Red head bullying

brighthair

I have auburn hair and have been bullied constantly for it, all through school. It's fine coming up with ideas but she WILL get comments. I'm 25, and still get things shouted at me in the street. Now I ignore it, but I know how hard it is when you're younger. Can she walk with a friend, and not these girls - why is she still walking with them if they call her names?
You need to tell her my favourite quote "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent". My Mum always says that if people pick on, or bully others, it's usually because they either don't have enough in their life, or they are reflecting their negative feelings about themselves on to others

patchwork_cat

She walks with these girls because no one else in her year goes the same way.

tonypop

What a bunch of little b*stards We should lock them and their parents away,and swallow the key!!:mad:

Curlywurli

Personally, from experience I would tell her teacher. I was bullied at secondary school because of my curly hair. It got to a point where even the boys would pick on me. I was called appalling names and hated going, even to the point where I pulled sickies. They made my life a misery and I still don't like the way I look now. My parents telling me how lovely my hair is didn't make a jot of a difference to me. I didn't tell my mum and dad for ages but I wish I had done. They pick on people because they are jealous of the way someone looks or their hair, but when this is happening to you you don't think about that. It still hurts now to be honest.

Mudbath

She'll have the last laugh! I'm strawberry blonde and I'm the only one of my friends who doesn't die my hair. Each year it just goes a bit blonder (probably the grey mixing in!!) but it stays a lovely colour. Big hugs to your daughter.

brighthair

patchwork_cat wrote: »

She walks with these girls because no one else in her year goes the same way.

To me, these girls (being the idiots they are) will see her as an "easy target" as in they can call her names, and she still has to walk with them IYSWIM
So she can either ignore them, say something to them, walk on her own, or take another form of transport
You could tell the teacher but TBH, it made little or no difference in my case. I can see my hair is gorgeous now (well apart from the curls!) but it isn't easy being different when you just want to blend in

LJM

i have red hair was bullied at school for it i am now 36 and my youngest daughter has same colour hair as me and people comment on how beautiful it is and how unusual it is to see someone with naturally red hair nowadays. and by the way one of the girls who bullied me at school was dark blonde and now she has dyed her hair red,talk bout pot calling kettle black. tell them to ignore her they are probably only jelous anyway

BitterAndTwisted

The thing is, the way young girls are, this particular allegiance may change with the wind and your DD will be "in" and someone else will be "out" before you can say "knife". And so it goes on

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

It wouldn't hurt to meet her on the way home a few times - irregularly, maybe mentioning that you never can tell whether you'll be meeting her or not. That way the other little baggages will have it put into their tiny minds that they could be caught at any moment. Checking whether she has a sympathetic teacher might be worth doing as well, rather than making a formal complaint at this stage.

DD1 says now (but never told me all this before now) that this 'tiny bit of teasing' that some people seem to think is good for the soul, actually was degenerating into threats of outright violence by the end of her time at school, all purely on the basis of her hair and skin colour.

By the time she was dodging scissor wielding harpies (no joke), the latest tabloid stories were about redheads being attacked and people finding it so very funny.

It doesn't matter how red her hair is - if it isn't blonde, black or brown, it must be red, and if someone else has noticed the red enough to remark on it, it's red.

So don't write it off as harmless characterforming behaviour. Keep an eye on it now, rather than potentially regret doing nothing later.

And hopefully it will all fizzle out as soon as they realise there could be better things to do with their time.

smartpicture

Both my girls have red hair (Irish dad!), and were called ginger at school. When I was at school, I got called ski-slope because of the shape of my nose. My brother got teased for his sticking-out ears, and their dad was teased for his accent. My point is, kids will find something different about you to pick on if they want to, because that's what they're like, and the sooner you learn to deal with it the better.

You need to know if this is teasing, which requires teaching your daghter techniques to deal with it, or bullying, which requires action by the school. I'd be inclined to suspect the former, because it's unlikely your daughter would be okay with walking with them at all if it was actual bullying, but that's for you to find out by talking to your daughter.

In either case, the number one thing for her to learn is to not react to it, because when there's no reaction it gets boring and there's less reason for doing it. She could try saying 'whatever' with a smile, or just changing the subject, or making a joke about it, or walking away, or turning it round on them - it depends whether she wants to stay friends with these girls or not. But no showing you're upset, no matter how you feel inside! You could try role-playing scenarios with her to practice how she will deal with it next time it happens, and those skills will stay with her for the rest of her life. My inclination would be to only involve the school if this approach doesn't work.