The year my daughter entered first grade, her autistic friend from the year before had moved to homeschool. An eager six year old, she loved her new teacher and felt immediate comfort in a classroom with kids she’d known in Kinder and the two years prior in Pre-K and preschool.
Her smile lit up a room. Excitement and light followed her laughter. She was a big kid. Just weeks before school started, she jumped as high as she could in the ticket booth at her Chuck E Cheese birthday party grabbing as many tickets as possible. I stood at the table filled with my friends, her (few) friends, and our family watching my first little girl transition in front of me to a big kid. Tears fell onto my cheeks as we sang to her and she made her wish, then blew out her six little candles. Even through a somewhat difficult year in kindergarten, her spark was still bright.
That was then…
She and I spent a lot of time talking. My role as her mother was to let her know never to change who she was – unless she wanted to, because self-evolvement is necessary for developmental and emotional growth, but that’s a bit heavy for a first grader.
If she wanted to befriend the kids with the labels who didn’t fit the other boxes, she had my blessing… and I was proud. She was a good kid. Kind. Loving. Gentle. A great listener. I didn’t want her to fall into the same mold everyone fell into – even if they were good people too. I wanted to her be unapologetically herself.
Somewhere along the way, she accepted who she was but stopped loving herself.
The school year started, and she walked into her class with her new pink backpack and her new red glasses – the ones she’d picked herself. She was at a charter school, so the uniform was bland, but I secretly appreciated taking trendy outfits off the table. Trendy wasn’t her deal – unique with personal style – but not trendy.
My daughter’s peers remembered her. They remembered she was different. Weird. Not like the rest of them. They remembered they could tease her – and get away with it. In first grade, she made a new friend. She was a young girl who enjoyed my daughter’s company with no reason and no expectation. She was a friend. Emily. She was kind and playful. She smiled and laughed. She was a sweet friend.
Peer Pressure & Authority
That year of first grade, when learning to read should be celebrated and problems should be minor, a group of girls decided to tell my daughter they would tell the teacher if she stayed friends with sweet Emily. Week after week, they threatened to tell the teacher until, eventually, my daughter told her new friend, the only one she had, they could no longer be friends. Emily was sad. My daughter was sad. And neither understood.
Her mood shifted at home. She was somber. Stressed. It took weeks for her to tell me what they had said to her and even longer for me to realize just how serious she took them and their threats. I tried to tell her to let them tell the teacher. I tried explaining a teacher wouldn’t dictate who is allowed to be friends with anyone, and I almost hoped for these girls to tattle the sin of friendship to the teacher.
Worse, for me as a mother were the moments of my friends’ girls jumping into the group of girls supporting their bullying, teasing, and manipulations. Back then, it wasn’t my journey… today it’s also my journey, and I’m far more protective of everyone I love, including myself. I skirted around conversations with my friends, listened to one, in particular, tell me over and over how her daughter would be so bored reading the simple chapter books my daughter was learning to read. You see… the difference in me as a mother today and me back then is that I know now how to love myself exactly where I am. It’s one thing I tell people every day – love yourself where you are. Back then, I allowed another mother to say things that brought down my self-esteem, all while listening to my daughter talk about this woman’s seven-year-old who agreed with the group of girls in the idea that my daughter wasn’t good enough for friends.
This is the part of parenting that is hard on us all. From the debates in politics and religion to bottle vs. breast, crib vs. co-sleeping, cry-it-out vs. coddling… everything is a competition, and no one is safe from judgment. And sadly, young children are pulled into it as well.
In fact, this was the same year, I drove a few older girls from her scout troop to an ice skating rink for an event. While driving, I heard the older kids (maybe 3rd graders) asking my daughter how big her TV was and how many game consoles she had. Now, I could answer those questions, but at the ripe old age of seven, I never expected my kids to know the size of any of our televisions, and though we had a few game consoles at the time, I didn’t expect her to even know that term. She just knew when she wanted to play Mario, she could — on a TV with the Wii. 
The competition between children had begun, and this feeling of inferiority would follow her for the rest of her years through school.
It took months to convince my daughter to let me talk to the teacher myself. I’d hoped she’d be able to resolve it on her own. I’d hoped she’d challenge the girls right back and dare them to tell the teacher. I’d hoped she’d listen to her friend who knew the control the girls were taking from them both. I wasn’t a helicopter mom and didn’t want to swoop in. But she was sad… constantly… and kids were mean time and again.
As a mother, I knew. I knew having a friend was a good thing. I knew the teacher would support the friendship. I knew the girls’ scare tactics wouldn’t go away where. I knew they would never tell the teacher. Yet, somehow, they took her control away from her and convinced my daughter making a friend was wrong.
Navigating these social waters took up most of first grade. We were no longer in the stage of encouragement to be bold. Our relationship had shifted to empowerment.
My goal shifted: Empower my daughter to stand up for herself.
She was the kid with the label now, and ‘weak’ would follow her for years after she lost her control to a group of six and seven-year-old children who convinced her she didn’t have the right to have a friend.
Up Next: Size, food allergies, and boldness… all haunt the years to come
Until then…
Be well
~ Stella
Be sure to read the first part of this journey here.
Images courtesy of Canva Pro. None of these images are of my daughter or classmates.