Anonymous wrote:I have 4th and 5th grade girls. Friend drama starts early and doesn’t go away.

General rules- you don’t have to be friends but you have to be kind. Full stop. No nastiness and I don’t want to hear you were mean at school. You will not be mean and when you say someone is annoying or you give the cold shoulder that is mean. Give examples of other ways to behave that is authentic to her friendships but not exclusive.

Saying she can’t control her reactions is an opportunity to coach better ways to respond. Taking a deep breath like you suggest or brainstorming other coping responses. She is responsible for her own behavior always and she needs to be accountable. No one ‘made me act X way’.

My girls know if they complain about a friend interaction I’ll always listen but I’ll always ask either ‘what was your role in that moment’ or ‘what’s one thing you could have done differently’. This has helped tremendously in accountability.

Don’t be a ‘candle blower-outer’. Google if from brene brown.

And yes, queen bees and wanna bees is a good rec.

Good luck and buckle up. This is constant coaching and conversation. It’s not one and done.

Please use “full stop” correctly. It means what it says. You’re not supposed to keep yammering away after using it.

Is there a school counselor you could request she meet with? Or a private counselor / therapist you could pay for?

My DD is the recipient of some mean girl behavior. This year (3rd) it’s more the typical “you can’t play with us today” type stuff - not good but not as bad. In first she was bullied. I’ve posted this before but a girl and two of DD’s former friends pretended they were slicing the throat on a stuffed animal - DD’s favorite animal - and said “that’s you”. They pushed her against a wall, hit and kicked her, and took her shoes and put them in a trash can.

Recently (2 years later) she told a friend who told another friend who told their mom who told me… that these girls pressured her to take her clothes off and said they’d say mean things about her if didn’t do that. She said she didn’t and ran away, but I had no idea that was happening! I was already shocked by the other behavior.

The principle was new and kind of overwhelmed and non responsive and the teacher was trying her best. Eventually I made a series of demands including that both the ring leader and my daughter have meetings with the school counselor. (Obviously separately)

I don’t know how it went for the other girl (who strangely was kind when she was 1:1 like if we ran into her on a weekend and who still seems kind 1:1, so knows how to behave toward my DD sometimes - though I try to avoid running into them or interacting) but my DD really loved it. She liked the other student she was paired with, liked the counselors approach, etc. This year we actually asked if she could get more help / social coaching after our DD said she would like to talk with the counselor about some of the mean girls in her grade.

You don’t want things to escalate and the counselors have seen this before. I think they’d be a great resource.

Anonymous wrote:I have 4th and 5th grade girls. Friend drama starts early and doesn’t go away.

General rules- you don’t have to be friends but you have to be kind. Full stop. No nastiness and I don’t want to hear you were mean at school. You will not be mean and when you say someone is annoying or you give the cold shoulder that is mean. Give examples of other ways to behave that is authentic to her friendships but not exclusive.

Saying she can’t control her reactions is an opportunity to coach better ways to respond. Taking a deep breath like you suggest or brainstorming other coping responses. She is responsible for her own behavior always and she needs to be accountable. No one ‘made me act X way’.

My girls know if they complain about a friend interaction I’ll always listen but I’ll always ask either ‘what was your role in that moment’ or ‘what’s one thing you could have done differently’. This has helped tremendously in accountability.

Don’t be a ‘candle blower-outer’. Google if from brene brown.

And yes, queen bees and wanna bees is a good rec.

Good luck and buckle up. This is constant coaching and conversation. It’s not one and done.

This is good advice.

One thing I struggle with is that my kid is not a popular alpha but she's not a follower either. She marches to her own beat, which I appreciate. But it can and has made her a target at times. I have had to coach her through that side of it and it was a parenting challenge but honestly she gets it and I think has a good head on her shoulders.

But I still worry about her turning around and doing it to someone else! Sometimes kids who get targeted try to reclaim power by acting the same way as the kids who hurt them. So you still have to keep talking about it. The balance is hard. You don't want your kid being a victim, and you don't want her victimizing other kids. The goal is confidence and kindness. But it's YEARS of navigating these tough dynamics with other kids and they all enter puberty and try to figure it out. So yeah, not one and done.

