“Girls are not aggressive,” several researchers concluded decades ago when observing and measuring aggression in school-aged children. They concluded that boys were clearly aggressive. This was easily observed during recess and lunch time, during games and sports. Boys would yell, argue, punch each other, and then resume the game or sports activity. The conclusion of the researchers: Boys are aggressive. Girls are not.
Flash forward, years later– a new group of social scientists arrive at schools to measure aggression in youth. Initially, their conclusions were the same. Are boys aggressive? Yes. Are girls aggressive? No. But then, some bright researcher said, “Hold on! We have been looking for one kind of aggression, physical.” It is true that boys are physical. They fight, punch each other and then move on. Girls, on the other hand, do something different. They often target a specific girl. They talk about her, stop talking to her, stop sitting by her, do not include her in outside social activities, and in today’s world conduct smear campaigns on social media.
What several studies have concluded over the decades is that even though boys are physically aggressive, in the arena of sports, it is a non-issue. It is handled on the court or the field and it is over. Not so with girls. We are so much more calculated, strategic, conniving, and mean.
As a teacher and as a counselor, mean girl behavior was far and away my least favorite situation to deal with, not because of the girls, but because of their mothers (and sometimes their fathers). Talking to a mean girl’s mother (or father) is incredibly difficult. Most of the time, this group of parents see their daughter as completely innocent, beautiful, popular, incapable of lying, and practically perfect. I am not exaggerating. Additionally, no matter how much hard factual evidence one presents to them about their child’s role in the incident, they refuse to see it.
So, how do we prevent our precious angels from becoming a mean girl? We must:
• See our girls through the eyes of love and adoration and from time to time intentionally see them through the eyes of reality for who they are and not who we want them to be.
• Build empathy in them and continually present life lessons to them that make them able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. (This is the foundation for the conscience.)
• Foster a spirit of cooperation instead of competition. This promotes an attitude of caring, giving, and kindness.
• Reflect on ourselves as parents and be willing to do the hard work it takes to raise wonderful girls who are genuinely beautiful inside and out.
