My 6-year-old is getting anonymous hate mail

Life goes on, another day, another drama (drama)...

Hello, and welcome to my second newsletter of this week, folks: because it turns out that no matter how hard you try to make it work, there’s just no easy way to gracefully segue from, “OMG, TAYLOR SWIFT WAS UH-MAY-ZING!!!” to this note, which we found in Max’s bag, minutes before we left for school on Monday morning:

I mean, talk about a comedown from the excitement of the weekend. One minute you’re decked out in sequins, trying to catch confetti as it falls from the sky, the next you’re having to play detective in a bizarre whodunnit starring a class of six and seven year-olds. Trust me when I tell you this was not the way I expected to spend this week.

Max has no idea who put the note there — he hadn’t even seen it until Terry pulled it out of his schoolbag when he was putting his lunchbox in there on Monday — which means someone’s snuck it in there at some point: probably on Friday, but I guess it could have been Thursday. I’m normally quite meticulous about going through his bag as soon as he comes home, just in case there’s a permission slip or something else that needs to be signed in there, but last week was kind of crazy, what with all the illness — and, well, the shopping — so I can’t say for certain.

But when, exactly, it was put there isn’t the point, obviously. The point is, someone took the time to write/draw a note telling my lovely little 6 year-old child that he’s hated, and I’m not sure anything has ever hurt me more. I mean, I thought being bullied myself was bad enough, but absolutely nothing prepares you for seeing it happen to your child. I now know why my own mum still seethes with anger at the mere mention of my bullies names, while I for some reason accepted their Facebook friends requests, and didn’t really think much of it. Follow me for more tips about setting boundaries!

But anyway.

The school were fantastic. They took it every bit as seriously as we did, and did their very best to try to figure out whodunnit. All of Max’s classmates flat-out denied being the culprit, though — obviously — and although I might have joked about starting a true crime podcast and letting the internet figure it out, I have a feeling that probably wouldn’t go down well with the Parents Association, which means that, realistically, there’s not a lot the school can do without any proof. So Max just has to continue spending his days worrying that any one of his his friends might secretly hate him, and all I can do is hope the bullying doesn’t escalate until he ends up joining every single school sports team he can in a frantic bid to fit in, only to end up being told that, soz, everyone still hates U, even though you’re in the swimming team now.¹

Oh no, wait: that’s me I’m thinking of. And, OK, sure, it’s possible that I’m projecting my own experience of bullying onto Max here. I’m trying very hard not to do that (I’m obviously writing about this here, but we've been avoiding bringing it up in front of him, because we don’t want to encourage him to dwell on it), but, at the same time, it’s not like some people have really positive experiences of bullying, and it’s just me who’s being a bit weird about it, is it? So I think we probably did the right thing by going to the school about it, even though I know some people would just be all, “Kids will be kids!”, and one person on Threads accused me of making up the entire thing — as if I don’t have enough stuff to make up for my books without deciding to invent an anonymous letter from a 6 year old, seriously.

All of the notebooks I need to make stuff up in

I really wish I had more to tell you from this week, but unless you want me to start rambling on AGAIN about what a terribly harsh winter this June has been, I’m afraid it’s just the primary two poison pen letters for now.

Here’s hoping next week will be better!

1. Especially after I totally messed up their chances of winning the relay race that time by neglecting to get into the pool after the starting gun went off…