growing pains

One day last month I woke up and it was "that time of the month".

(please insert whatever nicety you wish, my favourite is when my best friend told me she'd "got her monkey!")

I was a bit sensitive, a bit weepy and needed a bit of love. I am 43
The night before I had put my eldest daughter to bed and she was still my beautiful Disney princess. She is nearly 11.
 In the night someone stole that version of her away and replaced it with a pre-teen, hormone raging, venom spitting monster. She was up and out of bed for less than five minutes before returning to her room with "I HATE YOU ALL!!!!" and a door slam.
He father and I looked at each other in horror, cups of tea / coffee hovering. The downstairs was a wreckage of her temper, I think one of her younger sisters was weeping, the other was hiding.
"Wwwwhat just happened?" I spluttered.
He gave me a wise nod - a man who has weathered my monthly mood changes for 21 years. "Hormones" he stated and swigged his beverage emphatically.
A moment to register this. My baby! Growing up! Growing pains! What should I do? Should I go to talk to her? Or just open the door and throw chocolate at her?

How could he be so calm and ...smug ! Oh yes, I know he thinks this is purely my territory and my responsibility doesn't he? Well he needed a jolt, obviously. I wrecked my brain for facts about "women stuff".

"Umm..." I said, " Aren't women supposed to synchronise their cycles? Y'know when I was at college we all had periods at the same time in our shared house" ( True story)

Behind the cup his face rearranged his expression as he took into account he lives with four women, even if three of them are still ten and under. I saw him mentally move himself, the cat ( male) and his guitar down to the shed.

An hour later, I fell into a chair in the office at work and announced "my eldest has hit puberty"
We held a minute's silence.
We drank more tea.
We had run out of chocolate.

bully boys

So on Saturday morning,  I am talking casually to middle child about what she will actually allow me to put into her school sandwich box, hoping she will slip up and express a preference for something other than dry bread.
One day this term I gave her boiled egg and she was teased by other boys but she put them straight with an indignant toss of her head ... or so I thought. But mentioning egg sandwich opened a whole other tub of worms.
Last January, I discovered my little girl was being picked on in the playground by a group of lads who had decided she had "the bogey touch" so no one else was allowed to touch her or go near her. I informed her teacher who dealt with it well, a couple of the boys cried. I had asked my little girl if everything was ok and she said yes it was. Life went on.
Only when all but one of the boys started to do it again nearly straight away she decided she was going to ignore it. They didn't stop. She didn't tell me, she didn't tell the teacher. The other children in her year who witnessed it didn't say anything either. Last week her elder sister complained because she kept trying to play with her on the Upper School side of the playground. Even then middle child didn't say why.
I strode in on Monday morning, the new head teacher was busy, I left a pre-penned letter and said I would be home all day. I waited. At lunchtime, I rang the school after Daddy badgered me. The receptionist was flustered, she had given the Head the letter but wasn't sure what had happened next. The Head would ring she said. At 3p.m. I rang again, got another receptionist who didn't know what I was on about, the Head was out at a meeting, but she left me on hold and came back saying the Head of Year wanted to speak to me at the gate. We did actually go into her classroom when I got there.
The upshot was that the the majority of the boys confessed. The two that denied were outed by witnesses. They had their play time taken off them for a day and were made to apologise. Their names have gone into the behaviour book. They have written letters of apology during lunch time, when my eldest happened to be passing through the room to hear one of the try to deny it again.
"Yes you did do it" she says ( I imagine with great contempt, hand on hip, surveying them with disdain) " You all bullied her" she said.
Apparently the TA over looking the process took my eldest to one side to try to persuade her it wasn't really bullying. My eldest didn't speak but she disagreed and thought the TA couldn't have known that it was going on from reception until now.
The school has not informed the parents again, as this is" another academic year "from the last incident.
I wasn't happy. I know three of the mum's, Have one of their mobile numbers in  my phone. Standing at the school gates and not saying anything is hard. If I was their parents I would want to know and not stand there unaware that another Mother is standing near by silently writhing with rage and ( yes I will say it) JUDGING.
 I know what they have done is petty, but not to my little girl. On the surface she may not appear bothered, but inside she feels sick and her anger boils over quickly at home. I know that they are only little boys, but its a good job none of them were in my kitchen last Saturday morning when she told me.