which is worse in terms if mean girl behavior: middle school or high school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do boys experience the same dilemma or if there is something equivalent, when does it happen for the boys?

It is nowhere near as bad for boys as it is for girls.

My experience is different. My DS had it so much worse than my DD. Just pure nastiness from other boys and violence too.

That is rare though with boys.

The girls in general are much worse than the boys.

This does not mean it does not happen with boys. It is just not as common with boys.

[Anonymous]

^^ girls are mean to the boys too. Middle school is the absolute worst - 5th and 6th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have found that the pointed mean-girl behavior was worse in middle school, but the cliquishness is worse in high school. My 9th grader was planning a birthday brunch for herself last year and ended up scrapping the whole thing because of the complicated social rules ("If I invite this girl, I have to invite her whole group, but I'm not part of that group so it would be presumptuous." and on and on.)

I think the cliques have become so much stronger than when I was in school because there boundaries (and changes to the boundaries) are so well defined. If you're in the group, then you're in the group chat (etc.) and if you have been expelled from the group, they remove you from the group chat...

This is our experience. My dd had a best friend plus a larger group of 4 good friends from elementary through 9th. They did everything together. By 10th grade everyone had scattered but the best friend. In 11th, best friend befriended a “cool” girl, and now spends all her time trying to weasel her way into parties and other groups. Dd isn’t interested in social climbing, so has been making new friends.

Just wait until the homecoming and prom.
Girls often fish for dates that are in a cooler crowd or ditch their real friends so they can be in pics with a better known crowd. Some even choose by which country club they can tag in their pics. Kids often end up going with a a crowd that would never hang out with them under normal conditions.

I can’t wait to get my kids out of high school. It’s so hard to convince teens that by the time they’re 20, nobody cares who hung out with who in high school.

[Anonymous]

I think the behavior is the same in both MS and HS, but in HS, the kids have a somewhat better sense of who they are, and are not bothered as much. Now, I see the kids making fun of the mean girls. In MS, she was just socially isolated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ girls are mean to the boys too. Middle school is the absolute worst - 5th and 6th grade.

I agree. In 7th grade, skin is thicker.

But obviously, we will see mean girls in every grade, from K to senior care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ girls are mean to the boys too. Middle school is the absolute worst - 5th and 6th grade.

Yes, girls are mean to the boys too.

One of mine was bullied in 6th grade when the queen bee girls decided they liked all his friends and started cutting him out.

The boys were great when the girls were not around, but would leave him out when the girls told them to.

[Anonymous]

Back in my day, middle school was worse because friends woukd turn on friends. In high school, your friends has your back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have found that the pointed mean-girl behavior was worse in middle school, but the cliquishness is worse in high school. My 9th grader was planning a birthday brunch for herself last year and ended up scrapping the whole thing because of the complicated social rules ("If I invite this girl, I have to invite her whole group, but I'm not part of that group so it would be presumptuous." and on and on.)

I think the cliques have become so much stronger than when I was in school because there boundaries (and changes to the boundaries) are so well defined. If you're in the group, then you're in the group chat (etc.) and if you have been expelled from the group, they remove you from the group chat...

This is our experience. My dd had a best friend plus a larger group of 4 good friends from elementary through 9th. They did everything together. By 10th grade everyone had scattered but the best friend. In 11th, best friend befriended a “cool” girl, and now spends all her time trying to weasel her way into parties and other groups. Dd isn’t interested in social climbing, so has been making new friends.

Just wait until the homecoming and prom.
Girls often fish for dates that are in a cooler crowd or ditch their real friends so they can be in pics with a better known crowd. Some even choose by which country club they can tag in their pics. Kids often end up going with a a crowd that would never hang out with them under normal conditions.

I can’t wait to get my kids out of high school. It’s so hard to convince teens that by the time they’re 20, nobody cares who hung out with who in high school.

We've had the same experience with our daughter as well. In some ways high school has been more complicated and worse socially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is how we avoided this in my country, we only have elementary school, 1 to 8th grade and then 4 grades of HS. And you are stuck with same kids for 8 and then 4 years often. So, parents knew and would stop their kids, I grew up in that kind of country. If a parent heard even a whisper of their kids bullying other kids, they would whoop their …… We shaped up really fast. Then you sent you kid to the nerdiest grammar school you can find for HS and no worries. These schools with hundreds of kids are like prisons! No escape.

I went to a K-8 school. It was horrible. I was isolated, made fun of, and excluded. And parents didn't stop their kids, and since the school was so small, there were no other options for me to find friends. HS was so much better, because it was bigger and there were more people to potentially be friends with, and you were stuck in the same box you'd been in since you were seven.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ girls are mean to the boys too. Middle school is the absolute worst - 5th and 6th grade.

Yes, girls like to be mean to the boys, as well. Just today, a girl told my 8th grade ds "I hate your hair. It's really ugly how it's curly in the front."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:my kid literally just started school and is already being picked on. 6th grade and hoping it gets better in high school.

I read a book on girl development (trying to remember the title) and it peaks in 7th grade. The best thing about that book was it separated out "popular" girls and "powerful" girls. What we usually call the popular girls are actually not popular, they are powerful. Most of their friends are friends with at powerful girl to avoid being targeted by that girl, and after 7th grade, developmentally, the other girls have one by one decided that they don't care what Queen Bee Larla says about them behind their backs because they are just sick of her BS.

Ok that book was called...Untangled. Good book!

[Anonymous]

My middle school son is gay. I assume it's just hell throughout middle and high school.

We've told him to stay quiet about being gay because a few people suspected and tormented him.

He cries and says he wishes he weren't gay and I have major guilt because I tell him I'm proud of him, he did nothing wrong but still tell him to keep it to himself for right now - mostly for his safety

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My recollection from my daughter's school years is that Middle School sees more overt bullying. High School is more of a pattern of freezing people out and engaging in whispering campaigns.

+1

[Anonymous]

It really depends on the girl and the school.

I had the time of my life in 7th and 8th grade.

Then in HS, all my friends lived in neighborhoods that fed into a different HS so I had to start over again. Junior/senior year were probably the worst.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do boys experience the same dilemma or if there is something equivalent, when does it happen for the boys?

Yep! My son had an OK 7th grade, a terrible 8th grade, then things got better in 9th. They start growing up.