DD being bullied- REALLY need advice

Old 04-04-2017, 11:36 PM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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I think I was socially unsavvy as well. Then I learned savvyness and to be honest that put me in an equally painful place. As I got more savvy I engaged in lots of codependent behaviour as I endeavoured to change who I was in order to be loved and approved of. Once I got sober and went to CoDa and started to understand what a nonsense dance of codependency i had unwittingly engaged in, I made the decision to walk to my own drum. And my conscience has to be that drum. Sometimes it is painful when people I thought cared about me turn out not to have done, but actually I have found that in the last couple of years, while I've been sworn off the savvy, I've made new and better friends. Maybe not such.supposedly cool or popular ones, but that's no loss really. Social savvy is pretty overrated I reckon. The reason your daughter is bewildered is because she's trying to find sense and reason where there is none. That popularity game is not motivated by love or compassion. It is motivated by selfishness and ego, and fuelled by fear. Reading between the lines it sounds like her bff has been drawn to all that nonsense and your daughter, not wanting to lose said bff has wafted towards that fire with her. She may need to accept that sometimes people just change. And not always for the better. Hopefully if she can learn from this to be true to herself, it may help her avoid lots of trickier peer pressure situations when she starts college and there are cigarettes, alcohol, sex, and drugs thrown into the mix. This could be a great learning opportunity for her, painful as it seems now.


God, Grant me the serenity to accept the people i cannot change,
The courage to change the person I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Time for some decent friends I think.

I suspect that there will be other girls at school who are not part of this gaggle of little witches. Perhaps leave the savvy behaviour to them and wisdom and acceptance could be her tools instead.

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Old 04-05-2017, 06:17 AM
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Oh gosh, this brings back so many memories from my older DD. She is still a little awkward sometimes, she is just old enough now not to care, and has a very strong personality so she tolerates no one being unkind to her.

Right now there is some very mild things in my younger DD's class, but she has not gotten caught up in it. We tried all sorts of things and sending my older DD to another school is what ended up being game changing for her. She was like a different person, definitely a good move, but not something everyone has the option to do.

Tight hugs. I remember being very scattered and unfocused during that time because I was constantly worried.

I get it friend, and am here for you! PM me anytime you need a buddy!
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Old 04-05-2017, 01:26 PM
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Originally Posted by LexieCat View Post
Are you certain the other kid DIDN'T feel blown off? I'm not trying to blame your daughter, or make her responsible for other people's feelings, but sometimes we inadvertently do hurt people's feelings, and in that case there's nothing wrong with an apology for the hurt, unintentional though it may have been.

Unfortunately, BFFs aren't always "F." Cliques and social circles change, and so do friendships. It's sad that she is being rejected by her former friend, but sometimes the only solution for kids, as with adults, is to move on and find new friends. It's a hard lesson to learn, but we will wind up dealing with rejection in life. Coping skills are something we all have to learn eventually.
The "bff" may have felt "blown off" for sure... definite possibility... and I pointed that out to DD and said that whether intentional or not, maybe the friend felt that just to get DD to think of other points of view... but I also think this is more a case of the "bff" projecting more than anything... For a week straight the "bff" has made plans with DD and then gone and sat with the girls who bullied her, or waited for DD to come over and told her in front of peers "can you stop following me?"... So, I am finding little sympathy for the friend since DD was sure to explain to the kid and the mom that she had to run and go make up a test...

It is more than time that DD make some new friends, but she has been resistant to doing so... I think that hard as this has been with the "bff", she is seeing the need now to expand her world a bit because the way the friend has been acting is outrageous...
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Old 04-05-2017, 01:31 PM
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Originally Posted by hopeful4 View Post
Oh gosh, this brings back so many memories from my older DD. She is still a little awkward sometimes, she is just old enough now not to care, and has a very strong personality so she tolerates no one being unkind to her.

Right now there is some very mild things in my younger DD's class, but she has not gotten caught up in it. We tried all sorts of things and sending my older DD to another school is what ended up being game changing for her. She was like a different person, definitely a good move, but not something everyone has the option to do.

Tight hugs. I remember being very scattered and unfocused during that time because I was constantly worried.

I get it friend, and am here for you! PM me anytime you need a buddy!
I think sometimes the group that makes up a grade level sets a tone-- and apparently (according to my guidance counselor friend who works at the school), this is not a particularly kind girl group in the grade DD is in as a whole.

Must have been an extra large dose of "bitchy" in the pre-natal vitamins that the moms of girls in this group took

DD did well in her small neighborhood school and it fed into a massive middle school this year and its been a rough adjustment... I have been giving thought since the start of the year, to looking at a smaller private school which would be better for her learning needs and now, perhaps, social stuff too...

It's useful to hear Hopeful that you experienced a lot of the same with your older DD and that if we decide to change schools, it's not akin to running away-- Can I ask how your DD is now?
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Old 04-06-2017, 06:59 AM
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My DD is now 17 years old. She was in 7th grade when this happened.
Changing schools absolutely opened her up to a whole different set of friends. I second what you were told. This group (small school) were terrible from a very young age, they were always difficult. Honestly, the apple does not fall far, you could see it in the parents as well for many of them. I had no idea if it was the right thing to do or not, and we went to counseling for quite a while until the counselor actually told me that their opinion was to switch schools. My DD was SO relieved.

