Reply to How to handle girl-drama, 2nd grade edition.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s normal. I don’t really like calling 2nd graders mean girls, because I think it’s really rare that a second grader is actually a mean girl (as a 7th or 8tb grader would be) - it’s more that 2nd graders are pretty clueless about friendship & social skills. They are all struggling, trying things on, saying dumb stuff. ..not a lot of it is calculated exclusionary mean girl bullying like in middle school. It’s more kids struggling to figure out social norms & acceptable behavior.

So yes, tell your DD to take a break from anyone being mean. If they seem kinder the next week, then go for it, play with them again. [/quote]

+1000 to this and to the comment that this not isolated to girls. Gah it’s pretty sexist we make these conclusions about girls only.

This is almost always kids building social skills and trying to feel things out rather than malicious intent. They’re learning to be human. [/quote]

NP, I agree with all of this![/quote]

NP, I disagree with all of this. It is typically seen more often with girls than boys and it’s almost always behavior modeled by their mean-girl moms who never grew up. These 8-yr olds aren’t “figuring out” social skills and coming up with these behaviors out of thin air, they’re emulating their mothers. The kids displaying these behaviors at 8 almost always end up being the “mean girls” in middle school. I’m a die-hard feminist and this isn’t sexism, it’s reality. It’s nurture, not nature. [/quote]

Have you hung out with an eight year old boy lately? They can be real jerks. Usually it’s in a less sophisticated way because their social skills are generally a little behind girls. [/quote]

I agree.  I have both a boy and a girl. I am much more worried about his capacity to be mean to classmates than his sister.  Obviously, they are different people, but they way they interact has made me realize my boy child will need a lot more "training" on empathy than my daughter.[/quote]

Same. My daughter understands social interactions so much more than my boy. Sometimes, she and her friends use this understanding in obnoxious ways. My boy does not. But he also does not notice people's feelings in the same way that my daughter does; she's capable of noticing and helping people much more than he is. There's a flipside to social awareness, and in little kids who are still figuring out how the world works, sometimes that shows up as testing out being a jerk (I HATE the term "mean girl"), or manipulative, or whatever. My son, while generally a lovely guy, sometimes goes too far with the sports trash talk and hurts his friends' feelings without meaning to, and has to be educated about what he did, why it hurts, why you shouldn't do it. (Not to mention that boys tend to be much more physical when they're angry than girls, at least in my experience.)

In short, I think so much of the "mean girl" conversation can be attributed to misogyny and the idea that boys are just cooler/nicer/more awesome than girls, when the truth is that normal human experimentation and aggression comes out in different ways in different kids.

To the PP blaming mean moms--yeah, maybe some girls (and boys...?) are copying their rude or wannabe-leader parents. I just think there's a lot of run of the mill social learning going on and sometimes it's quite ugly.[/quote]

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