Ok, so this is a longer story….
Since shortly before this past christmas break, Charis (12) fell in outs with the “click” in her class. One of the girls, who she had been friends with (had even spent the night here), stopped being her friend from one day to the next, because of a new girl who purposefully wedged Charis out of this group. Then they proceeded to make her miserable every day, writing notes, whispering about her, glaring, trying to get others in the class against her. With every girl Charis tried to hang out with in the break, they would start to be sugar sweet to her and monopolize her. It took weeeeeeeeks before I could get the school to do anything. Finally there was one talk with all the girls and Charis, and the worst of it stopped. Still, this group of girls dominates the class and is totally prissy about every little thing. Charis is not your wall-flower-I’ll-do-whatever-you-say-just-so-I-can-be-near-you kind of girl, so she keeps getting in the line of fire.
She has been asking for a long while now if she can switch to Jonathan’s school, but I haven’t really entertained the idea, until I spoke with a mother recently, who did switch her daughter, and was glad she did. So, I called the Principal to see if he could give me some kind of reason to keep her at the school… some assurance that they would finally take the problem seriously… ha! “Problem? What problem? That is just Charis’ side of the story… no one else in the class seems to have a problem. It’s a normal class and none of the teachers has mentioned that there are any problems. It depends on how you define “fighting”…. bla bla bla!” Basically, he wanted me to know that it was my problem and not his.
Anyway, that very day Charis comes home in tears…. this little prissy brat (sorry, but I’ve still got my fangs and claws out!) was screaming at her in sport class, because Charis fouled her, then threw the ball at her as hard as she could. Later, when Charis went to change, her new shoes had been stolen.
So, today, I went into the class (luckily at the same time the sport teacher went in to bring up the issue, and she let me in, and let me rant!!), and I told that class exactly what I thought of them. Especially this particular brat and the two girls who had been guests in our home, and now don’t give Charis the time of day. I also scolded the entire class for letting this little mouse of a girl intimidate them all… “just because she has a big mouth, you think she’s a lion, but she is just a little mouse! You should all be ashamed of yourselves that you let some of these girls boss others, and scream at Charis, and NOBODY does anything against it… but then talk about her (the brat and the click) behind their backs… how lame is that and cowardly?” By the time I was done, a couple of girls who I had targeted were in tears.
While I was waiting for the sport teacher and the girls were switching classes, and Charis came down surrounded by girls from her class, I asked her if she found it terribly embarrising, and all the girls started in “no way, that was great! finally someone speaks up and finally DOES something!” When Charis got home, she told me that a few girls came to her and apologized for stuff that had happened back at the beginning of 5th! grade, or finally told her why they stopped being friendly with her (one was hurt, because Charis hadn’t shown up to her birthday party (our bad). Some came up to her and asked if I was mad at them, because I was looking at them so intensly (I basically stared that entire class down to the size of pin head). and tonight Charis got a message on her school network from the girl who had screamed at her… half apology, half trying to get me not to call her parents. Her turkish friend in the class, said it was too bad she could never get her mom to do something like that, because she can hardly speak german!
Moral of the story: parents should be way more involved in what goes on in school!
But, the way it looks, we got the one and only spot that opened up for a seventh grade girl at jonathan’s school, and Charis still wants to switch, so I will make the call tomorrow to confirm it.
