Here’s why I asked: Beginning of the school year a year ago, my daughter had two friends that are twins. One twin was in her class, one was in another class. School starts and I asked my daughter if she played with the twins. She said “No, because I’m not in the reindeer club.” I asked her if the reindeer is something that you have or something that you are. She didn’t want to discuss it so we dropped it. What I did know was that they didn’t want to play with her. Then the mom of the twins, who I am friends with, told me “it’s just a toy at Kohls, twenty bucks, you should get it.” So I did. I gave it to my daughter with instructions that since her other friend does not have one, she needs to include her, not like what the other kids did to her.
She told me the reindeer club was over. OK no biggie.
The teacher told me during the parent/teacher conference that she told the girls that was wrong and she did a hypothetical thing where she told them she wanted to be in the reindeer club and they told her you can’t if you don’t have the reindeer. She explained to them that you can’t do that, it’s not right.
My friend the twins’ mom told me someone snitched to the teacher and that’s how she found out. I told her it wasn’t me, my remedy was just buying the reindeer. I’m not sure who else was shut out as I am usually not talking to other moms much.
Recently I had a discussion with the twins’ mom on FB via private message, and we were talking about the new school year, which kids got which teachers, etc. We got into a discussion about the reindeer club. I told her how it was so upsetting to my daughter to be shut out of playing with these kids because of not having the reindeer. She said that she didn’t think there was anything wrong with the kids doing that. She said the other twin’s teacher found nothing wrong with it. I said the other twin’s teacher probably just looked the other way. The fact that our teacher (my daughter’s teacher) agreed and told them “you can’t do that” shows that it’s not right. The twins’ mom said that kids are going to have to get used to other kids having better phones, better handbags, whatever. I explained that it wasn’t that my daughter was jealous, it’s that it was sad that other kids wouldn’t play with her because of the reindeer thing.
I just didn’t understand how this woman, my friend, a grown person, didn’t agree that it’s mean to shut other kids out (like my daughter who was friends with her twins) because of not having this certain toy. I figured I’d bring it to Fluther and keep my opinion off for a while so as to get some opinions of the Collective.