If you left a private school because of bullying or exclusion, what was the tipping point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dealing with some issues at a small religious school. Kid says she can “survive” another year but I’m ready to pull her out. There’s no physical bullying but dealing with a small group of really insecure and insensitive girls who go out of the way to to be especially cruel to my daughter and one another. They are 10.

Call the school and the parents of girls involved. Sounds like you have nothing to lose. If it doesn’t help or makes it worse pull her and reach out to other schools. It is to the Bullies’ advantage to stay silent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dealing with some issues at a small religious school. Kid says she can “survive” another year but I’m ready to pull her out. There’s no physical bullying but dealing with a small group of really insecure and insensitive girls who go out of the way to to be especially cruel to my daughter and one another. They are 10.

Call the school and the parents of girls involved. Sounds like you have nothing to lose. If it doesn’t help or makes it worse pull her and reach out to other schools. It is to the Bullies’ advantage to stay silent.

Call each parent and tell them what their daughter is doing.

[Anonymous]

We left NPS for this reason. The director looked at my sobbing child and said, "She seems happy to me." Later in the conversation she suggested that the school doesn't have bullies and it was all in my daughter's head. We were done after that conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dealing with some issues at a small religious school. Kid says she can “survive” another year but I’m ready to pull her out. There’s no physical bullying but dealing with a small group of really insecure and insensitive girls who go out of the way to to be especially cruel to my daughter and one another. They are 10.

Call the school and the parents of girls involved. Sounds like you have nothing to lose. If it doesn’t help or makes it worse pull her and reach out to other schools. It is to the Bullies’ advantage to stay silent.

Call each parent and tell them what their daughter is doing.

The thing is, not including someone or ignoring them sometimes is not discipline worthy behavior. You can’t MAKE girls at this age include someone without there being some type of resentment. OP just needs to move her. For those who say all middle school experiences suck, that is not true. Our experience in private middle has been mediocre but our friends in our local public middle school have well adjusted kids with lots of social options - everyone has found a crew and seems genuinely happy. My DD only has one year of middle school left but I wish I had just sent her to our neighborhood W middle school.

[Anonymous]

100 percent what previous poster said. Plus it might make it way worse for your child to get the school involved. OP, move your child. To the extent you think she is getting a better education then she would in your local public, my guess is she isn’t. Who can learn optimally in a toxic environment? (Also, a bigger life lesson is not to put up with abuse. This is not the role you want her in and there are studies that suggest these experiences in middle school create long term problems for the victim and patterns in their relationships. Sadly not so for the dysfunctional bullies.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We left NPS for this reason. The director looked at my sobbing child and said, "She seems happy to me." Later in the conversation she suggested that the school doesn't have bullies and it was all in my daughter's head. We were done after that conversation.

The Pk-12 schools say this automatically too with the younger students.

Given how much they avoid talking and partnering with parents in lower and middle school, I imagine they won’t do a thing for an upper school student unless they were screaming bloody murder with public video feeds, text and email proof.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:100 percent what previous poster said. Plus it might make it way worse for your child to get the school involved. OP, move your child. To the extent you think she is getting a better education then she would in your local public, my guess is she isn’t. Who can learn optimally in a toxic environment? (Also, a bigger life lesson is not to put up with abuse. This is not the role you want her in and there are studies that suggest these experiences in middle school create long term problems for the victim and patterns in their relationships. Sadly not so for the dysfunctional bullies.)

^^^^^. All of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dealing with some issues at a small religious school. Kid says she can “survive” another year but I’m ready to pull her out. There’s no physical bullying but dealing with a small group of really insecure and insensitive girls who go out of the way to to be especially cruel to my daughter and one another. They are 10.

Call the school and the parents of girls involved. Sounds like you have nothing to lose. If it doesn’t help or makes it worse pull her and reach out to other schools. It is to the Bullies’ advantage to stay silent.

Call each parent and tell them what their daughter is doing.

I think this is a terrible idea that carries a great risk of backlash. What happens if the parents push back/deny/blow off their childrens behavior? And share this with the children? You are assuming the parents will be sympathetic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dealing with some issues at a small religious school. Kid says she can “survive” another year but I’m ready to pull her out. There’s no physical bullying but dealing with a small group of really insecure and insensitive girls who go out of the way to to be especially cruel to my daughter and one another. They are 10.

Call the school and the parents of girls involved. Sounds like you have nothing to lose. If it doesn’t help or makes it worse pull her and reach out to other schools. It is to the Bullies’ advantage to stay silent.

Call each parent and tell them what their daughter is doing.

I think this is a terrible idea that carries a great risk of backlash. What happens if the parents push back/deny/blow off their childrens behavior? And share this with the children? You are assuming the parents will be sympathetic?

