria was a little upset that Sarah didn't give her any credit for her help, but I told her that I'm proud of her for helping a friend who needed assistance and SHE should be proud of Sarah for knowing her strengths and weaknesses and working hard to win this award."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, you don’t say anything. If you do, you come off looking like a crazy tiger mom.

because you maybe are a crazy tiger

Nope. I have never hired tutors or enrolled DD in prep classes. DD didn’t compete in this contest and isn’t interested in academic competitions in general. I just want DD to be treated with some respect by a supposed friend. I’m also personally displeased that the mother has mentioned several times to me when I know the truth. I’m a very honest person and I guess stuff like this just bothers me more than others.

"Maria's really pleased that she was able to help Sarah with X, Y, Z on this report, she feels like she won a tiny part of the award too, our girls are so awesome, aren't they?"

[Anonymous]

Both comments are great, funny with a little bite. I’d turn it more into a joke and say that your DD is trying to earn her own money and next time she will charge an affordable consulting fee. Pure comedy gold!