I remember watching my daughter and her friends interact on the playground when she was two, three and four years old. Boys or girls, quiet or rambunctious, it didn't matter; everyone was a possible new friend. Everyone had potential.
After she started school, a shift began to evolve that was so subtle, it could have been missed. It was a power shift, of sorts. When I subbed in the elementary schools during those years, I saw it almost everywhere, the divisions forming. The playground cliques. The pitting of one child against another -- if you include her, I won't play.
My daughter came home one day in third grade and told me that a friend had created a club during recess; my daughter was invited to join, but her best friend was not. When I asked her how she felt about it and how she handled it, she said, somewhat indignantly, "Well, I didn't join, of course!" She then did the eye-roll, the non-verbal "you idiot," and walked away.
I couldn't have been more proud of her at that moment -- eye-roll or not. I knew it was a small victory, an early one, but it was a start. Her friends' mothers and I have been on a quest since the beginning of their friendships to mitigate, if not completely eliminate, the "mean girls" phenomenon that seems so endemic in our daughters' lives.
Why are we like that? Why do we need to hurt, put down, insult, and otherwise belittle others to make ourselves feel good? I'm sure there are many, many answers and reasons to the broad societal issue of bullying, but with girls, there seems to be an additional impetus. As Mary Pipher, Ph.D., suggested in "Reviving Ophelia," the adolescent years are when girls' self-esteem nosedives.
I remember my mom telling me things like that when I was a child -- a fringe kid, not one of the popular girls: "They're just jealous, honey." And I would think, jealous of what? The flaming red hair? The intelligence? Ooh. Yes. Those things are SO COOL. And I would roll my eyes at her and walk away. And yes, I do see the trend there.
As an adult, I get it. When girls lose their self-esteem, they DO become jealous -- maybe of another girl's things or looks, but also maybe simply because she hates herself. In my experience, girls who are insecure need the validation of others to cement their own self-worth, and often that validation comes at the expense of kids who don't fit the standard definition of "normal."
That's where the other moms and I stepped in.
It started -- we started -- even as the girls were starting to mature, to find their voices, their interests, their strengths. If our daughter was disrespectful to a friend, or rude, or not playing fair, we sat her down and explained that good friends build each other up, they don't tear them down. We helped them understand empathy: "How do you think you might feel if a friend said/did that to you? Do you think it could be hurtful?"
As situations occurred between our girls, we would coach them on how to understand other people's feelings, how to understand their own, and how to work things through. We still do, sometimes. But now, for the most part, we let them work things out themselves, because they have the tools to do so without hurting each other. They know, at the end of the day, that meanness will not be tolerated.
Earlier in the year we worked with a local youth center that focuses on positive body image and self-esteem, to create a kind of "We Rock!" party for our girls. They spent an afternoon doing crafts and activities around what they like about themselves and what's special about their friends, and emerged even tighter than before.
There are so many more ways today for girls -- kids -- to hurt each other; I may not be able to give my daughter self-esteem, but I'm hoping, through these kinds of activities, that I can give her the tools to hang onto what she already has. Finding other moms who share that philosophy has made the battle much easier.
Our hope is to cement our girls' self-esteem before the teen years can sabotage it. Will we be successful? I don't know. What I do know is that if I don't try, I will not forgive myself. I simply cannot accept that the pain I experienced in middle and high school at the hands of mean girls is a rite of passage. If we help our girls develop/retain their self-esteem, there's a better chance they will be neither bully nor victim.
It's never going to be as simple as the playground. But I still believe in the potential.
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And using just these guiding tenets, I notice that all of the bullying is based on negative behaviors that are actually true, which allows the "victims" to either stop their negative behavior if they do not wish to be bullied or continue to be bullied, but allow the clique to continue having fun.
So if you just take the time to get to know each girl, you can sap out most of the malicious intent and teach them values like trust, honesty, and class, while also focusing on having fun.
It should be reasonable to expect teachers and parents to be able to function in the similar roles that a lifeguard can function as in sleepaway camp.
It all comes back to effort and ability to relate to the kids.
Even the "losers" have their own clique, so even though that clique might not "matter," they still have friends.
For example, I have worked at sleepaway camps and definitely notice there being cliques among the girls, but not really among the boys, unless you count groups of kids who hang out a lot as a clique.
So like instead of taking my break during the evening shift, I'll hang out with the really girly girl clique and maybe the naturish girl clique, just so that I know what types of pranks are being planned before they happen.
And for any of the pranks that we plan, I always just insist that it is based on things that are actually true (Example: If we are going to exclude a girl for being promiscuouÂs, there needs to be somewhat tangible evidence that she actually acts like that. I do not allow them to exclude a girl just for wearing a short dress one day and for them to just assume that the girl is promiscuouÂs.)
And I always stress honesty and integrity as part of our interactioÂns as once someone is caught lying, I cut off my tolerance for pulling pranks and acting clicky with that girl.
UnfortunatÂely, the teacher's unions will not exert 1 extra ounce of unnecessarÂy effort.
