Daughter caught in the middle of mean girl behavior

[Anonymous]

I would also recommend the American Girl books. My daughter recently asked me to purchase one of the books while we were in the store, and I had her therapist look at it with her (she's been seeing someone for anxiety issues and I'm wondering if girl stuff could be at play), and the therapist told me that she though they did an excellent job of addressing problems and giving concrete examples of what to say and do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Read odd girl out it covers this behavior in a lot of depth. Essentially there are a couple risks here:

Your daughter learns this is the way of friendships and adopts mean girl behavior
Your daughter learns that friendship is precarious and feels bound by the norms of of the dominant mean girl
Your daughter learns to be suspicious of other girls and carries that into adulthood.

Long and short confront it, talk to your daughter about friendship and pressures of friendship and why it is valuable and how other girls can be manipulative.

[Anonymous]

including her how she can be manipulative

[Anonymous]

OP here with update - have had confirmation that the drama over friendships and alignment with the mean girl is also having an impact on her schoolwork since mean girl (not surprisingly) has a bad attitude in school. My husband has also observed her being disrespectful to her coach and having a bad attitude at soccer practice. I really just want my daughter away from this girl and the one other in their trip but just don't know how to make that happen.

[Anonymous]

I don't think you can. But. . . I have a sixth grader and girls like this do tend to "move on" rather quickly. My daughter was isolated from a very good friend by a "mean girl" who I wouldn't say did anything mean but is incredibly to create power dynamics that make her a "BFF" with a chosen friend at the exclusion of all others. A year later, she doesn't sit with any girls from her ES. She's moved on to a third group of friends in 4 years.

So, talk to your DD about what a good friend is, and why she should maintain more than one friendship and then let it play out. I know it's hard but embrace it as a teaching moment. Really, having someone like this around gives you lots of opportunities to dole out comments about what's acceptable and unacceptable in your book.