I LOVE Zen's question - excellent approach all around!
KnittingMama, it may or may not be bullying, but I found with one of my dd's in particular, part of the difficulty getting to the root of issues as school at this age can simply be due to lack of life experiences and understanding on the part of the child of what is "normal" vs "not acceptable". For instance, my dd was bullied by a preschool teacher, but she never told us. It was clear to us she was having a tough time at preschool and that one of the teachers thought she was a behavior issue, but we *never* found out about the bullying (via physical restraint) until a full year after she'd been removed from the preschool and drove by on an errand and out of the blue she told us about it. I wasn't sure I could even believe it had happened at that point in time both because it was outrageous enough on the part of the teacher that I simply couldn't believe she'd done it, and because our dd hadn't told us anything about it at the time - but I did in fact verify that it had happened repeatedly by speaking to another employee who had worked in the same classroom at the same time. The same type of "not telling" me things that were significant in understanding situations happened two other times re school issues in early elementary with the same dd - and she's a child who speaks non-stop and seems to tell me everything - it's just that she didn't' have the life experiences at that point to understand that what the adults in the situation had done was not
"normal" or ok.
polarbear
