Mean girls: What’s a parent to do?
Friday, January 29, 2010
Print
Recent posts
Kids LiveWell unveils healthy options on kids menus - 5/9/2012
Watching local news with a too-aware 8-year-old - 8/31/2011
Riding life's ups and downs - 8/16/2011
Subscribe to this blog
Posted by Tamara O.
I don't remember mean girls in school when I was growing up. Or else, I've repressed those memories since I do remember hiding in the girls' locker room every day at lunch to eat alone. That's another story.
As a parent of a budding tween, my heart aches when my sweet, overly sensitive daughter comes home with stories about this girl or that girl deciding they are no longer friends even though they had a blast at a sleepover just the weekend before. I don't understand the spreading of vicious rumors and mean words spoken. I do understand the tears.
By the next day, though, they are friends again. Until they are not.
So goes the rollercoaster of mean girl power plays.
It's changing everything about fourth grade for my daughter. She wants to take out her new ear piercing because the girls made fun of her. She refused to do the school talent show because the mean girls think dancing is stupid. She won't wear the clothes she loves because the mean girls say they make her look fat.
At that talent show dress rehearsal recently, I found myself in a group of moms who asked me why my daughter wasn't dancing this year. Mean girls, I simply replied. That got everyone talking. Apparently their daughters, too, were being bullied by mean girls. It was so bad for one girl her mom made the principal step in.
When the moms started naming names, my mouth fell open. They named the group of girls my daughter considers her best friends.
Could my daughter be a mean girl? Or just as bad, was she witnessing the mean girl attacks and saying nothing? So disturbed, I confronted her that night. She became nervous, but swore she would never be mean to other girls or boys, which I believe because of her personality to date. When I asked her if she had witnessed the meanness, she fell silent.
The lecture that followed filled that silence: She is never ever to sit silently by while other kids are maligned or bullied. If she can't get up the nerve to say something to stop it, she is to walk away. She agreed, but she was worried she'd be the focus again.
And she was right. Her "friends" have decided they are not her friends - again.
She hurts and it breaks my heart. This is one of the things the baby books never warned us about.
Error parsing XSLT file: \xslt\article-detail.xslt
Pretend FriendsBy Walter B. on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 My oldest daughter's moods can and do change in the blink of a text. In my in depth questioning of teenagers last Sunday regarding acceptance and forgiveness, they all answered that they would forgive a friend or sibling that did something to them. They also, to a teen, said that the single most important thing they valued was their friendships and people's acceptance of them. Sometimes more than their family relationships. This starts at a much younger age. Tamara, I applaud your stance with your daughter to make a stand when others are being treated badly. It takes courage to stand up for someone else. It is even more courageous when you realize that it will cost you esteem in the eyes of the peers you desperately want to continually accept you. The lesson is how to gracefully disengage from pretend friends and stick by your real friends. |
Mean girls, absolutelyBy Dan Haley on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 Tamara, This is an epidemic. And Facebook, IMs and other forms of invisable character assassination don't help the situation. Kids, girls, says things via the Web that I don't think they'd ever say face to face, certainly not during the sleepover we're hosting. You're in, you're out. And it happens in an instant. A lot of insecurities at play here, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch when it is your kid involved. |
You did right
By Peggy on Tuesday, November 13, 2012
If your daughter can follow through on this, you've raised a good kid. Other than being there for her and encouraging her to do the right thing, I don't know what else you, as a parent, can do. I don't think the mean girls phenomenon is new, but as Dan observes above, social media are fanning the flames. I've heard that the movie Mean Girls was partly based on a self-help book on the subject, "Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence." Aimed at a slightly older audience than your daughter, I think, but might be of interest to parents who are struggling with the issue.