Originally Posted by
jaynie04 
I spent a lot of time talking/reading books with my daughter. The one thing that has saved the day was getting her involved in an activity she loved away from the school.
The interesting thing is that the situation at school has not really improved that much, but she just doesn't care so much. ........... her confidence has grown because she feels loved and accepted by a group of girls that in my opinion are fine human beings.
I talked to her a lot last year about Eleanor Roosevelt's quotes like. " great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people". I acknowledged that what she was going through was painful and offered her the concept that these situations even exist as an adult woman for me. But I continually urged her to not get bogged down in the muck of meanness and smallness. We talked a lot about what would drive someone to hurt other people and the fear based mentality of girls who were followers. There are some really good books out there. I did talk to the counselor at school but to be honest they seem most interested in just keeping the peace.
^^This.
What IS it about this age with girls?? DD went through this in the 4th grade as well & it was awful, terrible, felt-like-it-would-go-on-forever bad. It all started seemingly overnight - when DD was given the lead in that year's play & her "friend" didn't handle it well at all.
Her friend also did that push & pull thing - inviting her places because she really did want to spend time with DD, and then tearing her down when other girls were around to see or when she was feeling "less-than". We talked a lot about how bullying has nothing to do with the person being bullied & everything to do with something "off" inside the bully herself and a LOT about how this all feels like forever to her right now, but it's going to equate to about 20 mins of memories over her lifetime. I remind her still that these years seem like forever but they are just a flash in reality - that a lot of it is just about surviving past it with your focus on just learning until you can get the heck out of high school.
She learned that nothing drove her bully crazy faster than not getting the reactions that she was wanting from DD..... so the more she tried to isolate her or feed rumors about her, the less concerned or even
aware DD acted about it all. Eventually she outed herself with escalating behaviors & the school had to deal with her without DD ever getting her hands dirty. After that, bully left DD alone completely but if she tried the same with others while DD was around, DD would confront her & stand up for whoever was getting picked on.
I did not talk to the bully's parents except to refuse an invitation for a party or something - I just told her mom, no thanks, your daughter isn't kind to my daughter so we are not comfortable with her attending x-y-z event. She was stunned at such an honest & (I'm sure) unexpected response.
Ironically her bully was given the lead in the following year even though DD was a shoe-in for it & had earned the role. The play was a disaster from the first rehearsal and the performance was a struggle and every kid that had participated in both made it a point to tell DD she'd been robbed & how they wished she'd been leading them again. All that showed her a bit about the "bigger picture" like I had tried to explain to her - but I know that year felt like 10 in her little world at the time.
(((((BIG HUGS))))) for both of you - this stuff sucks.