6th grade drama - looking for advice

In My Humble Opinion
1

My 11 year old daughter is a lovely, friendly, funny, smart and compassionate girl.

She’s not cool though. She’s a self proclaimed “nerd” and tomboy and really has no interest in the things that her peers are into - boys, social media, popular music, fashion, etc.

6th grade is proving to be tough on her. She’s quickly becoming the outcast in her class thanks to a couple of “mean girls” who have made it their mission to convince everyone that she’s not cool enough to hang with them.

She rarely gets invited to birthday parties…the last one the girl invited pretty much the entire class except for my DD. It seems very deliberate. I rarely get more than 2 or 3 girls at her birthday parties.

I feel horrible for her. She had 3 great friends since 1st grade but they have all moved away in the last 3 years. She does still have friends at school but she says they seem to be drifting away from her and more toward the popular crowd. How is there even a popular crowd in 6th grade?? Ugh, girls can be so mean.

One girl in particular who seems to be the leader of the pack singles out my daughter pretty much every day in some way. She gives her death stares during class, calls her bossy and chastises her any time she does something wrong. My daughter is pretty convinced that she is also behind a campaign to get all the other girls in her class to exclude her.

Daughter has recently been asking to stay home from school, needing a mental health day etc. Today she came home sick. She admitted that school has become really stressful for her largely because of this mean girl. This is a shift because she’s always really enjoyed school and for a while seemed to just not care about the drama but I can see it’s giving her a lot of anxiety. I’ve had depression and anxiety most of my life so I am concerned for her. I am even considering therapy to help her get some coping skills.

I have to be very careful here because I want to just make it all better for her but I know I can’t do that. I had many years in grade school where I had only one friend and I was an outcast and it hurt. I wish I could spare her the hurt.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve done her a disservice by not exposing her to more pop culture, music, not arranging more play dates/get togethers etc. She’s into mythology and fantasy and Minecraft and books and doesn’t give two shits about fashion or boys or anything remotely girly. But she’s a really really great kid.

She is who she is right?

She’ll find her way right?

2

You haven’t done anything wrong; it’s the kids. Girls that age can be brutal to others.

My daughter went through that but was lucky to find a couple of friends who took a liking to her and were tigers when it came to defending her.

Someone once observed that my daughter probably didn’t have a lot of friends in school. She had noted how well she got along with adults and said that eventually that would put her in good stead. Your daughter will have to find her way, but will eventually.

3

Is your daughter just “nerdy” as you say, or is she more introverted? Many introverted people fulfill their own destiny. They have a harder time making friends because they don’t make the effort themselves. Hard to believe that an entire school would shun her because one other girl declared her unworthy.

I would take a two prong approach as a parent. I would talk to the administration or the teachers about the perceived bullying from this mean girl, and ask them to be more on the look out for it. I would also talk to my child about social skills, and what it means to become friends and to be a friend.

4

I feel for your daughter, and for you. I was also a nerd who was uninterested in most of the principal topics of interest of my peer group.

I eventually found friends, who were interested in the same kinds of things I was. But it took a while.

What helped me was judo. I started at eleven (I am currently 59) and it was an organized activity with specific goals, in which I took a genuine interest. It helped very much with bullies, although my bullies were mostly physical rather than the “I am having a party and you can’t come” things that girls seem to do. But at the time it was semi-exotic to do martial arts, and it got me out of the house and in a group of like-minded people. And my instructor was a good man, and a strong male figure that I did well to admire and emulate.

Is your daughter interested in anything like that, or sports in general? It doesn’t have to be any specific thing - try a dozen different ones and see if any of them click.

Yes, she will find her way. It may take a while.

Regards,
Shodan

5

Middle school is hell for everybody, even the ‘popular’ kids.

I know as a parent that it’s really hard to watch your kids struggle, but 95% of the time it seems to blow over.

If you’re really worried, get her involved in some extracurriculars so she can make friends outside of school.

6

You have to understand the pernicious nature of the socialization pressures that exist in this society (and it’s only going to get worse). These girls are just now hitting puberty, which helps to explain their behavior. Your daughter needs to remain strong and hold on to her true self-surrendering to these people at school just for the sake of having more “friends” won’t do her any good.

Is hers a public school? Do you have alternatives that you can research (and/or afford)?

7

Oh, hi, younger me.

We know this is called bullying, right? It’s the emotional kind. It absolutely does happen the way it’s described. There may be more she’s not telling you because she’s been too worn down by it as an everyday occurence. For example: going home on the bus, a girl would be chosen from the group to sit down next to me. She would describe for 30 minutes straight how ugly I was in extreme and humiliating detail while pushing me against the wall in a way I couldn’t escape. Whispering into my ear that whole time while the other girls watched. For weeks. The only advice I was given was “ignore them, bullies will stop eventually when they get bored” so I would sit there, unmoving, letting them do this to me. I was too afraid to do anything because I was always the one that was punished for tattling or “acting out” and “ignoring the rules” if I did anything but sit still and take it. The thing I didn’t have was any support (I was always the one at fault) - so let your daughter know that if she feels she has to “act out” in order to make them stop, you’ll back her up and defend her. Give permission to throw a punch or two if that’s all they’ll understand.

