Christina Simon is the co-author of “Beyond The Brochure: An Insider’s Guide To Private Elementary Schools In Los Angeles.” She also writes the blog, Beyond The Brochure, about applying to private elementary schools in Los Angeles and the ups and downs as life as a private school mom. Christina is a former vice president at Fleishman-Hillard, a global public relations firm and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and 7-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter.
I’m part of a wonderful monthly parenting group run by Betsy Brown Braun, bestselling author of You’re Not The Boss Of Me: Brat Proofing Your 4-12 Year Old Child. At almost every meeting, I bring up issues my daughter is having with other girls at school. Rumors, secrets, lies, broken friendships, tears, nastiness and so on. Everyday seems to bring a new hurt or upset for my daughter. She is funny, nice and smart. But, she’s not especially tough.
My daughter is in 4th grade. But, her encounter with mean girls began very early. She first met a really, really mean girl at preschool. This tiny terror hit, bit and kicked. She also stuck her foot out and tripped my daughter right in front of me. That was just one of many things this mean girl did to my daughter and other kids. Luckily, her family relocated to another state before she became a real menace.
Mean girl behavior (or “girl terror” as my friend Jenny calls it), is often unwittingly facilitated by nice girls who don’t understand mean girl dynamics. Recently, my daughter made a mean girl mistake of her own. She gossiped about some of the mean girls to her friend. Her friend promptly went and told them what my daughter said. The mean girls came over to my daughter on the schoolyard and confronted her. My daughter is no longer friends with her former good friend. Obviously, my daughter took a page from the mean girl playbook when she gossiped about them and it backfired. Lesson learned.
Our private elementary school has periodic conversations with the 4th grade girls about what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behavior. The school has been having these conversations since kindergarten. It just doesn’t seem like it’s having the desired impact. Part of the missing piece is the fact that the moms of the mean girls aren’t part of the conversation. There is no accountability for their daughters’ behavior. And, sometimes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, if you know what I mean. But, as a mom, I can’t intervene. None of this stuff rises to the level of bullying. I can only talk to my daughter about her behavior. The school strongly discourages parent involvement in kids’ disputes and at some point, my daughter has to learn to deal with this stuff.
In my parenting group, Betsy assures me these are typical 4th grade girl antics. Whew! Call me crazy, but I thought this was middle school behavior. No! It’s arrived early and with a bang. Every day brings a new challenge. I’m optimistic, but lately my optimism has been quashed when I pick my daughter up from school. Another incident! My friend Jenny put it well when she said, “everything you’re dealing with is still better than having the mean girl for a daughter.” She’s right. I love my daughter’s sweet, trusting nature. I also adore her group of nice, generous friends. But, she does need to learn, as the school said to the girls, “watch what you say.”
The other day, I had one of my toughest parenting moments in a long time. My daughter, after talking with me for more than an hour about how she was feeling about her broken friendship, sent me an email. She signed it, “your sad daughter.” I instantly broke into tears. I knew how she was feeling, but I didn’t know how to make the hurt disappear. We talked some more and she settled down for the evening. I assured her tomorrow would be a new day and there would be an opportunity for good, fun things to happen.
Sure enough, just at the right time the next day, an invitation to a classmate’s birthday party arrived. My daughter was thrilled. Things are looking up.
(For now!)
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{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
My daughter is the vulnerable one. She is the one who is sensitive, trusting and naive. She just wants to be liked. She’s already entering middle school in the Fall and thankfully hasn’t had many hurt feelings yet, just a few. I am filled with anxiety about what her social future holds, though. I just keep telling myself all I can do is my best to build her up to know she is a great person who deserves friends and to be liked, and anyone who disagrees she doesn’t need in her life anyway.
Yes, this is definitely “scary mommy” subject matter. One of my twin daughters has had issues with mean girls and she’s only in 2nd grade. I am always talking to them both about making good impressions on other kids their age and by not doing anything to make themselves become a “mean girl”. There is so much involved in teaching them about dynamics of relationships and seeing how their actions (or lack of actions) appear from other kids’ perspectives. The one who has already been a target is much smaller than most kids her age and is much meeker & milder in her disposition than other kids, which I fear will make her a target to bullies someday. It is heartbreaking when you see how sad these things make such young girls. But you’re right that it all boils down to the fact that we can only teach our girls how THEY should act in different situations…we can’t help how the other girls act in the end, unfortunately….
My heart just broke for you. My girls are 4 and 2, and these social/emotional issues worry me so much, I’m a shocking mother lioness and don’t know how I’ll go when my girls (inevitably) have to deal with nastiness…
I have two the same age. The older is a step daughter, and I fear how she will turn out due to her mothers influence. I can already see the mean girl streak in her. The baby (mine) just wants to be accepted and play and doesn’t understand when sister gets mean and bossy. And I am a momma bear – I get all angry and snappy when someone looks at them the wrong way (creepy old men) or is mean on the playground. I’m terrified at how I’m gonna be when they have to go to *gulp* school.
