Reply to When does mean girl behavior start?

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "When does mean girl behavior start?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It starts by preschool if not kindergarten.

Girls are horrible to each other. Women are horrible to each other, too. It never ends.

Teach your kindergartener to stand on her own two feet starting now. It's nice to have friends who are real friends, but if they are not real friends, then don't be afraid away.

Teaching young girls that they need to put up with being treated badly by other girls -- or worse, that something must be wrong with them if they reject that treatment from a group of girls -- is one of the worst things we as mothers can do to our girls. Another girl's mean girl behavior hould always be rejected. This is how you teach your daughter to respect herself, and her boundaries.

Teach your daughter to be strong, for real instead of merely wearing a pink t-shirt with some power girl slogan.[/quote]

Yes to all of this. When I was a kid, my mom kept telling me "just be nice and the girls will like you" or "just ignore unkind behavior and it will stop." Hell no. I teach my kid that friends are not mean, they do not make fun of you, they don't talk about you behind your back, and they don't use exclusion as a weapon (there is a difference between simply not being included, which everyone must learn to accept sometimes, and being excluded in a targeted way intended to make you feel bad or left out). If anyone treats you this way, they are not your friend and you should focus your energy elsewhere. And also: don't do stuff like this to friends (to anyone but especially not to someone you consider a friend because it's more cruel when you behave this way but say "we're friends).

By the way, to the posters saying it's misogynist to call out the fact that girls engage in this behavior at much higher rates than boys do, and that it is, in fact, "mean" -- I actually think it's misogynist to ignore this phenomenon, which is well documented, and to pretend like girls (or women) are naturally kind to each other or that when they engage in this kind of relational aggression, that the victims are just misinterpreting or that they are just confused. These are the weapons girls use against each other. It absolutely is socialized into them and I think it's because girls and women are discouraged away from being direct or aggressive in any way. So they weaponize niceness in order to work out their aggression on each other in a way that they can claim innocence. That's why they engage in teasing ("I was just joking!"), gossip ("if I don't say it to her, it's not as mean"), exclusion ("what, does EVERYONE have to be invited to everything?"), and isolation ("[shrug] I don't know why no one hangs out with Kelly"). They learn they can do all of this but as long as they smile and are friendly generally, they can still be a "nice girl" who is well liked. It works. That's why they do it.

Meanwhile, when a girl is direct and honest, she will get a reputation for being unfriendly, aggressive, a complainer, or "no fun." A girl who says "hey, it hurt my feelings when you talked to me that way" is whiny and stirring up trouble. But the girl who said the hurtful thing? She's so nice, I'm sure she didn't mean it!

We make mean girls and then people complain that it's misogynist to acknowledge they exist. They do. We have to call this behavior out, whether it's happening in kindergarten or in the office.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics