I think it was two days ago when my daughter started telling me about a boy in class who liked her. She was laughing and giggling as she told me so I was thinking this was normal kid stuff. She told me he asked her if she wanted to date and she didn’t know what to say to him. I told her to tell him she’s too young to date, so no.
Then yesterday she showed me a note. At first I just dismissed her thinking she was talking to me like one of her girlfriend and I don’t do that well. I told her again to tell him she’s too young but she got upset and said she didn’t know how too. She said she was afraid he would embarrass her and be mean to her.
I then took the note from her and became upset myself. He kept asking her over and over if she would date him, yes or no. She kept responding “idk” and “I have to ask my mom”. He told her he would take her to Jump Street and to keep it a secret. Then he drew a heart and said he liked her. She responded with, ‘awkward’. She said at this point she was going to write “no, I’m too young”, when her teacher caught her and she put the note away.
What upset me the most was him telling her to keep it a secret. What upset me most about my behavior was I almost did nothing even though I could see she was upset and she told me she had been crying over it. She tends to be highly dramatic and the whole thing was triggering me from my past hurts.
This morning I woke her up and told her we would go tell her teacher together. I wrote a note, and included his note, incase I wasn’t able to talk to her this morning. Well I was able too but still so glad I had written the note because I completely fell apart. We even asked my daughter to leave the room for a bit so she wouldn’t see me like that. I didn’t want her to feel bad for reporting him to her teacher. It was during this moment when I realized I have to teach her how to use her voice, which made me so sad but it also triggered me back to when I was a child and my voice was taken.
I told her teacher that my “Danger Meter” was broken from when I was a child and that I didn’t want to get the boy into any trouble if this was all just innocent, but that she was very upset by it so we wanted to come forward. She told me this student does have other issues and that the threat was real. This would be one more thing they will need to be addressing with him. She said she understood her being scared because he could be aggressive to adults too. She is moving her away from him, and he won’t be able to communicate with her. She’s going to inform her other teacher, principal and his parents about the incident as well.
I can’t tell you how proud of her I am. I told her she is an awesome little girl and boys are going to be attracted to her awesomeness too. But that doesn’t mean she has to be less awesome so she won’t attract this kind of attention. Don’t let them take your awesomeness.
Growing Faith 