Your daughter sounds like a total sweetheart. But Christina, you need to be her strong foundation for her when things are going wrong. If you crumble into tears when she’s having problems, she won’t know how to react to situations aside from getting teary-eyed and upset.
Think about how irrellevent these “mean girls” are in the thick of things. I know she isn’t aware of it yet, but YOU should be. Communicate how unimportant these little things really are. What are the most important things in her life?
Family
Following what she’s passionate about in life
Making others happy
Making herself happy
Staying healthy
Improving in life
The little negligible bullshit of “you said this to me? well now I don’t like you,” is so useless and unnecessary to care about that she should pay 0.001% of her life energy in responding to it.
Life is not a reality show. Make her realize this. Show her through your actions, your vibe, and through your words what is most important in life. When little things like drama come up in her life and your life, show her how to quickly deal with it by staying positive, and if that doesn’t work, moving on to what is positive.
Love ya.
I love this comment- I can see myself using this, and then hiding in my pantry having a cry! Thank you, am printing this one…
Haha Greeny don’t worry this stuff takes time. The idea is to constantly wake up and have a strong outlook. We live one life, no reason for sissy shit.
My heart hurts for your daughter, Christina. I’m blown away by the behavior already occurring at my son’s age (4). While he’s shielded from the worst of it simply by virtue of being a boy, it still doesn’t make it any easier when two little girls at the playground walk away from him and tell him they don’t want to play with him. I had no idea this behavior started so young. Good for you for helping your daughter be accountable for her behavior and not become one of the “mean girls.”
The problem with these girls are definitely the moms. I had an experience with the moms in my daughters 3 year old ballet class, You would not believe how bad the moms were. http://beelieveit.blogspot.com/2010/11/fuquay-varina-90210.html
And then you wonder why the young girls are that way. Totally agree “the apple does not fall to far from the tree.”
“I can’t intervene.”? Bull. You choose not to. Because it’s uncomfortable, because you imagine there is some boundary between you and another person’s child. How can the village raise the children if YOU won’t be part of the village?
I think that’s a little harsh. I don’t intervene unless absolutely necessary (lives are in danger) for 2 reasons. First, after having been bullied as a kid, I know that the bullies just drive on harder after parental involvement. They call you a tattle tale, say you can’t fight your own battles, etc. You get a reputation as a mama’s baby with ALL the other kids, not just the rotten ones. Secondly, they need to learn to fight their own battles. They need to be tough enough and wily enough to react appropriately because I won’t always be there to witness/stop bad behaviour.
This is a big topic and one that just breaks my heart as I was one of those girls who could teeter between mean and sensitive and it was ALL CONSUMING. I mean, schoolwork meant nothing to me, but social issues could make or break me. I’m hoping to find a way to avoid this in my daughters’ future. Considering homeschooling. Wondering if not giving a daughter’s social “issues” as much energy as other aspects of their lives. Lots of wondering and considering over here as my girls are still young and not in school.
I am right there with you – having been a recipient of girl terror during my own 4th grade year, I don’t think I even realized how much I held my breath until my youngest daughter finished up that year. Then she started having some trouble with her school friends during summer camp, so we didn’t really escape it.
There’s a fine and ever-shifting line between letting your child learn how to negotiate the tricky shoals of friendship and identify who is a real friend and who is a bully, and the temptation to protect them from hurt. I don’t think any of us (not even commenter Chris) knows what the right thing is to do in any given circumstance. You just try to stay in touch with your child’s feelings, show them you’re confident that they can solve their own problems, and intervene when it’s clear they can’t.
Having survived some pretty awful 4th grade hazing, I learned to be kind to kids who were being excluded, and I will NEVER tolerate that meanness in my two kids. Not a bad badge of honor to take with me.
oh boy. as someone who was a target of bullying as a kid, I already imagine the horrors my kids will encounter at school. I hope I wrong. It seems an inevitable part of growing up–to have some measure of heartbreak and humiliation. There are indeed things moms can do and then there are things beyond our control. I don’t look forward to figuring this out. good luck and thank you so much for sharing!
Kids can be just plain mean. I was bullied all the way through high school for being a complete nerd. High-waters and everything.
Some adults under estimate the power dynamics that children practice and hone even when they are still in diapers. Tolerance for bullying, as in the case of the preschool example above, teaches children adverse behaviors.
Popular children are the ones who have more political skills than others. That’s how cliques form. This just carries through into adult life where office politics replaces schoolyard politics.
just a lurker throwing out my dumb hypothesis.