Example: At sleepaway camp, we have this really high wall (maybe 10-15 feet high that overlooks the grassy field below and 2 of our campers were standing up there, talking about wanting to jump down.
For some reason, there was no one else out there at the time, so I had some leeway about deciding if I wanted to stop them.
I walk up to them and stand up there with them and encourage 1 of them to go first.
Both of them admit they are scared and ask me to go first.
I look down and figure this is a pretty steep fall and the grass is not all that thick, so it might hurt, and I tell them I think it is too risky.
So the 3 of us walk off together. Problem solved.
Even if 1 of them had jumped, we have a full medical team on-hand that could have treated whatever bruises the kid would have incurred, and the pain serves as a lesson not to do something like that or similar in the future.
And if the kid does not get hurt, well then it was not dangerous in the first place.
Your reasoning is why children under the age of 18 are not legally adults and cannot legally make adult decisions.
1) FAR too many people are labelled as mean.
For example, I might hear a group of girls make fun of another girl for being fat and they are labelled as mean.
But the girl being made fun of is 150 pounds and only 5'5".
Are we supposed to tell the group of girls to lie and say she is not fat, when she clearly is?
2) There is no entrance test to being an adult.
But lots of adults set rules in the way that "Listen to this person because she is an adult," but then she acts like a total jerk and abuses the kids.
And then the kids are labelled disrespectÂÂful if they do not follow this jerk's instructioÂÂns
1) If there is some reason the group of girls has to address the other girl's size, there are other less offensive ways that would not sound like rudeness or insult.
2) Some day when these kids grow up they will (hopefully) be employed. At some time in their lives they WILL face a college professor or a boss who may not personally deserve their respect, and yet, they will HAVE to give at least a show of civility and respect to that person or face consequences; loss of job of 'fail' in college course. Life is simply like that. Yes, there are a lot of jerks in the world. Learning to deal with imperfect people and even 'jerks' is part of getting along in the world and is only to the kids's benefit in the end.
All you lose is any leniency from the professor.
And you can probably tell from the interview if a boss does not personally deserve their respect, so if they do happen to stumble onto a boss like that, they can simply reject the job offer.
School institutionalizes hierarchical behavior. Our children are being indoctrinated into a grim reality of life. That social status is MORE EASILY achieved at the expense of others.
We may sit our children down and tell them to be nice, but they aren't stupid and they see that meanness elevates status. And this is true virtually everywhere they look.
There is huge cognitive dissonance between what we try to teach our children about values and self-esteem and the reality of their experiences in the school yard.
Remember, those little creatures are inexperienced, but they are processing information at a blinding rate compared with their adult role models.
What are we showing them?
Petulant little bullies rising to the halls of power in politics. In business. In the media.
If you want to stop the bullying, don't even begin to think that teaching your children proper values is going to do a thing.
The problem is systemic, top to bottom.
Until we take a hard look at what kind of society we really have, and begin the painful process of real change, then the school yard will just be their honest initiation into the bullying of the supposedly grown up world.
Of course, we must. And sometimes it helps.
Most of us try to teach our sons and daughters to be good men and women.
But to think that our influence will be so much more powerful than the world they step into, full of peer pressure and misguided adults, is pure narcissism.
Children find that stepping into the real world is very different than the ideals their parents impart. This is a challenge for every parent.
How do you give them proper survival skills without destroying their spirits?
Of course, there are know-it-alls who are very good at lying to themselves and maintaining that their values are in sync with and mirrored by society.
But reality sometimes steps in.
I was bullied as a child from the ages of 5-10, by a group of 5 girls, not just at school but at home because they lived in my neighborhood. It was important to me to be present for my children and to be the one to teach them to be kind people and not put up with bullying. I refused to allow them to be raised in daycare, etc. I sacrificed a lot but of course it was worth it.
I volunteered at their school when so I could observe frequently and know what was going on. It was a small school, and I hoped there would be less problems, but I think percentage wise there were just as many. Church doesn't automatically deter being mean, some of the scariest kids had a pastor for a father! So be aware, if you want your children to learn values important to you, don't leave it up to someone else. Unfortunately, the way the economy is now, there are too many latch-key kids raising themselves on tv and learning bad habits from poorly behaving peers!
You might argue that it is okay for American women to be competitive in a male dominant market but they also need to be taught the tender side of feminism which is missing in most American women as their identity is to compete on the job market and educational institutions.
Some of this permeates down to a notion that if an American woman is not being mean to a weaker sister, that she, too, will become the weaker sister herself.
Therefore, American women need to be retaught to value of their own sexual identity -- the problem is, who is going to teach them???
But I think the most important thing in all of this has, is to have our kids be able to come directly to their parent and express their feelings and ask for advice on what is going on in their own lives. We as parents need to let our kids know that we are there for them and will help them out along the way.
It is a wonderful feeling to be able sit down and listen, then hand out our best advice. What is even better is whenever they take that advice and they respect and understand what you are saying to them.