Reply to Mean girl behavior in 1st…. Tricky situation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree with the poster who said she is 6 and to tread lightly and assume she is learning. 6 year olds can do really dumb things and not always intend to be mean, they need help to learn. Also remember that 6 year olds aren't always the best reporters so keep in mind that you don't know what may have happened before and after on your daughters end. I'm not saying give a pass to the mean behavior, it sounds like your daughter was upset. But remember that sometimes these situations can be more complex and it is really easy to assume our kid would never be a part of it.

We have a neighbor two doors down and have had to navigate some things like this when the kids weren't getting along that great. But it wasn't just one of the kids, both were kind of engaging from what I saw. I mentioned to the other mom that the kids had been like oil and water lately and we talked about things that might help them. Even though I thought her child was being kind of mean at times, I recognized it was a bigger thing in their relationship and not this kid being a mean kid. I talked to my own child about some strategies and both parents worked to give them a little space from each other in terms of hanging after school and stuff. Things got way better again after that.

I would give your daughter some tools to respond. And ask her how she wants to handle it. And if I could, I would bring it up to my friend in a way of like hey the girls seem to be getting into it recently, DC was crying the other day because maybe they were fighting and your DC may have said x. Have you heard anything?

Don't make it about just your daughter did x wrong or is a mean girl. That obviously will not go over well. Let's be real, no 1st grader is a mean girl so just stop there. They are little girls, who can be mean, because they hear big kids or whoever being mean and they are trying to figure it all out. [/quote]

+1, especially because of the report that the girl "runs hot and cold." This is so normal in this age! My DD will tell me she hates and I'm the worst mom because I won't give her a second dessert, and then literally an hour later be cuddling with me in bed and telling me I'm the best and she loves me. She's just articulating her feelings in the moment without much filter and nothing she says is meant as a permanent judgment. When she uses hurtful words (like hate, or labeling people as bad or mean) we push back and say it's fine if she's not happy but that hate is a strong word and that we label behavior but not people. It's a work in progress.

She has also complained of feeling like other kids at school are "mean" at times, but when we explore it a bit, often it turns out that it's similar to what I'm describing in my own DD -- they aren't bullying her even being nasty to her, but they sometimes express negative feelings to her and she takes that as them being mean. She'll also call a teacher mean if the teacher doesn't just let her do whatever she wants. We keep explaining that people setting boundaries are not mean, and that DD might not love everything other people do but that is different from disliking other people. Again, work in progress.

I'd also caution talking to the other mom without thinking very hard about whether there is actually a problem here. Please recognize that if you approach the other mom from the perspective of her DD being the problem, she may very well flip it around on you. Are you ready to hear what her DD says about your DD after school? You might be surprised to discover that the complaints go both ways -- they very often do.[/quote]

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