I was in 4th grade in the 80′s and I can tell you, these issues were relevant then as well. I don’t think they’re showing up any earlier than they were when I was in school. Girls are mean to other girls. They’re jealous, feel superior or inferior, pick on those who aren’t in on the trends and those who aren’t pretty or are socially awkward.
Definitely not a new problem. As a mom of two boys, I can tell you the 14 year old also started seeing that sort of behavior early on.
My fourth grade daughter is both. Kids often do what they learn from other kids, as well as their parents. She had it done to her at the ripe age of 4 and it broke my heart. Now I see her buddying up with mean girl leaders. She is a second tier mean girl sometimes. She learned the “b” word from them and blew up a friendship with it. I made her apologize in writing along with a note from me to her mom. The family who are neighbors now run from us when they see us. Be careful not to see your daughter as better because she is a victim. She may discover there is power in meanness and do it under the radar. Or she may discover that there is power in being a victim. I see both syndromes in adult women i work with. Parents get too much blame though. Much of this is part of a larger social/cultural dynamic. I can’t intervene directly but I do stay in close contact with the teachers and inform them of the intelligence I pick up at home, so they can do better conflict resolution. They do a good job of that but can’t always keep track of the dynamics. Btw I found you via Twitternets and am enjoying your writing!
Anthony, you are absolutely right about the importance of finding something she is passionate about. My daughter started dancing at 3 and acts in the local theater and it has given her the confidence to follow her own path and not pay attention to what others say or do. My proudest moment was when she came home from school and told me about a girl being mean to her. She told me what happened, stopped and thought a moment, then asked, “What is WRONG with her?” As a child I always assumed of someone didn’t like me it was because there was something wrong with ME.
When my SD started going through this I started really taking a look at myself and my own relationships that she was seeing. This stuff still exists in adults. Do I gossip about other people? Do I lie and say mean things? Do the people I associate treat me badly? The answer. Yes! And I am proud to own up to it. My SD was the one being treated badly and I couldn’t believe that my own world reflected that of an 11 year-old. I needed to be able to walk the walk if I was going to talk the talk. It’s been hard work but if I want her to not be a “mean girl” then I need to lose the crap that I have learned over the years. Some of my friends are still “mean” to each other and to me and it’s become perfectly acceptable. Hmmmnn. Not so much in our house anymore!
My daughter will be in 6th grade, and I feel fortunate that this has not come up much yet. However, I anticipate the next few years to be difficult. I like that your school does group for the girls – too bad it doesn’t seem to be working. I wish our school would address it more. There’s a strong emphasis on academic success, but I would like to see more focus on social success.
You got it spot on when you said the mother’s of mean girls take, “no accountability for their daughters’ behavior.”
My daughter will start preschool very soon, and I’m hoping (I know in vain) she doesn’t come across any mean girls throughout her school years.
I am really not looking forward to this season in my daughter’s life. I have a feeling, with her stubbornness and independence that she is going to end up being a “mean girl.” I hope I can steer her away from her.
I am dreading this. I have a soon to be 4th grader who is 5 FT tall and not thin by any means. There is a group of girls who have commented about another big girl and this poor thing was not happy last year. The guidance counselor has talked to these girls and the coming up school year we will not have the counselor in school all the time. Very worried about this.
I have been hurt/ blindsided by mean girls 3 times in my life. 7th grade, soph year in college and as a mom with a 1yr old It is hard and has made me more guarded in my friendships with women and I know it is something I have to work on. But still words and actions hurt at any age.
Really, is this how it is now. I am way, way past fourth grade, and people were mean then, but this is extreme. I have boys, and as much as I want them to stand up for themsleves, I think it is a fine line from them also being the mean ones. Good Luck, things to look forward to in my future, thanks for sharing.
My daughter was in kindergarten, going to first-grade this fall. In the past, there were times when I casually asked her about her friends, and to my shock and surprise, I was taken aback by how mean children could be, even as young as 5 or 6 yrs old! While I’m glad that my daughter has a very sweet and accommodating nature, there were times when she told me of how some girls in her class were sometimes mean to her. It was not so much verbally as mentally. For example, there was a girl who constantly tried to boss my daughter around, giving her an impatient look and sigh whenever my daughter didn’t do as she was told. And then there were those who compared who’s the richest one of all among themselves. It was insane!
I think the problem of mean girls/boys would only be solved if only every parent pays more attention to how their own children behave, and if every parent takes responsibility of raising their children seriously (ie.by being good role models, etc.). But life is more complicated than that, and the reality is that there will always be parents who somehow ignored or are ignorant of their children’s behavior. I admit there were times when I felt like defending my child to every single mean girl/boy out there, but I know that the best I can do as a parent is to teach my own daughter proper values and principles to ensure that she grows to become a good and useful individual, and to hope that having planted all those values in her, she would be able to deal with the issue of mean girls/boys in a healthy way.
