My daughter tells me she is feeling persecuted in her school?

private schools are tough, she should have realized that before hand. I’d call the school and simply ask what the nature of her detentions were, sometimes teenagers, especially teenage girls, exaggerate.

Maybe she doesn’t realize how lucky she is?

Unless her school has secret rules that you can only learn about by breaking them, she should have known beforehand that she was violating some restriction. If she follows the rules, she won’t be disciplined. Enforcement of known, published rules is not persecution, nor is being treated the same way anyone else would be for the same offense.

This environment does not sound like one where an inflated sense of entitlement is going to get her very far, and my guess is that it might do her some good to learn that.

Geez, I been switched to different school systems in 2 different countries not my own (Italy than here in US) , been poked fun of every single day of my Polish accent and culture, and how I dressed poor because I came out of the Soviet Occupied Poland. I think I turned much stronger from all that persecution .

Check with the school to hear their side of the issue. Go and see your daughter in person.

This may be a sign she is missing you. Tell her that you want her to be comfortable, but that she can’t change schools like outfits. Tell her that she needs to follow the school’s rules. By seeing her in person, you can evaluate how serious you think it is.

If you want her to hang in longer and you are comfortable she is overdramatizing to use the word persecution, set a goal and a reward. Say something like, “If you will give it until Thanksgiving, we will reevaluate then, and I will get you (a CD she wants? concert tickets? clothes? whatever you think will be motivating) for sticking it out.”

Good luck, Mom.

I thought this was going to be a question about being bullied by classmates which is a serious issue.
However’ from what you describe, it sounds like a typical public school kid not liking the rules at a private school with the balls to have higher standards.

As long as the rules are applied to all, it’s NOT persecution. Complaining to her teachers on her behalf will just have you looking like more of a fool than she is already being.

Tell her to suck it up, grow up and stop testing you.

Sorry to be so blunt but I used to teach in a parochial (not RC) school in the worst inner city area. The parents were grateful that the school had discipline standards enabling them to focus on LEARNING.

Any parents who felt the rules were too strict were perfectly welcome to take their child elsewhere. That just meant that another child on the waiting list gets to take the place of the whiner.

The iPhone thinks it knows what I wanted to convey better than I.

It should read “stop texting you”

But maybe it was a fortunate glitch anyhow. This will be a test of your fortitude as a parent.

Or you can give in to her whims and let her go back to where she can do as she pleases

Private school can be really ridiculous with the rules and regulations. When I was in school, we couldn’t dye our hair (only natural colors), we couldn’t wear “large” jewelry, we couldn’t wear sandals with no backs, etc. etc. Girls broke the rules all the time (my best friend dyed her hair neon pink for prom. That was a great day…), but they knew what they were doing. If you broke the rules, you got a demerit (or two), and had to pay the consequences. The rest of us who didn’t care enough to break the rules, but still felt like we needed a way to express ourselves found loop holes in the rules. We had to wear socks with sandals (guh!), but there was no rule about the color the socks had to be, so we’d find the most insanely colored socks we could find.

Maybe your daughter is feeling stifled (although, as the rest have said, she should have known going in that it would be this way). Maybe she can try finding other ways to be herself, that aren’t regulated. Though, if she’s getting detentions for mascara and having her hair down, it sounds as though the school may have covered all their bases.

@Buttonstc, I thought “stop testing you” was so apt and wise that I did not suspect a typo. In fact it might be better advice than “stop texting you” because there’s no harm in the messaging itself, right? What’s wrong is the expectation of being rescued from the reasonable limitations of the environment that she chose, as if her own decisions ought to be free of all consequences.

@Jeruba

Yeah, as usual, you are right. But in spite of the serendipity (which is rare) the iPhone is bugging the living daylights out of me with this “predictive” nonsense. It’s not as if texting is such an esoteric word in this day and age that it simply MUST BE FORCIBLY changed to a different word altogether.

Can you tell I’m more than a mite peeved with steam coming out of my ears??

Sorry for the tempo hijack.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread….

Sounds like she got more than she asked for. Oh, well. C’est la vie. Make her live with the consequences, just like real life.