Sounds like it can’t get any worse? She is considering leaving anyway. It could get better or could get worse. If a parent called me and expressed this I would try to help the situation. That doesn’t mean I would force my child to be BFF friends with her but I will do my best to help whether it was helping her meet other friends or bringing her into a larger group of friends to maybe make connections. I actually have done this before with other kids and it helped their kids by inviting them to larger groups and eventually they did find a pack. There are ways to help and I certainly would hope one parent out of the group would be willing to see that kid is suffering and try to help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dealing with some issues at a small religious school. Kid says she can “survive” another year but I’m ready to pull her out. There’s no physical bullying but dealing with a small group of really insecure and insensitive girls who go out of the way to to be especially cruel to my daughter and one another. They are 10.

Call the school and the parents of girls involved. Sounds like you have nothing to lose. If it doesn’t help or makes it worse pull her and reach out to other schools. It is to the Bullies’ advantage to stay silent.

Call each parent and tell them what their daughter is doing.

I think this is a terrible idea that carries a great risk of backlash. What happens if the parents push back/deny/blow off their childrens behavior? And share this with the children? You are assuming the parents will be sympathetic?

Sounds like it can’t get any worse? She is considering leaving anyway. It could get better or could get worse. If a parent called me and expressed this I would try to help the situation. That doesn’t mean I would force my child to be BFF friends with her but I will do my best to help whether it was helping her meet other friends or bringing her into a larger group of friends to maybe make connections. I actually have done this before with other kids and it helped their kids by inviting them to larger groups and eventually they did find a pack. There are ways to help and I certainly would hope one parent out of the group would be willing to see that kid is suffering and try to help.

I will add it sounds like it can’t get worse and if it does get worse I would pull the kid immediately. I have faith though that one of the parents would look at the bigger picture and try to make the situation better in someway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dealing with some issues at a small religious school. Kid says she can “survive” another year but I’m ready to pull her out. There’s no physical bullying but dealing with a small group of really insecure and insensitive girls who go out of the way to to be especially cruel to my daughter and one another. They are 10.

Call the school and the parents of girls involved. Sounds like you have nothing to lose. If it doesn’t help or makes it worse pull her and reach out to other schools. It is to the Bullies’ advantage to stay silent.

Call each parent and tell them what their daughter is doing.

I think this is a terrible idea that carries a great risk of backlash. What happens if the parents push back/deny/blow off their childrens behavior? And share this with the children? You are assuming the parents will be sympathetic?

Sounds like it can’t get any worse? She is considering leaving anyway. It could get better or could get worse. If a parent called me and expressed this I would try to help the situation. That doesn’t mean I would force my child to be BFF friends with her but I will do my best to help whether it was helping her meet other friends or bringing her into a larger group of friends to maybe make connections. I actually have done this before with other kids and it helped their kids by inviting them to larger groups and eventually they did find a pack. There are ways to help and I certainly would hope one parent out of the group would be willing to see that kid is suffering and try to help.

I will add it sounds like it can’t get worse and if it does get worse I would pull the kid immediately. I have faith though that one of the parents would look at the bigger picture and try to make the situation better in someway.

You have more faith in people than I do. This can get worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We left NPS for this reason. The director looked at my sobbing child and said, "She seems happy to me." Later in the conversation she suggested that the school doesn't have bullies and it was all in my daughter's head. We were done after that conversation.

The bully problem still exists at NPS and some parts of the leadership still act like it’s all in the kids head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We left NPS for this reason. The director looked at my sobbing child and said, "She seems happy to me." Later in the conversation she suggested that the school doesn't have bullies and it was all in my daughter's head. We were done after that conversation.

Wow. What an asshat. Anything to preserve the “everything’s fiiiiiiine” facade.

I’m sorry that happened to you. Hope your daughter is much happier now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We left NPS for this reason. The director looked at my sobbing child and said, "She seems happy to me." Later in the conversation she suggested that the school doesn't have bullies and it was all in my daughter's head. We were done after that conversation.

Wow. What an asshat. Anything to preserve the “everything’s fiiiiiiine” facade.

I’m sorry that happened to you. Hope your daughter is much happier now.

+100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can she be in a different class next year with different kids? If she is going to be with same kids for the duration I would switch too.

There are no other classes - it’s one class per grade.

OP, just curious, do you have other children at the school? We are in a similar situation with our fourth grade DD at a small school with just one class per grade. DD is really struggling socially and we’re considering public, but we have another child who has lucked out and is in a class with mostly easy going kids and seems to be thriving at the small school. Overall, I’m not thrilled with how the school handles mean kids so am tempted to pull both kids out. Just wondering if you’ve got another kid factoring into your decision.

This is our exact situation and I am wondering now if we are at the same school and the same grade even. Are your children attending a Catholic school in McLean? Our 4th grade DD’s class has several mean kids and the school’s talk through apologies approach simply is not making a difference. They say many of the right things but until they stand behind policies and remove certain children from the class nothing will change. Some, though not all, of those include children in families with a lot of presence in the school and parish and we are not naive to think they will do anything there. We originally applied out this year to give ourselves options next year if it seemed as though nothing was changing, and since it hasn’t we made the decision to move both of our children to another private next year.

It’s awful that these schools all talk about being strong against bullying when this thread suggests the opposite.