I read this at the perfect time. I just had to take my 2 year old daughter home within 45 minutes of arriving at a playdate. My good friends are fantastic, but their two boys are total brats. We used to come over every day. I practically moved in to help out when they were born. As they get older, our visits became more sparse.
They refuse to let her use any toy. New, old, something that was forgotten in a corner weeks before. Even toys I bring with me so she can play with they freak over. And they are several years older. Tonight, the only thing they would allow her to play with was the wrapper from their presents that we brought them. Seriously?
I wasn’t about to subject her to a full night of her being forced to sit on the couch and watch them play with their toys, just because I am friends with their parents. Thats just cruel and unusual punishment to a two year old. So, I made up some excuse that my little miss wasn’t feeling well and that I had to take her home right away.
What makes the whole thing heartbreaking is my daughter gets so excited every time we pull into their drive way. Why? I don’t know. Or maybe its because if you asked my daughter for the last bite of her cookie, she would gladly give it? Or maybe because when we have kids over (as we usually do 3 nights a week), she shares, even insisting that the grownups get toys? But I suppose the mean streak starts early.
American Girl has a great book covering this topic…something like The American Girl guide to resovling friendship conflicts…it’s amazingly well-written and accessible and teaches girls how to recognize and negotiate the mean girl landscape. I read it with my daughter and I think it really put things in context for her.
I remember being the brunt of mean girls – This seems like 100 years ago. I had no one to protect me so I had to come out fat fists flying to make in this school. I was the little fat kid and Native needless to say there are times when you gotta do what you gotta do. But today there are rules against this. this is a good thing and the little ones can rest a little easier. I was talking about the late 40′s early 50′s – different world.
unfortunalty mean girls are a cruel part of growing up. i feel like going n finding the moms n dads n punching thm alot. becuz of how my 9yrs lil girl talks about her mean girls. one min they r her friend buddying up to her thn the next they r talking crap about her n having the other kids ignore her. i feel its exaclty like u said the apple dont fall far from the tree. i am faced with the temptation to grab the partents n shake thm n yell at thm saying ” wake up do u not see what a lil monster ur raising”? but i know tht will not make matters any better. i know how u feel n i tell my daughter all the time if those girls are gonna be like tht thn u dont need th in ur circle of friends, if u have 2 or 3 friends tht stick by u n care for u no matter wut thn thts all u need but she just want thm all to like her.. but this past month the last of the school yr she stood up to those mean girls. she told thm to leave her alone n they will never get to her she said try all u want but it wont work. n this i was reallt proud of she toldthe ring leader tht ” u may hate me n u may make fun of me but ur just unhappy being u if it makes u feel better about being ugly to the bone to pick on me thn i hope u feel better.. shes really a smart girl. i know she was alil mean herself there but sometimes u have to fight fire with fire..
I needed to read this. I have the nice girl. She wants to be friends with everyone and tries so hard to get along with all of the girls, even the mean ones. I’m amazed by her determination to just keep trying. We have discussions about this every night. I try to explain their unexplainable behavior, but she just can’t comprehend why everyone wouldn’t want to be friends. I keep hoping that by the time she gets to junior high she will have learned all of this and it won’t be able to hurt her anymore.
And your friend is right. I would way rather be the mother of the nice girl.
Can I just put my girls in a bubble???
Oh, we’re there! Fourth grade is next year and I’ve already seen the cliques and manipulative behavior this year. It’s really, really hard to watch my daughter maneuver through it-harder than it was to go through it myself.
I was the sensitive, trusting child who regularly got her heart broken by the “mean girls” at my school. And yes, it did start early – in elementary school. I tended to hang around girls who seemed to get a power trip out of bossing me around. And later, I became the weird, smart kid that no one wanted to hang around. I was regularly making friends with nice girls and then turning around to find they’d been sucked in by the mean girls.
My parents were helpless as to what to do. Their advice was not helping, talks from teachers and guidance counselors to the class were not helping, nothing was helping. I eventually changed schools and started over. Ironically, in middle and high school I had little to no problem with mean girls.
When I finally got out of that environment and started feeling better about myself, there was a girl in a community choir with me that everyone liked to make fun of, and I liked to join in. I definitely enjoyed being on the other side. When my mom found out what was going on, she was really disappointed in me. “You, of all people, should know better. You know what it feels like to be in her place.”
I cleaned up my act fast and have never forgotten. I’m expecting my first child now, a girl, and I hope I raise her not to give too much credence to what the mean girls say.