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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You would never know how mean some kids & teens really are by chatting with them at a family gathering or any setting where there’s adults watching. They’re charming and hide their meanness VERY well![/quote]

This is something that drives me nuts sometimes. This is what differentiates "mean girl" behavior (or "relational aggression", which is what we should call it since boys can do it to) from bullying or just being a mean person.

A "mean girl" is rarely actually unpleasant, rude, or openly cruel to someone. Their cruelty is all done as subterfuge, often with plausible deniability ("oh I had not idea Larla was even there -- I certainly wasn't trying to exclude her"), and they are usually extremely good at working the refs. Meaning they can be very charming, helpful, even kind to parents, teachers, other popular kids, etc.

One of the meanest people I've ever encountered is best known in my home town for donating a kidney to a kid we went to school with. And while I'm really glad that kid got her kidney and don't deny that was a very kind thing to do, I also 100% believe she did it in part because she knew it would buy her a ton of goodwill to cover up for her incredibly controlling and nasty behavior. And it worked -- a few years later there was this huge problem with a team she was coaching and rampant bullying and harassment of the kids by the coaching staff, and there was no way she wasn't involved but she wound up being the only one not fired. I think people just couldn't reconcile the accusations with her image as just an incredibly kind and generous person, an image she carefully cultivated specifically to cover up what a terrible person she could be.[/quote]

My high school guidance counselor, assigned based on the first letter of my last name, said multiple nasty things toward me, wrote nasty emails, routinely ignored emails and was just awful. Made me cry in front of her.

The year after I graduated, there was an article in my hometown’s local newspaper praising her as “Woman of the year of [insert name of city].” The article was gushing with praise for her on multiple fronts. I almost barfed reading it.[/quote]

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