Mean Girls Suck: Pt. 2 OR What are you going to do to prevent your child's involvement in relational aggression?

Page 39 of my was three hundred dollar, now on sale for a hundred and twenty dollars Educational Psychology textbook says that “relational aggression appears to play a more important role in peer status than does overt aggression,” and “Because popularity and aggression are related to academic engagement and later disruptive behaviors, teachers need to identify and eliminate aggressive behaviors.”

      This is the part where I WAS going to tell you about an incident that happened several years ago during a Girl Scout event.  Instead I will relate an experienced I witnessed with my own kindergartener yesterday.

     My daughter is 5-years-old.  She attended pre-school last year and started kindergarten three days ago.  Her class, a sizable group of munchkins, have been making friends and sorting themselves out while learning the ropes of school this week.  Part of the sorting out has been a strong lesson about being "exclusionary."

     My little one spent a bit of time with a couple of girls over the summer but now, with a whole class of girls, the possessiveness over who gets to be friends with who has kicked in.  The little girls jockey for position, arguing over who gets to play with whom, who gets to sit next to whom, while their teacher, an award-winning veteran who absolutely deserves sainthood, does her best to head off issues and create a happy and inclusive environment for every student.  But the woman can't do everything and parents have to reinforce lessons at home.

     Yesterday we had a serious talk about excluding other students from play.  We have a zero-tolerance policy against "mean girl" behavior at our house, regardless of age.

      Research on bullying, overt physical or covert relational, clearly shows that victims suffer emotionally, mentally, academically, socially and often end up hurting themselves or others because of their negative experiences.  How can we justify standing by and watching children get treated like dirt and made to feel worthless by their peers because we consider it “normal” or we think they’ll eventually “sort it out.”  Like a pack of social-jockeying hyenas, they will sort it out and the unfortunate underdogs will end up dead or gone. 

Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to spot the Mean Girl behavior but we absolutely must have a zero-tolerance policy toward it, just as we do with fighting among children.  The pricey textbook clearly states, “Given the link between relational aggression and negative outcomes, teachers should be on the lookout for instances of relational aggression and react as swiftly to these aggressive behaviors as they do to instances of overt aggression.” 

No ifs, ands or buts about it.

So.  If you are a parent, teacher, administrator or adult who works with children in some other capacity, what are you going to do the next time you hear something like this:

“Oh.  My.  God.  You totally wear the weirdest outfits to school.  Do you like wake up in the morning and take crazy pills or something?  Hahaha…  Just kidding!  Like, omigod!  Don’t be so sensitive!”