Irene Wilde said:
I am worried. The school year has gotten off to a very rough start; there have been tears and hurt feelings and I truly wish I had some solutions for her.
She and I have a wonderful relationship and at home she's very content and happy. I marvel at her creativity and imagination and do what I can to give her outlets for them, even if it means the house is usually a disaster area. However, in order to resolve her issues at school, I have to be honest with myself about her behavior...her tendency to fixate on the subjects that interest her; her daydreaming...not that these are bad things, but they are things that other kids her age will single out and pick on. I don't want to discourage her creativity; I want to protect her sense of self-worth and help her defend herself from these criticisms.
From the time she's been in pre-school we've talked about how all children are different and not everyone is good at everything, but everyone is good at something.
Hi Irene,
My son went through something similar. When he first started school I encouraged him to express himself freely and pursue his interests, and he would sometimes wear paper hats to school or dress like a "detective" or bring an "inappropriate" book in or another project. He "sang" a whole book for the class once, like an operetta, at the prompting of the principal. Naturally, this eventually resulted in teasing and then bullying, when he was about 7-9.
If your child is being teased or bullied, the most constructive thing to do is validate the experience and teach her over time where it is coming from. After school take out a special notebook and ask her what happened that day, good and bad, and write bits down. Whenever there is something hurtful, discuss why it happened and whether there is a way to fix it. Commit to fixing the things you can fix. Discuss the options with her until you find one you agree on. (She might not want you to speak with the teacher, but might like a cooler lunchbox.) She will immediately respond to your support and even decide in time to take things on herself.
A couple of things I learned from this process:
--life is much easier for kids who conform at school, no matter what they do at home. An old lesson from Atticus Finch. Parents have the ability to counsel kids about this in a way that preserves their integrity, interests, and confidence.
--teasing and bullying comes from other kids' insecurities. It takes a long time to show this to a child, but you can. I often told my son that kids who tease and bully probably get bullied at home, so their lives are crappy and they are sad inside.
--being able to have a social give-and-take with people who aren't necessarily your friends is extremely important. This happens naturally at home in large families, but in small families the dynamics are different, so it has to be taught.
One thing I used to tell my son all the time is that the older he got, the more he would be spending time doing great things with people of similar interests. That time came around age 12. Now he's 14, and the kids he's with all day are involved in the same after-school activities like jazz band and theater, and are in advanced classes together. Things will definitely get better for your daughter, especially if she learns how to deal with antagonism.
You know, even the early-school teachers seemed to be constantly promoting conformity and dog-eat-dog playground tactics. They would say, "your son isn't fitting in." Well, of course he wasn't. We didn't practice Lord of the Flies behavior at home. It was so confusing for me at first. Why would they do that? Of course, to make their jobs easier. Let the dominant kids rule the classroom.
But then, all of a sudden, around age 11 or 12, his teachers did the opposite, encouraging individualism, verbal expression, special achievement, and he suddenly gained the respect of his classmates because he had those things. The part of my job that I hadn't foreseen was to teach him how to deal with the big, conformist, hostile world out there while holding onto his passions, a lesson never learned too early.
