Relevant background: My (43F) daughter Becky (10) has struggled with leukemia since she was 5 years old (finally nearing remission, we hope!!). As a side effect of the chemo, she lost her hair.
She’s a bit self conscious (and found a wig to be very uncomfortable), but everyone at her school is quite supportive. She usually wears a baseball hat or beanie. She’s never run into any problems with other kids because of this until now.
My daughter wanted to go to a YMCA day camp this summer and her doctor cleared her. Of course, I signed her up. Unfortunately, there’s a clique of girls there that have been straight up vile.
My daughter came home crying the first day because the queen of this clique (we’ll call her Jenny) gave her the nickname ‘Lex’ (as in Lex Luthor; it’s comic book week) and wouldn’t stop when my daughter asked her to. I went to the counselor the next morning and pretty much asked wtf? He said that he talked with Jenny and the clique about it and they will stop.
They didn’t. It just got worse. They started a game of “steal Jenny’s hat and keep it away from her”. Counselor was some feckless teenage dude that did f^%k all to stop this. My daughter wanted to try and stay in the camp because she was making friends there who actually stood up for her. I decided to arm her with a bit of secret “adult” information.
Jenny is the daughter of a couple going through a nasty public divorce. I told my daughter that next time Jenny harasses her, she should tell Jenny that she is the reason for her parents’ divorce and that they both want to get rid of her. Probably not true, but certainly a devastating insult to a tween.
This worked quite well. Becky responded to Jenny with divorce slam yesterday, and it was super effective! Becky was beaming when I picked her up, Jenny was inconsolable, and the counselor looked like he had just come back from ‘Nam.
He asked for a sit down with us and told me I shouldn’t encourage my daughter to insult other campers. He said that Jenny was just stressed from the divorce and was misplacing her anger on Becky. I said that my daughter is going to stand up for herself, and I will continue to teach and encourage her to do so. AITA?
The kid with cancer can get picked on, but the kid whose parents are going through a divorce?! That’s too far! I’d report the counselor.
Yeah, like WTF didn't the counselor react the same to the initial injury like he did to the reprisal. If you're not going to protect the kid, you can't get mad when they protect themselves.
Sorry, but Becky is stressed from having a life threatening illness and doesn't like the added stress of being the target for Jenny's petty drama :(
Like, I get this counselor is just a kid himself and untrained to mediate problems between other kids, but holy crap. Defending the Jenny's actions isn't really the best stance he could have taken.
Jenny probably kicked up a fuss and had a huge meltdown when Becky clapped back at her versus since Becky is a nice kid when she gets insulted she doesn’t go into full meltdown mode. So the counselor is more upset at Becky because he had to deal with the meltdown.
NTA. You asked the counselor to handle it. They didn’t, so you went to plan b.
My 5 year old son was being made fun of by a kid in daycare. My son’s name is Lucas and the kid kept calling him Mucus. I pointed out to my son that the kid picking on him was named Cooper, which rhymes with pooper… Pooper, I mean Cooper stopped picking on him really quickly. I felt a little bad about it, but you’re definitely NTA.