Question
I received a call from my daughter’s school reporting that she kept touching another girl's hair during PE. My daughter is in 6th grade in a new school. According to the school it was happening frequently and the girl asked my daughter to stop and she didn’t. They talked to both girls and their parents. My daughter cried and explained to them she was not being malicious and that she was just playing. I think she was just not able to control her impulsivity. The school claims it had been happening frequently and that is why they were calling me and if it kept going on it would be considered harassment and it would go in my daughter’s record. I talked to her a few times asking her to tell me what exactly happened. The only thing she would tell me was that it had NOT been happening frequently, that she did it twice (she got very upset when I said that school was saying it was frequent). Whenever I try to talk to her about this to get more details she gets upset and cries and says that she doesn’t want to talk about it. When I ask why she says it is embarrassing and uncomfortable.
When we first talked about that she said that the lesson for her was that she could only play like that from now on with friends outside school. How could I encourage her to talk to me about what happened? She usually opens up to me but not this time.
I tried again a few weeks ago and she reacted the same (cries “it’s embarrassing ok Mamae”) so I let go. I want to respect her but I also wanted to understand why it’s so uncomfortable for her. I know she was just playing and that she did not have ill intentions and I told her that (even the school said that to me). How could I approach this again? Thank you
Answer
Stop asking her about it.
It’s embarrassing because she understands she made a mistake.
She also already told you what she will do next time- only play that game with friends who consent.
Welcome to adolescence- we let go of knowing every detail of their life and only ask:
1- what did you learn from this?
2- what will you do next time?
She needs to work on problem solving by herself. This is an incredibly important developmental marker to
launch into adulthood.
This is so common I made a video about it look: