Trouble in Paradise

    We had a great start to our day today. Molly and I made it through the whole sign language alphabet. We only get tripped up on one or two as we work our way through it now, but usually one of us remembers. We are a good team:) She finished a workbook today, too. She managed to accomplish the whole book in only two sittings so I was quite impressed. Today was all about telling time, completing words by putting in the missing letters, and reading sentences to find which one fits the picture. It gave her a lot of practice writing her letters and numbers. When we were finished, I put on some music and she had an art explosion! She did watercolors and also used cotton balls and glue.
   Today was swimming lessons and it did not go well. This is her third week of being excluded by the three girls that she is in class with (there are only the four girls total in the class). It is very hard to watch. Molly is one of the most social kids I've ever known and I was in child care for 28 years before I had her...I know a lot of kids. She makes friends everywhere she goes so this experience has been especially hard for her to understand. She was injured during class by another girl (an accident, though...definitely not on purpose) which didn't help make this a positive experience, but she pulled it together and cheerfully went back to class. After class ended and it was time for free swim the meanness kicked in. She came up to me so sad and started sobbing that "they are hurting my feelings so bad." Even after that she was able to get it together and go back into the water. She was injured a second time, however, by the same girl and by then we were both done. I'm at war between my desire to protect her and my desire to help her fight her way through this. The other girls are completely unsupervised during the free swim. Molly says, "They are only nice to me when the teacher is there." Without a parent there to witness and address the behavior, I'm afraid it is a losing battle. I know that kids are often mean, but she's four. Does she really need to experience this yet?