Mean girls mean moms

[Anonymous]

From what I have seen with my 2 older kids and their peers: mean kid does not necessarily indicate mean parents. However, the parents of the mean kids appear to have NO clue about their kids’ mean behavior. Who is going to tell them, after all? Mean kids are often able to fly under the radar of teachers and other adults.

There is a boy in my son’s grade (freshman) who is absolutely notorious for being a mean kid. All the kids, parents etc know this and have for years- and have overheard people gossip about it. The parents seem fairly nice, and both siblings are very nice (one of the sibs is in another of my kids’ grades). The parents don’t seem to have any clue about how their oldest behaves…the mom recently posted something on FB on the boy’s birthday like “happy bday Larlo. We are so proud of you- not just of your accomplishments but of your kind, beautiful and generous soul” LOL.

We know a girl who is similar. She openly insults other girls (usually about appearance) at random and has for years. Most of the girls (middle school) avoid her. Her mom can’t figure out why she has trouble making friends, worries she is being left out etc. Again…who is going to tell her? Nobody. The parents both seem nice.

I think the parents of mean kids are sometimes nice themselves- but clueless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was just talking to a friend of mine last night who has all boys. She hadn’t encountered this whole phenomenon until her boys started dating. She was surprised at how mean the girl was, and even more surprised that the mom seemed to condone and encourage it.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed the opposite...the mean girls always have really nice, sociable moms.

I'm always so surprised how nice the families of the mean girls are.

I wouldn’t say that the parents aren’t social. It’s more that they gossip a lot, form cliques, and kind of deliberately exclude other people and encourage their daughters to do the same.
For example, one little girl in my daughter’s class got lice. One of these moms found out and told everyone about it along with kind of an insinuation that the family was dirty. Then, suddenly, their 8 year old daughters just weren’t really friends with this little girl anymore. They stopped inviting her to things or attending anything she had planned. Didn’t really play with her at recess, etc.

I push back on this with facts. "Lice pose no health risks to anyone. They do not carry disease. She most likely caught it AT school from someone else, so it didn't start with her." and then good god invite the poor child over.

If I heard another mom talking trash about a kid with lice, I would be the one cutting her out.

Yes. Of course that’s what happened. I’m not trying to be friends with these people.
But, of course, when my daughter was still friends with the girl with lice, these girls told the other kids not to talk to them, made fun of them, etc. Some of the girls chose to still play with my daughter and her friends. Eventually, everyone moved on to something else and someone else these girls were picking on.

It’s kind of amazing that a few girls can create this whole social hierarchy. It kind of shifts, but there is definitely an “in” group where there wasn’t one before.

Also, that I think of it, you have to kind of have a mean girl mom to pull it off. It only works if you have the right hair, clothes, and attitude. Otherwise, you’re just a bully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From what I have seen with my 2 older kids and their peers: mean kid does not necessarily indicate mean parents. However, the parents of the mean kids appear to have NO clue about their kids’ mean behavior. Who is going to tell them, after all? Mean kids are often able to fly under the radar of teachers and other adults.

There is a boy in my son’s grade (freshman) who is absolutely notorious for being a mean kid. All the kids, parents etc know this and have for years- and have overheard people gossip about it. The parents seem fairly nice, and both siblings are very nice (one of the sibs is in another of my kids’ grades). The parents don’t seem to have any clue about how their oldest behaves…the mom recently posted something on FB on the boy’s birthday like “happy bday Larlo. We are so proud of you- not just of your accomplishments but of your kind, beautiful and generous soul” LOL.

We know a girl who is similar. She openly insults other girls (usually about appearance) at random and has for years. Most of the girls (middle school) avoid her. Her mom can’t figure out why she has trouble making friends, worries she is being left out etc. Again…who is going to tell her? Nobody. The parents both seem nice.

I think the parents of mean kids are sometimes nice themselves- but clueless.

I’ve seen this, too. Often the nicest parents are the most clueless - it’s like they can’t fathom how mean people can be. I wonder if part of it is that the super nice parents have a hard time with any negative emotion generally, so their kids don’t have any space to discuss less-than-happy feelings. It’s great to be positive, but when it comes at the expense of reality and accepting the spectrum of emotions, it’s too much.

[Anonymous]

Aw, the age old question of nature versus nurture…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just talking to a friend of mine last night who has all boys. She hadn’t encountered this whole phenomenon until her boys started dating. She was surprised at how mean the girl was, and even more surprised that the mom seemed to condone and encourage it.

I have two daughters and haven’t encountered it. I think this is only an issue if you have a daughter that wants to be in the cool kid crowd and isn’t interested in friendships with any other kids

Only? Not my experience. Girls will be mean and bully other girls even when those girls just want the mean girls to go away and leave them alone. Nice victim blaming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just talking to a friend of mine last night who has all boys. She hadn’t encountered this whole phenomenon until her boys started dating. She was surprised at how mean the girl was, and even more surprised that the mom seemed to condone and encourage it.

I have two daughters and haven’t encountered it. I think this is only an issue if you have a daughter that wants to be in the cool kid crowd and isn’t interested in friendships with any other kids

Only? Not my experience. Girls will be mean and bully other girls even when those girls just want the mean girls to go away and leave them alone. Nice victim blaming.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter’s teacher told her to stop trying to get those girls to like her. They never would.
Instead, she should look for friends among the girls who want to be her friend and will be a good friend.

