Hi all, thanks for taking a look at my post. I'll get straight into my problem.
My wife and I are both fairly new to child minding and my wife works in school as a lunchtime assistant.
Last week, one of the children my wife looks after in school, bumped their head and came to my wife for assistance.
During the course of a quick head survey she noted that the child was crawling with head lice. On returning the children to their teacher after lunch, my wife discreetly mentioned to the teacher that the child had a head lice infestation, and the teacher replied that this child "always had them."
The next day was red nose day and all the children came into school dressed up, again at lunch this same child approached DW to show off her outfit, DW complemented the child on their lovely outfit, no mention of the headlice from the previous day, all was well.
After school, and while my wife and I had picked up our 'wraparounders' and our own children(2,3,6,8,9), and walked to the local store, the mother of the headlice child had followed us from school and accosted my wife in front of all the children and all the people in the store, stating that (read in your best chavish accent) "Eh you... Mrs. XXX, next time can you not point out they've got nits in front of the whole class", now DW handled it well, and told the lady what had happened but she was dismissive and wasn't listening so DW ended by saying if she had a complaint to make it in writing to school, and not in front of everybody in the store and all the children present.
Chavvy little lady sauntered off having said her piece over to 3 of her friends with their staff dogs, who, it appeared she had brought along as support. (I realise as I type this how bad this area sounds but it's mostly lovely semi rural village up North.)
We all walked back to school to make a record of the incident with the head teacher and head of year and honestly thought nothing more of it than a minor over reaction on the parents behalf.
Today our eldest daughter came out of school and immediately told us that an older relative of this child had been intimidating and bullying her in the playground asking for DW's first name because her mum wanted to "invite her to a birthday party." To be clear we didn't even know who this woman was until the store incident. Our daughter being fairly wise, told the older girl she wasn't going to tell her, and was verbally and physically attacked because she would not divulge this information.
As soon as she told us after school tonight we went straight back into class and reported this as a bullying incident, and the teacher has undertaken to monitor the situation closely now she is in the loop.
I am considering calling the Police after the school advised that DW should, but feel that it is only 1 hour after the bullying report was filed in school, and that I may be over reacting myself.
Help me out fellow childminders, would you take this further or leave it in the hands of the school. I really want know what you would do.
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