Hope this helps friend!


It's useful to hear Hopeful that you experienced a lot of the same with your older DD and that if we decide to change schools, it's not akin to running away-- Can I ask how your DD is now?

Last edited by DesertEyes; 04-06-2017 at 07:22 AM. Reason: Fixed broken quote
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Old 04-06-2017, 05:05 PM
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Originally Posted by hopeful4 View Post
My DD is now 17 years old. She was in 7th grade when this happened.
Changing schools absolutely opened her up to a whole different set of friends. I second what you were told. This group (small school) were terrible from a very young age, they were always difficult. Honestly, the apple does not fall far, you could see it in the parents as well for many of them. I had no idea if it was the right thing to do or not, and we went to counseling for quite a while until the counselor actually told me that their opinion was to switch schools. My DD was SO relieved.

Hope this helps friend!
Apple does not fall far indeed... Not a one of the "mean girls" in this situation come from moms who are anything but the adult version of the mean girl...

I had deluded myself for a time that the "BFF" was cut more from her dad's cloth than her mom's but it's not hard to see why she is behaving as she is...

My DD took the initiative this week to sit with some aquaintances and make an effort to get to know them... These two new friends are students in the team that "bff's" mom teaches in at the school and as far as DD knew, not girls that "bff" was pals with. Tonight one of the new friends texted to say she and the second friend had been invited to "bff's" tomorrow and had DD been invited too since they did not really know "bff" and figured DD was going to be there.

I almost lost my mind. It's like if "bff" can not control DD, and see her begging for friendship, she is going to interfere with any friends she does have.

Frankly it's a little single white female crazy and Im moving past sadness for DD and am starting to get angry with how nuts the mom of the "bff" is to be creating the crazy level of social engineering that she is.

Ughhhhhh.

Time to look into new schools I think.
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Old 04-06-2017, 07:26 PM
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I was bullied in school but back then it didn't have a name. The bullying stopped when I was on the bus and the children were making unkind gestures. I sat there. I didn't respond at all. They didn't get a reaction from me. That's the day the bullying ended.
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Old 04-07-2017, 12:07 AM
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Originally Posted by wanttobehealthy View Post
Apple does not fall far indeed... Not a one of the "mean girls" in this situation come from moms who are anything but the adult version of the mean girl...

I had deluded myself for a time that the "BFF" was cut more from her dad's cloth than her mom's but it's not hard to see why she is behaving as she is...

My DD took the initiative this week to sit with some aquaintances and make an effort to get to know them... These two new friends are students in the team that "bff's" mom teaches in at the school and as far as DD knew, not girls that "bff" was pals with. Tonight one of the new friends texted to say she and the second friend had been invited to "bff's" tomorrow and had DD been invited too since they did not really know "bff" and figured DD was going to be there.

I almost lost my mind. It's like if "bff" can not control DD, and see her begging for friendship, she is going to interfere with any friends she does have.

Frankly it's a little single white female crazy and Im moving past sadness for DD and am starting to get angry with how nuts the mom of the "bff" is to be creating the crazy level of social engineering that she is.

Ughhhhhh.

Time to look into new schools I think.
Well, just because they've been invited, doesn't mean she'll fool them. After all, they've probably been watching this nonsense all from afar.

This has all reminded me of when a new girl started at our local school and was put in our class when we were about 15. We had been at the school for a couple of years, with intake from a couple of schools, and had done all our friend shuffling in the first year and were quite settled. Me, being a scared and jealous type wasn't so keen on this new girl landing and shaking things up a bit. I was low enough on the pecking order as it was. Lol. I kept quiet though. Her first day was wet lunchtime which meant that we were all bored and confined to the school hall. The new girl didn't seem interested in any of us and sat reading a glossy magazine (the type none of us could afford). My class mates started picking her to bits between themselves: She looked stuck up; who can afford that magazine anyway?; she's got a weird nose; isn't that a whatever-make bag?; who does she think she is?, etc., etc. It was the first time I'd heard them all talk like this and I was pretty disgusted, and in a rare act of bravery (because I was scared to death really) I stood up and let them have it. Told them what bitches they were being and they were letting themselves down. How would they feel being a new girl at school? Etc. Etc. I did go on a bit. Then I huffed off to the bathroom to calm down (and probably to have a little fear-and-rage-cry truth be told). Then I went and chatted to the new girl, introduced myself and welcomed her, etc. Me and the new girl never saw eye to eye anyway (she could be a bit of a stuck up cow to be honest), but we managed to maintain a kind of love hate relationship for a few years til she left school and lost touch.

My friendship with the others was never quite the same after that. I suppose I'd proved myself to be a bit of a loose cannon lol. One of them told me, afterwards, that she did feel ashamed of how they'd gone on, and that she was glad I'd gone off at them and made them think. Said itheg had stopped when I'd stomped off to the bathroom. They ended up being closer friends with the 'new girl' than me later on (had more in common I suppose) so it all worked out okay.

Anyway. Sorry if that was a little off topic. Just needed to share that little memory.

Hope DD's okay.

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