Building resilience against little mean girls
There are ways to help your daughter swim as she faces choppy social waters
The girls in my daughter’s
Grade 4 class began to divide themselves into groups. Reports of comments that someone was “fat” or not “cool enough” directed at girls I’d known since they were five years old became prime topics of discussions at home. I heard cruel insults about my child, because her loyal friends told her about them.
I figured my daughter would eventually stumble into meangirl territory, and that subversive manipulation, social rejection and alliance-building would leave her occasionally on the curb. But not until middle school, at the earliest. Right? Wrong.
“The mean-girl thing is happening much sooner than everyone realizes,” our elementary school counsellor said.
Bullying — or peer victimization — is “associated with depression and anxiety and social withdrawal and low selfesteem and academic problems,” says Catherine Bagwell, a professor of psychology who studies children’s social development at Oxford College of Emory University.
Katie Hurley, author of No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident, and Compassionate Girls, says research shows that severe bullying in childhood puts adolescents at a higher risk of mental-health issues, including suicidal thoughts and behaviours, debilitating depressive symptoms and anxiety. And one survey in Oregon of nearly 12,000 kids in grades 3 through 8 revealed that 41 to 48 per cent of girls reported experiencing what is called “relational aggression” in a month. About four to six per cent experienced it daily.
The most common ways girls ages eight to 12 bully is by mocking, teasing and calling people names, says Cosette Taillac, a therapist for children and adolescents and the national strategic leader for mental health and wellness at Kaiser Permanente.
“Girls at this age are extremely conscious about how they look in relationship to others,” Taillac says. “Any way they look ‘different’ is a potential target. This goes beyond weight — it can also be about being taller or shorter, skin colour, or even about things like having freckles or pimples.” A girl can also be targeted because of her name, ethnic or religious background, or the way she dresses or speaks, she says.
It’s important to jump on this problem immediately, but parents don’t always know their child is being bullied.
“Many of these behaviours, such as spreading rumours, saying mean and nasty things ... verbally or online, are discrete and hard to detect,” says Meline Kevorkian, a dean at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
It also may be difficult for a girl to tell she’s being targeted because bullies frequently say “just joking ” after being mean, says Taillac, as “a way of avoiding responsibility, blaming others and demeaning the reaction if the victim is starting to show she’s upset or if others seem disapproving.”
My daughter’s eyes were weary and fatigued, and she shied away from probing conversations.
Too many mornings, she’d wake up hot, sweaty and in tears, and off to the doctor we went. She missed 18 days of school last year, after having near-perfect attendance when she was younger.
I felt lost. How could I keep her from becoming part of the problem?
“Listening is initially a better strategy than asking many questions since she will probably shut down with the questioning,” says Jane Timmons-mitchell, a child psychologist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “If you are concerned about her behaviour, you should let her know that.”
To help her cope, first establish that although bullying happens, it can and will be fixed because you’re in it together, says Kevorkian. Also, tell her you won’t embarrass her with the perpetrator or her friends. And assure her that reporting mean behaviour is not tattling; reporting hurtful actions is the right thing to do, including when she witnesses other kids being bullied, Kevorkiansays.