A harsh punishment or fair enough?

BitterAndTwisted

It seems that after a discussion with the children about being unkind to each other Child C paid attention and took it to heart. Child B intended to be unfriendly to Child A and has now been appropriately punished.

I applaud the teacher for taking appropriate action given the history. It's not always the intent that's important but the appearance of an action to another. Nine year old children should be able to grasp that, and if not, need to helped to.

Spendless

peachyprice wrote: »

Sorry, but the teacher has done your child no favours whatsoever. The other children will now see her as a child who can't take a joke and won't want to interact with her for fear of getting in trouble. The worst part of it is, it wasn't even your child who told the teacher but she's the one who's going to suffer for it.

I would be more concerned about this if today wasn't the last day of term and next year, my DD is going into 1 class with her friend and several others and the rest of the children she has had probs with are going into another class. For me I am thankful that my DD is away from this set of kids, but I do think it would have been intheir best interest to seperate the group up, or at least to remove the ring-leader into a different class. It wouldn't surprise me to hear next year that they have just selected another victim.

peachyprice

Spendless, you know the children involved, what is the most likely scenario?

Child B wasn't being malicious and meant it as a joke/was part of the game and child C has interfered because she was left out of child A and B actually getting along.

OR

Child B was being deliberately nasty to your child and child C stepped in to defend your child.

I don't think any of us are qualified to say that child be was being deliberately mean or that child C was being super nice as we don't know those involved but those of us with daughters know only too well that 9yo girls are sometimes the devil incarnate.

peachyprice

Spendless wrote: »

I would be more concerned about this if today wasn't the last day of term and next year, my DD is going into 1 class with her friend and several others and the rest of the children she has had probs with are going into another class. For me I am thankful that my DD is away from this set of kids, but I do think it would have been intheir best interest to seperate the group up, or at least to remove the ring-leader into a different class. It wouldn't surprise me to hear next year that they have just selected another victim.

I'm glad that she'll be away from the gaggle. My DD was in the same situation as your DD, she hasn't been in the same class as the ringleader since the end of year 3 now, for which I am eternally gratreful, that was one nasty piece of work, and still is.

GobbledyGook

I would speak to the teacher personally to find out exactly what happened because something doesn't sound right.

There's no way Child B should have been punished for something that happened with Child A without the teacher speaking to Child A. That's really bad form on the part of the teacher. If they were playing together and having fun then getting in trouble will just make children less likely to want to play with Child A if they get in trouble even when they are playing.

I'd want to clarify that Child B was punished for that incident, why the word of Child C was taken as gospel to it being an issue and why the teacher didn't speak to Child A.

If the teacher believes that Child B was being cruel to Child A then s/he should have spoken to Child A, even if she was happy to take Child C's word for the incident s/he should still have spoken to Child A.

Sounds like a poorly handled incident all round with the teacher possibly/probably being over protective of Child A due to previous incidents. I'd want clarification so that it was clear that it wasn't Child A who complained. Over-protectiveness on the part of the school could see A as isolated as bullying did.

Spendless

peachyprice wrote: »

Spendless, you know the children involved, what is the most likely scenario?

Child B wasn't being malicious and meant it as a joke/was part of the game and child C has interfered because she was left out of child A and B actually getting along.

OR

Child B was being deliberately nasty to your child and child C stepped in to defend your child.

I don't think any of us are qualified to say that child be was being deliberately mean or that child C was being super nice as we don't know those involved but those of us with daughters know only too well that 9yo girls are sometimes the devil incarnate.

I really, really don't know and it was part of the reason I posted to see if I could clarify my thoughts. DD's freind has been on holiday and so she started to play with Child B but I was aware she was 'wary' of her given their past history. If I was asked to think in which way DD viewed it, I would come down on the side of she felt Child B was doing it to 'set her up' to make fun of her, but I can't honestly answer from Child B's pov.

Child C flits betweeen the 2 groups. I'd not thought of it being a power struggle till gravity mentioned it and as I'm aware she is the mother to several children I take her opinion onboard as another angle to consider.

I don't have any intention of mentioning it to teacher(I know you didn't ask me that). The school year finishes in 30 mins anyway

londonsurrey

Spendless wrote: »

I don't have any intention of mentioning it to teacher(I know you didn't ask me that). The school year finishes in 30 mins anyway

If I were Child B's mother, I'd just tell her to stay away from Child A.
It seems as though you don't think Child B did anything wrong, but don't intend to set the record straight with the teacher either.

piglet74

sorry if i missed it, but how do your and ur hubby disagree with the punishment?

Dunroamin

Oh dear, I thought that the punishment was too lenient.

Spendless

londonsurrey wrote: »

If I were Child B's mother, I'd just tell her to stay away from Child A.
It seems as though you don't think Child B did anything wrong, but don't intend to set the record straight with the teacher either.

There's 10 minutes left of this year. From September they are all in different classes. Even if I was to seek teacher out tonight - which I can't do as I have to take my Gran to a gp appt about her dementia which is a higher priority than the squabbling of 9 year olds -she can't rectify the merit points or anything - school's out for summer.