rae and the bully

it seems that we have found ourselves in a little predicament. the little girl that rae affectionately pushed her desk back at has been secretly eating away at her. i noticed about a week ago that rae was drawing "lee" everywhere. so, i just thought that she just found herself a little boyfriend or something. well, conversations have been popping up out of the blue about "leena" the little girl that she had the desk fight with. they sit across from one another in school. about leena not liking her. or that leena was mean to her. or, that leena said this or that to her. well, then it got a little deeper. that her and "kaitlin" whispered and wouldn't tell her what they were talking about. that they laughed at her. that she didn't have any friends. of course, that stuff will break a mothers heart when she hears that her child thinks that she doesn't have any friends. that was just tough. but, that wasn't anything up to what happened while i was gone with mom shopping the other night. the girls were up at dad and diane's and rae was sitting playing. all of a sudden, she bursted out in tears, crying, saying that she didn't have any friends, that she didn't want to go to school and that leena was mean to her. well, the tears lasted for over 20 mins and it broke dad and diane's heart. diane spared my time out and waited to call me until the next morning. little did she know, that i was going to have a similar conversation but with no tears the next morning AS SOON AS rae opened her eyes. at any rate, i compared her feelings to a little cartoon that we have seen a few times and told her to tell leena "so" when she starts calling her names and laughing at her. she asked doug to come and eat with her at school right after we were discussing all of this and i found that really odd. i didn't know what it was all about until i got the phone call from diane a few minutes after she was gone to school. it all made sense to me when i heard the story from the night before. so, i remembered seeing some "art" in her folder from school. i was really saddened when i opened up the folder and saw that she had in fact started writing "leena" and marking it out with a "X" over top of her name. there were hearts and flowers like she always does and then the name leena over and over with x's on it. it was really upsetting to see and then i understood why it was so important that day for her to have someone eat with her at lunch. she didn't want to go to school. she's been so excited about school and for her not to want to be there is disheartening. so, after discussing this for a short while, i decided it was best to go ahead and talk to mrs. ballengee that morning before i came to school for lunch. i didn't want to bother her in her free time. so, i went down there immediately and rae never saw me talking to mrs. ballengee. she was grateful that i came and brought it to her attention before it got really ugly and she told me that rae had actually said something to her that morning as well. so, the story will end with me going to the school and rae being excited to see me at lunch. the first thing that she said to me was "leena apologized to me, mommy!" i'm not so sure how this mommy thing is going to work out. it's tough.