Friends with Bullies

[Olioxenfree]

My ten year old daughter is friends with a group of “popular” girls in her grade. She has a good time with them and they are always very nice to her. A couple of weeks ago my husband won a bouldering contest and there was a Stanley water cup in his prize basket. Last night my husband asked our daughter if she wanted it, since her friends have them.

She asked me if she could give it to a girl in her grade instead. I said sure, but asked her why she we hadn’t heard her mention this girl before. She said that this group of friends had been making fun of other kids behind their backs and recently had started saying things to their faces. She said that they had been particularly mean to this one girl and had made her cry. She said she doesn’t join in on it, but still feels bad. This girls family struggles financially so she thought if she had something “cool”, they would leave her alone.

I told her that she was still welcome to give it to her, it might make her feel better to have someone be friendly toward her, but that it likely wouldn’t make the bullying stop. I explained that my daughter doesn’t have a stanley or a lot of the cool fads, but they were still nice to her because they liked her. They were mean to this girl because they decided they didn’t like her, and just use her not having cool things as something to make fun of her for, if she had one they’d find something else.

We told her that she is old enough to make decisions about who she is friends, but part of being old enough is deciding who you want to be associated with. Being friends with people who would do that will makes others think that you stand by it. I understand that it’s a hard decision for a child to make. We talked about it and she is stuck because these girls are very nice to her and good friends to her, plus being in the “popular crowd” is a good boost to her self esteem. But, she also knows how important it is to not bully others. She knows that my husband was bullied and how that effected his mental health as a kid. She knows we would not tolerate her ever actually bullying a kid. She knows it’s not right. I told her that I was friends with popular kids when I was in school and don’t talk to most of them now, my lasting friendships have been with people who I really connected with. I understand that it seems really important now, but she’ll will go through a lot of social groups in her life and she has to decide what her boundaries are.

We talked for a long time about what her different choices are and what the outcomes could be and I told her to put some thought into it today. I know I could have just told her that she couldn’t hang out with those girls anymore but I think she’s old enough that she has to be a part of the choice and understand why, otherwise she won’t learn anything from it. We also talked about how these girls are still young, doing a bad thing now doesn’t mean they will always be bad people and that they likely don’t realize the depth of their actions, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a permanent effect on the kid their being mean to. We’ll talk about it again tomorrow to see what she’s feeling. She said she nervous to talk about it before because she knows what my husband went through and didn’t want him to be disappointed in her, but he assured her that he’s had a lot of growth since he was a kid, he shares things about his childhood with her so she empathizes with others, not because he would ever judge her for discussing how to make decisions like this. It’s hard having to see your kids start to have to make more grown up decisions like this. I guess it’s just a vent, I wanted to respect her privacy and not talk to my friends about this, so I came on here.

[LiveWhatULove]

I am sorry your daughter faces these tough choices.

I have spent a fair amount of time reading and reflecting about bullying, ever since kids started calling my second child a “retard” with “messed up eyes”. We have been able to instill enough confidence and they have developed enough wit and sarcasm, that so far, all 3 seem to be able to have a pretty positive school experience. But it has taken a lot of intentional practice on our part, especially for my second son. But sacrificing your own social status, especially as a girl gender, oof, that is another challenging layer.

It’s hard to obviously understand via one post, so at first glance, I would likely coach my daughter to act confused when she hears her friends saying those things, “like what, I do not understand, are you making fun of ___?…weird, that does not seem like you at all, you are so sweet and nice, I cannot wrap my mind around this craziness.” And try to redirect the topic everytime. But yea, if that doesn’t ’t work, the child sort of faces that classic scenario, where the right thing is not the easy thing.

[Anonymous 1]

I was the squintch eye kid when I was little. Later I was the big nosed, fat bottom kid. I accepted my tormentors and just thought I was useless to their society.

[Quorra2.0]

Bullying has always been a deal breaker for my kids. It’s something they didn’t/don’t tolerate whether it’s behind someone’s back or to their face. However, that said, I know they have friends who are in that more outlier of groups who don’t participate but still feel guilty because they understand not speaking up against it is just about as bad as doing it. I’m sure she’ll figure it out. You gave her something to think about. Now it’s up to her to decide who she wants to be and her boundaries with friends.