So, Monday when I picked Ell up from school, she was very upset. I had to pull the car over and have her come up to the front so she could cry it out. It seems that she asked her classmate for a piece of paper during a quiet time, her teacher sternly called her out for this, and it embarrassed her so much that she started crying. In class, which made the embarrassment even greater.
Then yesterday (Tuesday), she was asking her friend if she could play with her friend's Lego toys while the friend was doing something with another friend. The friend didn't answer her, so she assumed that she hadn't been heard. She asked again. The other friend started yelling at her to just leave them alone. Now both aren't talking to Ell, and she really doesn't understand why. Day two of crying in class. Bring on the crybaby reputation....
My darling girl is heart-broken. The girl with the Legos has been her friend for years. I know her to be sweet and kind. And now, all of a sudden she's not, and I'm forced to give my daughter lessons in schoolyard politics: No matter what, hold your head high. Don't ever let them see you cry - if you have to cry, ask to go to the bathroom. This is going to bother you, but don't ever let them see it. Just smile and laugh like everything is ok. Mean girls are like sharks - if they smell blood, they will never let you get away.
This sucks, man.
I'm remembering back to my 5th grade year. It was horrible. I had moved and changed schools in about September or October, so I had no friends. Worse than that, I had a classroom full of newly minted enemies. Girls beat me up on the way home from school almost every day until I learned how to fight enough to give as good as I got. It wasn't until the beatings stopped that I learned that I was getting beat up for being Mexican, which is funny (now) because I'm not Mexican, I just tan easy. I had long attributed my horrible experience at that time to the fact that I had just changed schools at the beginning of the year. However, my middle daughter's experience in 5th grade wasn't good either. 5th grade seems to be the birthplace of mean girls. I wonder why this is. It can't all be about hormones, can it?
A cursory Google search of the phrase "5th grade mean girls" would indicate that this mean girl behavior starts to be typical in the 5th and 6th grades. The difficulty here is that it's only the victims of mean girl behavior that are getting any kind of assistance in navigating around the mean girl culture. Mean girls don't go home to cry it out - they are the victors, and a lack of knowledge about friend loss and low self-worth are the spoils. They aren't the ones asking for advice, so nobody knows that they are the ones that need it the most. This alone is all the validation they need to continue the behaviors.
Meanwhile, the parents of kids like mine get to be the ones to hold and comfort our kids while they learn to deal with their new "normal."
Stay strong, young ones, and know that we parents send you off to the battle grounds with praying hearts and crossed fingers that you come back to us as whole in mind and body as you left us. We will bandage the wounds that we see, and help you deal with the wounds we don't see. We will fight for you and teach you how to fight for yourself. We love you as you are, and as hard as it might be, keep being you - I promise you, even though it doesn't seem like it, it is enough.
