What To Do When Your Child Says Everyone Hates Them In Their Classes
I was stirring marinara on the stove last Tuesday when the front door hit the coat rack so hard my faded canvas raincoat slid off its hook and onto the floor. My 13-year-old Mia stomped past the kitchen, her backpack thudding against the hallway wall, and yelled over her shoulder, “Everyone in my classes hates me. I don’t want to go back tomorrow.” The sauce bubbled over the edge of the pot, hissing on the burner, and I wiped it up with a crumpled paper towel before I followed her down the hall.
She was face down on her bed, one fuzzy sock kicked off onto the floor next to a half-finished sketch of a stray cat she’d been working on for art class. My first instinct was to blurt out the thing most of us say first: I’m sure it’s not that bad. Plenty of people like you. But I bit that back. When my older son was 14 and came home with the same line three years ago, that’s exactly what I said, and he rolled over, pulled his hood over his head, and didn’t talk to me for an hour. That time around, I’d learned that brushing off the feeling doesn’t make it go away.
Instead I sat down on the edge of her bed, far enough away that she didn’t feel crowded, and said, “That sounds terrible. Want to tell me what happened today?”
It all came out: the teacher let them pick their own groups for an end-of-unit project. Mia hung back by the whiteboard for five minutes while every other person paired off, no one waving her over. The teacher eventually stuck her with a group of three girls who’ve sat together since the first day of school, and they texted each other under the table the whole period, ignoring her idea for the project and laughing quietly when she spoke up. Then at lunch, when she went to sit at her usual spot, one of the girls slid her backpack over to take the empty chair, so Mia ate her granola bar in a bathroom stall.
I just nodded while she talked, didn’t interrupt to offer solutions, didn’t ask her if she’d been nice to everyone or if she’d done something to upset them. When she finished crying into her comforter, I said, “Standing there alone waiting for someone to pick you is the worst feeling in the world. I’d be hurt too.” That’s it. No fixing, no minimizing, just naming the feeling back to her.
I’ve thought a lot about this since my son went through the same thing. Back then, I jumped straight to fixing: I emailed his teacher that night, demanded she rearrange his seating chart, I even forced a playdate with a boy from his class that I thought was nice, and my son was so embarrassed he refused to talk to the kid the whole afternoon. I learned then that when a kid says “everyone hates me in my classes,” they don’t always need you to call the school and storm the classroom. Most of the time, they just need you to believe the hurt is real first.
After a few minutes, I asked her one simple question: “Is this every single class, every single day? Or is it mostly math and lunch right now?” Kids have a way of turning a bad day into a blanket statement, and that question doesn’t dismiss the pain—it just helps both of you see the problem clearly. Mia thought for a second, then said it was really just math. She talks to a girl named Lila every day in art, and PE is fine, she just hangs out by the bleachers and talks to another kid who doesn’t like running.
Next I asked her what she thought would help, instead of telling her what to do. She immediately said she didn’t want me emailing her teacher. If the teacher rearranged groups in front of everyone, all the girls would know she complained, and it would be even more awkward. That’s a hard thing for parents to remember: most kids don’t want a public intervention. It just makes them stand out more as the kid who can’t handle their own problems.
We came up with two small, low-fuss things to try first. First, Lila from art is also in her math class—Mia just never thought to pair up with her before, because she sits on the other side of the room. Next time there’s open group picking, she’d walk over to Lila before everyone else pairs off. Second, if lunch feels too uncomfortable, she could ask her art teacher if she can eat at the back table in the art room once or twice a week. Most teachers are happy to let a kid do that, especially if the kid likes being there anyway.
I did email her math teacher two days later, but I didn’t demand anything. I just said Mia’s been having a hard time feeling included in group work lately, I wanted to make you aware, and we’re trying a few small things on our end first. I asked if she could keep an eye out, and if it was easy, she could sometimes count off groups instead of letting kids pick. A week later, Mia told me the teacher started counting off groups for every project, no one even noticed why.
It’s been two weeks now. It’s not perfect. She still says the three girls in math make quiet rude comments sometimes. Last Friday she came home upset because one of them made fun of her Hello Kitty hoodie. But she ate lunch in the art room twice last week, worked on her sketch while she ate, and her last project group was with Lila, and they had fun making their poster about fractions. Last night she asked if Lila can come over for pizza and a movie this weekend.
I still don’t have all the answers. Some days being 13 is just awful, no way around it. I still check in every afternoon when she walks in the door, and some days she still says it’s a bad day. But the small, slow steps worked far better than any big, dramatic fix I tried with my son. It doesn’t erase the hurt, but it lets her feel safe enough to figure out what works for her, one day at a time.
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