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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In my experience, mean girls befriend before they start treating you poorly.

Like the worst bullying I've experienced wasn't done girl who just didn't want to be friends with me. That doesn't even register. Everyone experiences that and it's not that big a deal.

The mean girl experiences I've had have happened when I WAS part of a group, and then within the context of that friendship, one or more members of the group started making fun of me (but always under the cover of "it's a joke! We're kidding of course"), talking about me behind my back (often using things i had confided in them specifically because they were my friends as fodder), of excluding me from group activities (and going out of their way to let me know the rest of the group is doing something i had previously been invited to, but not this time).

This is why mean girl behavior is so insidious. It's not bullying from some random kid in a playground. It's bullying from the people who are, ostensibly, your friends. And who you might have trusted with sensitive info, or who might know things about you.

Also, it's not just the "popular girls" who engage in this. It can happen in just about any friend group where it's tolerated.

So I don't even understand what is being argued about on this thread but it doesn't seem to have much to do with how mean girl behavior actually works.

Oh, and yes-- often kids who do this have parents who do it. Especially the gossip, because when kids hear their parents gossiping about their friends, it normalizes that behavior.[/quote]

This is the problem with these discussions. Everyone has a different idea of what’s “mean.” Toxicity, emotional abuse, narcissism exists in little girls, usually intergenerationally, but other people are talking about exclusion. One is not always a problem. The other won’t be fixed by a school or by conversation with an adult. You just have to teach your kid to find their healthy friendships, and there will be some trial and error involved. The errors will hurt, but it’s part of the process.[/quote]

I'm the PP and I disagree. If it's low level and the kids can move on quickly okay. But what I just described should not be "part of the process." I once had a friend group turn on me, spread a vicious rumor that made me an outcast with everyone, not just my supposed friends, and literally pretend I didn't exist at school. It was excruciating and I started self-harming just to remind myself that I existed because the pain of cutting felt good compared to the pain of being made invisible every day. I think I may still have PTSD from this experience.

And yes, the school and adults could have intervened. I ultimately wound up switching schools and starting over, but that was a long and academically disruptive process. It should never have been allowed to escalate as it did.

Which is why the attitude that "mild" mean girl behavior should be ignored and accepted as normal bothers me. My experience was mild until it wasn't. The acceptance of gossip, teasing, and exclusion by the adults around us made it possible for my "friends" to keep escalating until my school life was a daily misery.

So yeah, if kids are intentionally excluding on the playground, it's a problem and you as an adult should explain why that behavior isn't okay. Kids are welcome to have whatever friends they want after school, but at school you have to be inclusive. Teasing and gossip are anti-social behaviors that should be discouraged.

Kids kill themselves over these behaviors. You'd think that would be enough to get you to care.[/quote]

Your situation and to the degree you describing is an outlier and not what OP started a thread about.  Otherwise she would have included it in her OP; not made a post about how moms are like their daughters.  [/quote]

DP I disagree. Most of this thread seems to be disagreeing with OP and people talking about how their daughters excluding others aren't really mean, they just have better social skills and don't want to be friends with everyone. But the reality is their methods of exclusion aren't exactly nice nor should they be tolerated while at school.[/quote]

Some people on this thread think that if all the kids aren’t friends, that’s bullying / exclusionary behavior. It’s not. [/quote]

Yes it is if they're like "we're not playing with you today!" and then want to be besties the next day. Stop talking about lived experiences that aren't your own. I know it when I see it.[/quote]

I agree that is abusive behavior. When this exact scenario happened repeatedly to my child, I encouraged her to end the cycle and stop playing with the other girl. My DD agreed and became friends with other people. The bully then turned around and complained that my child was excluding her. DD wasn’t. DD didn’t tell anyone not to play with bully. All she did was ignore the bully herself. Bully’s mom complained to the school about my daughter. Bully’s mom is socially awkward. I am positive that she thinks I’m a mean mom with a mean child. I couldn’t care less. I had to try to protect my child from emotional abuse. I’ll proudly wear the badge of mean mom if that what it entails.[/quote]

I'm the PP and I see this again and again. My daughter was the new girl at school and befriended some girls but a few were openly hostile to her and didn't want her in their group because they felt threatened. I talked about it with her and encouraged her to just find other girls to play with. So, now she is friends with another group of girls, and again, there is 1 or 2 who is hostile and jealous of her presence. Some girls just can't accept new people or a widening group of girls. So they tell her she can't play soccer, volleyball, four square, or whatever the recess game is. Seems like this dynamic exists in every group of girls she finds. It's frustrating. There are only so many groups of girls. And this isn't some popularity contest where she's desperately trying to horn in. She's genuinely friends with some of the girls: birthday parties, play dates, sports, etc. But a few can't handle the change and try to exclude her.[/quote]

I disagree that this is abusive. That aside, this is how I coached my daughter, which worked well: X can tell you she doesn’t want to play with you. If she does, you probably won’t want to play with X either, and everyone gets to choose who to play with. However X can’t decide that Y doesn’t want to play with you. If X, Y, and Z all don’t want to play, find someone else. You’re a lovely, likable girl who deserves to play with girls who want to play with you. If Y and Z want to play but X doesn’t, then you and X need to make a choice either to coexist or to walk away. If she wants to walk away, let her[/quote]

I didn't really call it abusive, just relating what I see. And I gave that speech to my daughter but, being the new girl, X had more sway and the girls didn't stand by my daughters side. So, on to girls A, B and C and again, A did the same thing, and the cycle repeats. When A or X are not there for whatever reason, the girls play together nicely, but then those girls come back and the drama starts. There's one in every group it seems. Some of these girl groups have been together since preschool and it seems the girls like A and X desperately want to keep the group exclusive. I'm just waiting for a few years when I think the girls outgrow these groups which are also firmly held together by the parents, who are not so coincidentally, very close.[/quote]

Girl, I'm living through this right now with my girls, they just started at a new school and are running into these groups of BFFs whose parents are BFFs because they've all lived in the "cool neighborhood" that makes up 90% of the school since their kids were babies (we did not move into the cool neighborhood, we live one neighborhood over). I'm feeling it myself as the mom on the sidelines who will chat with the only mom there if we both arrive early, but then the mom will literally turn her back to me and create a circle to chat with her friends who just walked up. It's happened three times with three different people. Only once so far has the mom I was talking to introduced to me to someone who has walked up to say to her. Deeply regretting moving where we moved.

If I could give a word of advice to anyone with elementary-aged kids, it would be to live in the cool neighborhood that feeds into your kids' school.[/quote]

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