"Mean Girls"

[Anonymous]

We have a situation where a mom buys the teacher gifts in order to enhance her child's standing in the class. She also very much tries to re-enact "Mean Girls" by friending only certain moms and slyly slighting kids she percieves to be brighter ( or whatever arbitrary trait here). Has your child ever been in school with a "bully" mom? How did you keep things on equal footing for your kid? Please, Mean Girls, refrain from answering, we've had enough negative this year! Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Have you already tried to ignore the bully? Tell your sweet daughter how we really feel sorry for people like that.

[Anonymous]

And rest assured that teachers read right through gifting like that. Well, good ones do anyway!

[Anonymous]

OP here - Even the good teachers seem too nice to not appease - unfortunately! Should I just request a different class? What if the option is not possible? FYI, MG's kid is time consuming, which is why she tries to monopolize the teacher....

[Anonymous]

just playing devil's advocate here, which i don't usually do. is there any chance that she might realize her daughter is high-maintenance (or gasp - a brat) and feels bad about it so she's trying to butter up the teachers a bit so they won't hate her kid? sort of like when you go to a restaurant with infants or toddlers and you feel bad for the waiter so you give them a big tip? (i was tempted to buy my seatmate a drink the last time i flew with my daughter, because she was a little fussy. wanted to reward him for his patience.)

(or she might just be a mean girl. in which case, good luck!)

[Anonymous]

A tip is after the fact. Gifts beginning and/or throughout the year could be easily construed as bribery. As in: please, be extra nice to MY kid.....

Trust me, I don't think many parents realize if their kid is a brat!

[Anonymous]

What kind of gifts are we talking about here? Is it something for the whole class, like a box of goldfish crackers or some stickers that were on sale at Target? I would think that the schools should have policies in place about accepting expensive gifts from parents, no?

[Anonymous]

OP here. If I didn't see it with my own eyes...
PP- thank you! High priced gifts....
I can see how this is unbelievable; especially since most (w/whom it is happening) would never find out it is happening in their own classroom...

[Anonymous]

Have you got any reason to believe this situation is actually detrimental to your child? If not, ignore it. On a day to day basis in the classroom, teachers aren't doling out attention based on whose parents did what for them. Too many other, more immediate, imperatives. As for the social situation, it doesn't sound like you'd want your kid playing with her kid, so being slighted isn't the issue. Any one else who opts in to this dynamic to the exclusion of your kid probably isn't someone whose judgment you respect either. So let it go. Pursue the relationships you want to encourage; ignore the others. If something's in your kid's face and requires explanation or intervention, explain or intervene.

There are years when I get the class roster and groan, thinking "ugh, all my least favorite Mommies." But, realistically, the behavior of the parents of other kids in a class rarely affects me or my DC directly.

[Anonymous]

OP here. What if it *does* affect your child - as in, your child is picked on as a "detriment"; in order to deflect that the "gift giving child" is really the *drain*? A primitive survival of the fittest situation?
The agenda for the gift giving parent (ggp) might be that, if (ggp) percieves your kid is throwing the curve, so to speak. To enhance her standing and diminish yours.....
Does this clarify?
How do you keep things on equal terms for your child?

[Anonymous]

Your child is picked on by whom? The teacher? The other kids? The mean girl mom isn't in the classroom.

And, ironically, she thinks she's doing exactly what you think you're doing -- trying to intervene in a way that gives her kid a fair share of the attention. Don't get sucked into the popularity contest dynamic. Advocate for your kid when your kid isn't getting what s/he needs, but what other kids get and why is not the issue. (Except maybe if you have an observant kid who notices and asks, at which point you explain.)

[Anonymous]

OP here. Since the mom's a troublemaker/bigmouth (she uses gossip to get *not keep* friends), the kids recite what they hear their parents saying - all negative.

[Anonymous]

Extend invitations to the kids/parents you want to socialize with and form your own relationships. If they won't accept because of gossip, then they aren't really people you want in your lives anyway. People who mindlessly spread dirt on other people (especially about kids) without even caring whether it's true aren't much better than people who manufacture this stuff in the first place.

[Anonymous]

We went through this situation. No gifts, but the mom would complain about other high-performing kids, including mine, despite the fact that her kid was a notorious bully to the point of kicking other girls in the shin and verbally bullying. We even have the brat on camera, when my daughter panned over to her at a school camp out and the brat was openly rude to my daughter.

What's the mom's end game? Does the school end in 6th or 8th, and the mom wants to better her daughter's chances for getting into the next private? That was our situation.

We generally took a low-key approach, laughing about it with fellow moms. Most everybody knew about the kid and the mom.

At one point we had a chat with a chat with a school administrator, after the brat had done something physical to ours. In fact, a serious event is probably a good entree, and you don't just look like a whiner. Then you can take the opportunity to vent bout other stuff like the gifts. You may find, like we did, that the school administration already knows all about it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. What if it *does* affect your child - as in, your child is picked on as a "detriment"; in order to deflect that the "gift giving child" is really the *drain*? A primitive survival of the fittest situation?
The agenda for the gift giving parent (ggp) might be that, if (ggp) percieves your kid is throwing the curve, so to speak. To enhance her standing and diminish yours.....
Does this clarify?
How do you keep things on equal terms for your child?

I notice that this is in practice during academic prize & award ceremonies at our school. Unfortunately, I've had to tell our DC that the award giving practice at the school is fake.