How do we teach our girls to lift each other up instead of pulling each other down?

[Anonymous]

Our neighbor's DD is a horrid mean girl. Her mom is a friend of mine who is very nice, but lives in complete denial. Doesn't see it at all and would never believe you if you said something. Thinks DD is a little innocent flower and she is the worst of the worst in every way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First, we need to stop thinking of it as a “girl” thing and instead as a “kid” thing. Boys can be just as awful to each other, but we are socially more accepting of it in boys (heck, in some cases we celebrate it) while holding girls to a higher standard.

We are talking about girls here, and their bullying as adolescents tends to last longer (past middle school and into well high schools), is less physical than verbal, and is particularly facilitated by “social media.” It is a bigger problem in this area.

[Anonymous]

Our girls will do it when we women set a good example for them, which means it will never happen. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Human nature is such that people simply aren't always nice all the time. People get upset, hurt, scared, frustrated, irritable, rejected, jealous, guilty, ashamed, bitter, cynical, angry, annoyed, disappointed etc.

When you put the situations that cause those feelings and the managing of those feelings into different developmental stages, you get different ways that people act on this.

We don't live in a kumbaya world. There is conflict, and pain and sadness and adversity and suffering that is part of the human experience. Rather than trying to figure out how to avoid is completely and then being unable to cope when it happens, it is better to accept that this is part of life and figure out how to deal with it so it isn't so impactful. Growth comes from adversity and failure. A life that is everyone always getting along and no negative anything isn't possible or healthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our girls will do it when we women set a good example for them, which means it will never happen. Sorry.

+1

Unfortunately.

The moms are not willing to take note or set an example. Look at some of the previous posts.

[Anonymous]

It’s simple. You teach your daughter to not say mean things about people. I do that by not saying mean things, ever. Is it easy? Not always. But it’s worth it. Dd and ds are now good kind teens who attract good kids. Plus they don’t want to hang out with mean kids.

[Anonymous]

Don’t let your daughter hear you gossiping about other women behind their back.

Monitor her friends and try to steer her toward girls you know to be kind and nice, with parents you also know to be kind and nice.

Keep tabs on their social media activity.

If you catch her trash talking other girls, have consequences. If my mom heard me being mean about other girls or found notes I wrote about other girls, I got punished for being mean.

Don’t spoil her. Keep her down to earth. If she’s always getting the latest and greatest and most expensive brands without having to earn things, she’s probably going to be a bit materialistic and this leads to making fun of less fortunate kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t let your daughter hear you gossiping about other women behind their back.

Monitor her friends and try to steer her toward girls you know to be kind and nice, with parents you also know to be kind and nice.

Keep tabs on their social media activity.

If you catch her trash talking other girls, have consequences. If my mom heard me being mean about other girls or found notes I wrote about other girls, I got punished for being mean.

Don’t spoil her. Keep her down to earth. If she’s always getting the latest and greatest and most expensive brands without having to earn things, she’s probably going to be a bit materialistic and this leads to making fun of less fortunate kids.

+1

[Anonymous]

No More Mean Girls is a book that's been recommended to me-have a copy but haven't read it yet.

[Anonymous]

By nature women tend to compete and backstab for men. They tend to use this technique in life especially now they are not staying at home.

[Anonymous]

By nature women tend to compete and backstab for men. They tend to use this technique in life especially now they are not staying at home.

[Anonymous]

OP here-
Thanks for some thoughtful replies. They gave me a lot to think about.

I do monitor my daughter's phone nightly. That was part of the deal when she got the phone. It is how I found out about the recent conflict at school. One of the older girls called my daughter a B@tch and that's when I stepped in and contacted the mom.

We have laid down the law about mean behavior and emailed her teachers asking them to let me know if they observe any mean behavior on my daughters part so that we can address it at home. We have outlined exactly what we mean by mean behavior so she knows what we expect from her.

I know that my kid is not 100% innocent in this and we talked about how she should have handled it in a better way (she just stopped talking to the other girl). She told me she was tired of the ongoing drama and just didn't want to be friends with this other girl anymore. I told her she doesn't have to be friends with her but she does need to be kind and respectful.

DD doesn't get a lot of the latest and greatest. She has an iPhone 5, gets her clothing and shoes at Target and she likes going to the thrift store with me. We go to the library for books, she does activities through the rec center and scouts.

I will talk to the GS Troop leader to see if there are any units that they can cover.

This incident is pretty minor compared to a lot of other stories I have heard. At the same time, I don't want to raise a mean girl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s simple. You teach your daughter to not say mean things about people. I do that by not saying mean things, ever. Is it easy? Not always. But it’s worth it. Dd and ds are now good kind teens who attract good kids. Plus they don’t want to hang out with mean kids.

Yup. And you teach your son, too. Because it's not a girl thing, it's a human being thing.

[Anonymous]

Why does this have to be posed as “girls lifting each other up?” Why not be concerned about boys lifting boys up, boys lifting girls up, or girls lifting boys up?

[Anonymous]

On the first day of my freshman year at my all-girls high school, my teacher wrote the following on the board:

"Those who gossip with you, will gossip about you."

We had a bit of a class discussion around it and that was it.

For whatever reason, that really resonated with me at 14 years old. It has stayed with me and guided my actions since then. Perhaps that's something that will resonate with your children too.