Anonymous wrote:Be very aware of what she is reading and watching. I see this type of snotty behavior and attitude common in books marketed toward young girls and a lot of the kids shows as well. It’s pretty appalling.

I wish that whoever developed Bluey was on the case for this next stage.

Have also seen it beginning. Recently there was "drama" at an 8-year-old's birthday party (don't sit next to me, I'm not telling you the secret I told so and so). Resulted in two girls in tears and one girl being picked up early. Got the low down at pickup.

Whatever it is, please try to correct it now. Otherwise, the teen years will be intolerable for you.

Chiming in to say we have a 2nd grader, and we are definitely seeing this behavior in her grade. Just because it’s “normal” does not mean it is healthy. I appreciate all of the above suggestions.

Be very aware of what she is reading and watching. I see this type of snotty behavior and attitude common in books marketed toward young girls and a lot of the kids shows as well. It’s pretty appalling.

Little late to this thread, but I have 2 cents to add. My daughter befriended a girl at the end of Kindergarten who was mean to her and she learned 1) How it feels to be treated unkindly by someone you believe is your friend 2) She did not want to be that girl's friend anymore 3) She does not want to treat someone else the way she was treated. I watched this happen without intervening because experiencing that kind of behavior is necessary to learn all of the lessons above and sooner the better. She is resilient now. A new girl started bullying her at the beginning of 2nd grade this year with daily questions that were really criticisms like "Why do you wear your hair like that?" "Why are you wearing that shirt?" ... My daughter and I discussed it and my daughter handled it by responding "Why do you ask?" and then "Why do you need to know?" to her questions, which shut it down. Months later, the girl asked my daughter another question and my daughter responded "Why do you need to know?" When the girl said "I just want to know," my daughter said "You want to know, but you don't NEED to know." The girl walked away without another word. So proud of my daughter. And that painful experience with the friend from Kindergarten helped get her to this point of being able to recognize what she is dealing with when bullying happens and handle it like a champ without being mean herself. My point, if you want your daughter to stop being unkind to her peers, then set up playdates with another girl who you recognize is unkind. Let her be on the receiving end of that behavior while she is young enough to learn from it and grow into a better person.

By this age, most kids instinctively know what popularity is. If they walk into a classroom at a different school, they would be able to pick out who was popular fairly quickly. Kids are popular because they have a talent, fame, material possession, or physical quality that stands out. This is the kid who is the best gymnast, has an actress mom, has a huge house, is always told how pretty she is, etc. Then there are kids that are popular because they have positive personality traits that make people want to be around them. These are the kids who are kind, friendly, funny without joking at the expense of others, fair, and trustworthy. And it’s possible and very common to be in both categories. Once my kids reached that stage of elementary where they were conscious of popularity, we discussed this and it helped them to “see through” kids who were popular for the wrong reasons and to look for the good eggs.

I have 4th and 5th grade girls. Friend drama starts early and doesn’t go away.

General rules- you don’t have to be friends but you have to be kind. Full stop. No nastiness and I don’t want to hear you were mean at school. You will not be mean and when you say someone is annoying or you give the cold shoulder that is mean. Give examples of other ways to behave that is authentic to her friendships but not exclusive.

Saying she can’t control her reactions is an opportunity to coach better ways to respond. Taking a deep breath like you suggest or brainstorming other coping responses. She is responsible for her own behavior always and she needs to be accountable. No one ‘made me act X way’.

My girls know if they complain about a friend interaction I’ll always listen but I’ll always ask either ‘what was your role in that moment’ or ‘what’s one thing you could have done differently’. This has helped tremendously in accountability.

Don’t be a ‘candle blower-outer’. Google if from brene brown.

And yes, queen bees and wanna bees is a good rec.

Good luck and buckle up. This is constant coaching and conversation. It’s not one and done.