Kids

Having a tough week with the kids. Emma has been having disagreements with her friends. They had to go to the talk room, or whatever it is called, at school to work through their problems with a teacher. Emma's teacher was kind enough to come and talk to me about it. She said that Emma had stayed very calm and argued her side well. The teacher was concerned that the two friends had rounded on Emma and were both complaining about things Emma had done and said. Apparently Emma had told one of her friends that she talks too much and had hurt her feelings. While I will admit this is not something a person would want to be told, if they are sitting next to each other in class and one of them is constantly chattering and distracting my child and giving her a headache I think she was within her rights to make a comment. Unfortunately friendship doesn't get easier just because you get older. I explained to her that I have moments too where I need to tell my friends to shut up and that the important thing is to try to do it in a way that doesn't hurt their feelings, although generally they will be hurt, you can minimise how much. So Emma has been a little sad and introverted this week because of all this stuff her friends have been carrying on with. I feel sad for her but I know that handling these situations is an important lesson and I can at least let her know that I feel proud of how well she has handled the situation.

Alex on the other hand is currently being bullied by some of the older kids at school. I was going through his room and discovered the bathroom scales under his bed. So we had a chat last night. I asked him why he wanted the scales in his room and he started to get a little sniffy and said that he needed to check his weight after meals to make sure he wasn't getting too fat. I asked him why he thought he was fat (while trying to keep my face blank so he wouldn't see I was feeling murderous towards whoever was putting that idea in his head) and he told me some of the kids at school had been calling him fatty and telling him to loose some weight and other lovely things. Upon questioning I discovered it was some of the older boys at the school and that he doesn't know who they are. We got to the school this morning and he was sobbing, he desperately didn't want to stay and wanted to come home with me. My heart was breaking and I had to push him off to class and explain the problem to his poor teacher who doesn't need this either. Alex loves gym and music, his first two classes for the morning and he was still sobbing that he didn't want to go.

Quite frankly I am not feeling very shiney at the moment. I know all children have their issues and all parents worry about their kids, I'm just feeling a little snowed under by it all at the moment. Hopefully next week will be a better week. If not, the school holidays are coming and I am looking forward to a bit of quiet recovery time.

Dan xxx