Scary stuff at school...

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And I'm proud of my daughter... So I found out last night that Dearra was worried about a school friend of hers. Apparently, back in February a boy pulled a knife on her, and threatened to hurt her if she told anybody. Well she told a friend and the friend convinced her to tell her parents, and the boy got in trouble. Since then, his friends have been bullying her, and it must have gotten to be too much to take, because Dearra heard recently that she had attempted suicide. She's been very worried about her, and not sure what to do, but she decided to write her a letter. It took forever last night, because something's wrong with the laptop, but she got it done. As she was going to bed, she asked me if she should tell her dad, or did I want to. I told her it was up to her, and she said, "you tell him". So I told him that Dearra had been worrying about something, and I started to tell the story. Unfortunately, I did not have my blast shields up. First explosion was that "kids should stand up to bullies, or it will never stop". Second explosion was "and why are we just hearing about this now?" Third explosion, "what are we doing wrong as parents that she didn't feel comfortable bringing this up sooner?" Followed by a rant about how from now on we're going to have half an hour of discussion over dinner, no tv, no computer. And then the final blast at me, "why didn't I tell him immediately after I found out?" Well duh, I was waiting for Dearra to tell him, and when she chose not to, I told him. So instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour last night, I was kept up almost an hour late listening to him rant. He didn't really appreciate it when I told him that this was about Dearra, not about him. Or that this sort of reaction was exactly why she didn't want to tell him. He claimed that he wouldn't react that way with her, but pardon me for being skeptical. So this morning she asked if I had told him, and I said yes, and gave her a toned down version of what he had said. "That's exactly how I expected him to react." Anyway, fun as it was NOT, by talking to him first, he did get a chance to let off the explosion far away from Dearra, and by the time he does talk to her, he'll most likely be calmed down, and much less judgmental. She called to tell me that her friend is at school today, so I guess she will be able to just hand her the letter. Anyway, I'm proud of her for caring enough about her friend to do something to let her know that people care. But how scary...