The mean girls club

Something has been weighing heavily on my mind lately that I feel I need to write about.

Yesterday sydney came home saying she wants to move to another school....
The source of this desire is not new, but it has escalated so bad that she wants to move. And I want to jump in and move her, to fix it, to make things better. But I know in moving we would just be leaving one bad situation to another.

When most people think of bullying they think of the big, mean boy in fifth grade picking on the little third graders and pushing them over on the bus..... But the type of bullying that so often goes under the radar, the type that President Obama's anti-bullying campaign does not address, the type that is overlooked so often by school teachers principals and counselors,  is the kind of bullying that Sydney has become so entangled in.  I'm not discounting Pres Obama's efforts to help minorities and underprivileged students, or the countless people who are fighting to stop bullying. But there is so much being done about bullying but no one recognizes the "relational aggression" and "social cruelty" that most girls in school experience. Relational aggression is different from bullying, where children often "use social power to have influence over their peers." ("How to bully proof young girls") And I am one of those guilty of discounting it... Until now.

When Sydney first came to me complaining about the girls in her class being mean I told her ignore them. I later found out that they were her friends, so I told her to just play with other kids, make new friends. I started suspecting that she was being bullied and couldn't understand why she would want to be their friend. But it goes deeper than that...

This is a case of Queen Bees and Wannabes, the mean girls club as seen on the movie, Mean Girls (yeah that hilarious movie back in 2004 about the mean girls club). But sydney is in third grade.... and those are about girls in high school. And the kind of social cruelty that Sydney is involved in is way worse than that shown in the movie.... The movie shows the cruelty that goes on but doesn't bring to light the kind of emotional damage relational aggression does. You can't just solve this problem by gathering all the girls together and having them say you're sorry and sharing little pieces of the homecoming crown, although it did make you feel all warm and fuzzy when watching the movie.  It is more complicated than that, more complicated and requires more than even the weekly sessions these girls are attending with the school counselor.

Now that I am learning more about relational aggression I realized this started much earlier than third grade. I clearly remember a conversation I had with Sydney's kindergarten teacher when I addressed some concerns. Her response, all girls go through this where they are just learning the new dynamics of being school with other kids, and finding where they fit in... Yeah! They're learning to navigate the earliest years of the mean girls club and what it takes to fit in!

I wish I could say that Sydney is the innocent one in all of this... But I am only getting her side of the story (hence, why I thought it was a case of  basic "bullying"). But after talking to her teacher, I've learned no one is innocent. She is playing her own role as everyday there is a different girl getting her feelings hurt. There is so much "bullying" and social cruelty going on in this group of "friends". And as a parent I feel helpless. I am not there to be like "you girls be nice now!" And like that would ever work! ha!

Well I started reading a book, "Little Girls can be Mean," by Michelle Anthony M.A PhD and Reyna Lindert PhD.  I'm hoping to learn what I can do, but I feel hopeless when there is so much going on at school. I know I have to let Sydney learn how to handle each situation as it comes and how to be a good friend and how to influence others for good.

Here is another interesting article on "How Girls Bully" and mentions some of the ways Sydney's group of friends interact from day to day.