09

The most active thread since my post on Friday was, as expected, the thread about the attack by Hamas on Israel. That thread has already reached 142 pages. But, since I covered that in a post yesterday, I'll move to the next thread today. That thread was titled, "Mean girls mean moms" and posted in the "Elementary School-Aged Kids" forum. The original poster says that the "not so nice" girls in her daughter's class have "not so nice" moms. She says this is probably an obvious observation, but she wonders how to break the cycle. Most posters suggest that it is futile to worry about breaking the cycle and that the best approach is to avoid the mean girls and moms and teach your own daughters to be better. Other posters know of mean girls who have nice moms. This provokes responses saying that nice moms are too nice to properly discipline their kids, resulting in them being mean. Some posters report that their daughters have not encountered mean girls. This is a 17 page thread and I don't have time to read all of it, but it looks like much of the thread is devoted to posters describing their own problems with mean girls, mean moms, or simply unfriendly school environments. Some posters tell tales of mean girls that they encountered when they were in grade school. There is disagreement about what constitutes a "mean girl". To some, mean girls are those who take affirmative actions to hurt someone on an emotional or physical level. To others, simply not making friends with another girl is a form of "bullying" and being a mean girl. Several posts really have nothing to do with mean girls or mean moms, but rather simply describe normal social behavior. For instance, parents and kids who have lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same schools for years and made close friendships may not be very welcoming to a newcomer. For some, this is mean behavior. For others, it is something to be expected and simply takes time to overcome.