The only way I got through it was to decide that if I was going to be friendless and hated, I was going to be friendless and hated. That was the hand life dealt me for being me. I did not end up actually friendless, but it killed any enthusiasm I had for attempting to reach out to other people at the time. Before then I would try to be nice, offer people things, share, etc. After, I decided I needed to stop caring about other people because they obviously did not care about me. Don’t bother speaking to anybody until they talk to me first. Interestingly enough, this made me “mysterious” and “cool” and people started liking me, and a larger group of friends appeared than I ever had before in my life. Some of the bullies even said, “You know, you’re cool now…”

I mean, I did end up being massively depressed, suicidal, with zero self-esteem for years, and never liked school again after 3rd grade, but hey. I ended up getting through it with the method described above, as good as that is.

Now, if people actually did something about bullying in schools, that would be great, wouldn’t it? But everyone always disbelieves the bullying that’s mostly emotional and doesn’t want to do anything about it.

8

Thanks. Yes, she can be introverted and I sometimes have to push her to be social. In her perfect world, she’d stay at home playing Minecraft all day.

9

A lot of being cool is having self-confidence. You might not ever be able to be the most popular kid in school, if you’re not mainstream, but if you’re able to put out there that you “don’t give a rat’s ass” about what mainstream cool is, stand up for yourself, and recruit people who are on the fringe to your side, you can establish a competing, second tier of coolness that is respected.

But if your daughter couldn’t accomplish that, you might want to look around and see if there are any other schools with a culture more to her liking.

10

UGH, how horrible for you. I had similar experiences but not to that extent.

I try to give my daughter the tools she needs to deal with this girl but I’m not even sure myself how to handle it. I tell her that she needs to stick up for herself or she will always be a target. My daughter is polite to a fault, and when she gets yelled at by mean girl, she apologizes :smack:

11

She needs peers, and from the sound of it, she probably needs to find them outside of school. Fortunately, finding people your age with the same interests has never been easier, thanks to the internets. School will still suck, but it’s much easier to deal when you have your own “group”, even if it’s outside of school.

12

There’s also always the option to kick the doodle out of bullies. Obviously, she’ll get into trouble for it, but for certain levels of bullying, I’d tell my kid to go for it.

13

I’m gonna echo the chorus and say that 6th grade was the worst for me as well after years of low self-esteem/halfway bullying from other kids.

The thing to keep telling her is to be true to herself. No matter what the other girls say she needs to remember who she is, and that she is a good person who is loved by others and has a purpose.

The girls call her ugly…well that’s fine because I am not going to marry you, so that’s your opinion.

The girls call her stupid…Either her GPA will say otherwise or stupid compared to whom? We aren’t in college or anything you know?

Use her love of fantasy and books to her advantage. Try and pick out characters from her literature and discuss how they handled the same thing. I’m not saying convince her shes a fantasy character or anything socially awkward but basically say “Princess Merelda was bullied by her classmates too, and she knew she was better and that’s what you should do too!” That might be a bad example, but maybe you’ll get the gist of what I’m saying.

I also wouldn’t put it outside the realm of possibility to show her this thread. There are actual functional adults who have gone through the same thing, and we’re ok! We found friends! It’s hard I know but you can do it kid. :):slight_smile:

14

The situation sounds heart breaking. I would make an attempt to reach out to the parents of the girl. If that fails, call for a conference with the principle.

15

Maybe it’s just her nature to internalize, but make sure she knows she has explicit permission to get mad, to feel mad, to feel what she wants to feel, and that it’s natural. I was raised to be a little adult, who was always polite and follows the rules no matter what I felt inside. So I never had permission to be mad or act on that feeling, even if it was just to go outside and scream at nothing for a minute. Instead I would feel like I had done something wrong whenever I started feeling upset, even if it wasn’t my fault.

So she might need help training herself to let emotions out. Maybe practice with…well, letting her yell at something as though they were the bully. Let her yell nasty, mean things at it if she wants to.

16

I went through some of the same pain as your daughter when I was her age. There are some things you can do to help but keep in mind that you can’t erase all of the hurt. Resist the urge to fix everything. There are going to be times that all you can do is stand on the side and weep. It’s a really tough balance as a parent.

That said I really agree with this:

What helped me through that age was having a small circle of close friends from my church. Get your daughter involved in something–almost anything–where she will meet some girls her own age. I’m a big proponent of sports (lots of studies show that girls who play sports do better in most aspects of young life), especially team sports. The best situation would be a group that she can hang out with on her own after school. Good luck, mom.

17

Please don’t take this as snark because it’s not meant to be, but does this ever work? I worked with teens and I don’t remember it ever working (except in the cases where the parents already knew each other).

18

In fact, it usually has the opposite effect - the girl is shunned even more because she went and cried to mommy.

19

Recent example:

Daughter had a substitute teacher for Art class recently. Sub thought it would be a good idea to listen to music during the class so she said everyone could pick a song they liked. Daughter decided to try to organize things and went up to the blackboard to make a list. There ended up being like 20 songs chosen so now of course everyone is arguing about the songs and what order to play them in etc so daughter gets blamed for some reason over this. The mean girls skip over any songs they don’t like and I don’t think any art got done during this class.

At one point, everyone is surrounding daughter and yelling at her and blaming her etc and she HATES people touching her, crowds, loud noises, etc so goes into a panic attack and runs to the washroom to hide out. When she returns, #1 mean girl corners her and tells her she is bossy and ruined their art class.

Oh and substitute pretty much sat on her ass and did nothing to help the situation.

20

I would look at options for different schools. I work at a STEM magnet and it’s wonderful to see kids that would be "weird’ anywhere else find they have tons of people that share their interests and respect their passions.

League of Legends isn’t just A sport here, it’s THE sport.