Sunday, January 12, 2014

Tales of 4th Grade Drama: The New Girl


This week, before I could even ask about The Drama Scale, my daughter announced “We got a new student today.”  A million thoughts rushed through my head: it must be so hard to be the new kid, I feel so bad for her, I wonder if SHE was nice, I wonder if MY daughter and her friends were nice, etc.  To start I kept it simple and asked how is she?  My daughter proceeded to fill me in on some of the details of the day including her name, where she sat in class (next to my daughter) and other miscellaneous events and happenings from the day.

At one point during the day, a classmate said to “The New Girl” (TNG) was “You don’t really smile a lot” to which she replied “Maybe you should get to know me before you judge me.”  (Touche’ TNG, good answer.)  My daughter and I talked about that a little bit and we agreed that it must be really hard for her to come to a new school.  She agreed that she would continue to be nice and friendly to TNG to get to know her better.

The next morning we talked about TNG briefly and off she went to school.  Before the car door was even closed I started hearing about her day.  TNG had accused my daughter of copying off her paper during a class project about future occupations.  (Both girls chose the same occupation, one that my daughter has talked about on numerous occasions.)  I assured her that her teacher knows her well enough to know that she would have chosen that occupation on her own and she shouldn’t worry about the teacher believing the accusations of TNG.

As those of you with girls know, the stories did not stop there. Throughout the week we talked about many different situations and I have to admit, I struggled to find the right words for each.  I expected that our talks would relate more to my daughter’s established group of friends isolating TNG.  However as the week went on, we talked more about the best way to react to her strong personality without resorting to being mean right back.  We also talked about how learning to get along with people is not just something that you do in school, but that you also have to do it at work.

I’m probably over thinking this just a little.  I know that my daughter is going to have to go through these experiences herself to fully understand.  I can’t do it for her, but hopefully some of the things that we’ve talked about will stick with her and help her through.

Heart-FULLy yours, 

Kacey

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