I thought this was good advice. Those girls are only going to get meaner in middle school and high school.

Great advice from your daughter's teacher, and good for your DD for seeking out such good counsel. My DD is now a college student. In middle school she was on the periphery of the popular girls circle in middle school. I knew that wasn't going to lead anywhere good -- either she'd be an acolyte to the alpha girl or they'd all turn on her.

I wasn't sure what to do, and so, I will forever be grateful to the mom who also wanted to extract her daughter from that group and who came up with a plan to make that happen. At the start of 8th grade, she suggested to her daughter that she invite a group of girls over for Friday night dnner, followed by a walk to the ice cream store and then a movie back home. That started a Friday night tradition, and those girls, including my daughter, became a wonderfully supportive group for each other. They were not obsessed with the popularity pecking order and were friendly to other girls. And they were sensible about boys. They all went off to different colleges, but are still great friends. I have loved seeding them grow up into young women who are genuinely kind and courageous.

As for OP's question about the moms of the mean girls, with the benefit of the long view, I can see that there were many different kinds of moms. A few had been mean girls themselves and were still mean, but most were simply happy that their daughters were popular and chose to look the other way when they engaged in mean behavior. A few in that second category had been the victims of mean girls themselves and actually seemed to be a little scared of their daughters. I felt sorry for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just talking to a friend of mine last night who has all boys. She hadn’t encountered this whole phenomenon until her boys started dating. She was surprised at how mean the girl was, and even more surprised that the mom seemed to condone and encourage it.

I have two daughters and haven’t encountered it. I think this is only an issue if you have a daughter that wants to be in the cool kid crowd and isn’t interested in friendships with any other kids

Only? Not my experience. Girls will be mean and bully other girls even when those girls just want the mean girls to go away and leave them alone. Nice victim blaming.

9/10 of these redundant posts about “mean girls” involve their DD not being played with, included at recess, invited on playdates. But that is not bullying. They are nearly all about their DD being on fringe. None of these posts are about someone’s daughter minding their own business with their own friends and the “mean girls” just start bullying and torturing her for their own entertainment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just talking to a friend of mine last night who has all boys. She hadn’t encountered this whole phenomenon until her boys started dating. She was surprised at how mean the girl was, and even more surprised that the mom seemed to condone and encourage it.

I have two daughters and haven’t encountered it. I think this is only an issue if you have a daughter that wants to be in the cool kid crowd and isn’t interested in friendships with any other kids

Only? Not my experience. Girls will be mean and bully other girls even when those girls just want the mean girls to go away and leave them alone. Nice victim blaming.

9/10 of these redundant posts about “mean girls” involve their DD not being played with, included at recess, invited on playdates. But that is not bullying. They are nearly all about their DD being on fringe. None of these posts are about someone’s daughter minding their own business with their own friends and the “mean girls” just start bullying and torturing her for their own entertainment.

So when you say “only”, you are assuming that the behavior described in this thread is the entire universe of mean girl behavior. If so, you are wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been surprised there’s no mean girl dynamic in DC’s class. I think it may because we have a very diverse student body in a highly educated area, so this helps.

You are lucky enough not to have kids involved in it. You can’t speak for a whole school or class. And it certainly has nothing to do with diversity or highly educated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed the opposite...the mean girls always have really nice, sociable moms.

I'm always so surprised how nice the families of the mean girls are.

I wouldn’t say that the parents aren’t social. It’s more that they gossip a lot, form cliques, and kind of deliberately exclude other people and encourage their daughters to do the same.
For example, one little girl in my daughter’s class got lice. One of these moms found out and told everyone about it along with kind of an insinuation that the family was dirty. Then, suddenly, their 8 year old daughters just weren’t really friends with this little girl anymore. They stopped inviting her to things or attending anything she had planned. Didn’t really play with her at recess, etc.

Explain this one to me, please. Are you saying that the mothers should make friends with all of the other mothers? It seems logical to me that one might make friends with one or two others and then get together to do whatever based on common interest/time.

No. That’s normal. Everyone does that. It’s more like having a party as a fundraiser for the school and only inviting certain people. Or only asking some people to participate in the classroom parties or field day or whatever.
Whenever these kinds of people (it’s not just women) are in charge of something, it doesn’t feel open and inclusive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter’s teacher told her to stop trying to get those girls to like her. They never would.
Instead, she should look for friends among the girls who want to be her friend and will be a good friend.

I thought this was good advice. Those girls are only going to get meaner in middle school and high school.

This is the problem. People want what they can’t have. In this case and many like it, girls that are insecure seek out the “popular” girls and want so badly to be liked by them

Such a stereotype. Bullies are not always popular girls. They come in all shapes and sizes.

[Anonymous]

I find the whole “mean girls” trope a way to keep the drama alive. Personally, I’d change my narrative to improve my outlook.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been surprised there’s no mean girl dynamic in DC’s class. I think it may because we have a very diverse student body in a highly educated area, so this helps.

You are lucky enough not to have kids involved in it. You can’t speak for a whole school or class. And it certainly has nothing to do with diversity or highly educated.

Or maybe her DD is the mean girl.