<p>Nrdsb, oh yeah.First time I did it I almost keeled over from my 13yo D’s potty mouth. Yikes. She has cleaned up her act, at least from what I can see. SO many ways to hide things now a days.</p>
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I’m not saying it still doesn’t happen, Roman - but it is recognized as a problem and more out in the open than it was in the 60s and 70s.
Maybe so, but after what I went through (some of it at the hand of teachers and other adults from whom one would expect better) I really find it hard to sympathize.</p>
<p>LasMa- thanks for explaining! I just couldn’t understand how the bullies could find this young girl again (12 years old!) after she switched schools. Personally, I don’t think that children this young should have unlimited access to the internet. If things had already gotten to the point where this poor child was hospitalized, she should have been better protected from the hateful peers who wanted her to harm her.</p>
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<p>I wasn’t clear enough; my post was NOT meant to elicit sympathy for bullies. In fact, I hope that some of these underage bullies start getting criminally charged as adults, as is being done with some other crimes in some places. Those 15 girls who drove young Rebecca to her death need to have their lives ruined forever. Maybe that would make more parents start paying attention to what their kids are doing online, and make some schools and law enforcement start taking this more seriously.</p>
<p>And you’re right, if bullying is a terrible thing when done by a teen, it’s unforgivable when done by an adult. I’m so sorry that happened to you.</p>
<p>I am a firm believer that social media is destroying our teen’s self esteem. I can use my 16 year old as an example. She gets random negative remarks from twitter about her physical appearance and lack of tolerance for drug use and underage drinking.
The physical attacks go like this :
" She needs to get out into the sun and stop being a vampire "
I do not exaggerate when I state that my daughter looks like a young Gwennyth Paltrow, She has long platinum blonde hair, blue eyes, tallish and thin. Other parents tell me she looks like a model, yet she sees herself in the eyes of her classmates who feel very free and willing to criticize her appearance.</p>
<p>Wow, I really sound like an idiot here, but you can tell who is on Twitter, right? It’s not anonymous? I would be tempted to ask them to their faces why they would be so mean. I feel so grateful that my most sensitive child just missed most of the technology as a teen (but has it as a young adult). She would have been devastated by comments like that.</p>
<p>I know only because she tells me and insists I stay out of it. It is a struggle to try to maintain a healthy sense of worth in your child as compared to what it was when social media was nothing more than a blip on the stream
She is 16
Her sisters are 26 and 23. All different from each other as far as interest and passions.
Never dealt with the level of peer pressure with the older girls as I do now</p>
<p>So sorry lje62. It sounds really hard to be a teenager these days.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I could stop myself from contacting some of those kids’ parents and reporting them to the school administration.</p>
<p>Honestly, my kids were lucky enough to go to a boarding school where that kind of mean spirited behavior wouldn’t have been tolerated (IF it came to the attention of the adults which I’m sure sometimes it does not). Does this happen in college too? I’m guessing that it does not, but I could be wrong.</p>
<p>My Ds attended an all girls school who had counselors who were prepared to deal with issues like mean girl behavior, eating disorders, and other issues which are common among girls. You couldn’t have paid me enough to do that job.</p>
<p>Any kind of serious, systemic bullying would have resulted in expulsion of the offender if she didn’t respond to counseling or if her parents would not get on board with changing the behavior. With all the ways it’s possible to record/print actual abusive online behavior, I don’t see how denial would get anyone very far.</p>
<p>We forbade our D to be on Facebook until we found out that she had disobeyed us and was on anyway because that was how the kids made plans (she was about 16 at the time, and a friend spilled the beans by a casual comment in the car when I was driving the gaggle). I understand that we were being draconian but still. Social media brings the bullying home in a way that was not possible in earlier generations. I faced some mild social adversity in middle school, but I knew that at home, in the bosom of my family, I was safe and loved. Unfortunately social media is pervasive and infects the psychological safety of the loving home. Social media is a temptation and a power that many young people are simply not mature enough to handle, either as perpetrator of bullying or as victim.</p>
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<p>When D1 was being bullied in middle school, we decided to try to start with the parents,whom we had known since the girls were very young. We contacted them and requested a family meeting to discuss the girls’ issues. They agreed. I tried to avoid blaming terminology and to keep the conversation as civil as possible, discussing ways we could all work together to at least help both girls remain respectful even if they couldn’t be friends. The other girl had to meet my eyes and know that I knew. After that, I think she decided that bullying my daughter was just too much trouble, and she began to direct her efforts elsewhere.</p>
<p>Years later, she told D that her English class had to write an essay on “My deepest shame.” She said she wrote about how she had treated my daughter. I have to admit I was surprised and had to at least give her props for examining and admitting her behavior. She and D eventually forged a decent relationship and even met for lunch last summer. Wonders never cease.</p>
<p>*mom2ck, I was bullied in middle school and trust me, I was a threat to NO beautiful girl. I was tall and painfully skinny, smart (ammo for the bullies), glasses and frizzy hair, socially awkward, fashion-impaired, pretty much the school geek. </p>
<p>Let’s just be clear that bullies can have lots of different reasons for bullying someone, from “too beautiful” to “too ugly” to “too anything.” Like domestic abuse, bullying isn’t caused by the victim. It’s caused by the bully’s insecurities and need to elevate themselves by putting someone else down.*</p>
<p>Oh, I agree. We all know that kids are very cruel to all kind of kids for a lot of reasons. Yes, it is about making themselves “feel better”.</p>
<p>I was bullied in middle school, and it was horrible. I can’t imagine how I would have reacted to cyberbullying – I’m sure I would have suffered and been truly miserable. </p>
<p>When my daughter was in second grade she told us how she and her friends were making fun of another girl in her class. My husband and I spent the rest of the dinner time chastising her. We made it very clear that this behavior was unacceptable to us – and I got very emotional given my experiences. As she got older, we talked a lot about how middle school girls can be mean – in fact, we probably talked too much about it! It turned out that her cohort in school was a generally nice group of kids – anything that happened was pretty minor.</p>
<p>I have been tempted to see if my tormentors are on Facebook and let them know how miserable they made my life, but so far have decided not to waste my time.</p>
<p>This story is such a tragedy.</p>
<p>When D1 was in 6th grade, a 5th grade girl’s mom called me to let me know that she thought D1 was “picking” on her daughter on the school bus. It was very hard for me to believe that my seemingly perfect kid could be mean to another kid. I kept my cool and asked the mom why her kid thought D1 was being mean to her. After listening to her, I thought there maybe some truth to what she was saying. I then had a talk with D1 about it. According to D1, she thought the girl was annoying and just didn’t want the girl to be around her and her friends. After I explained to D1 how it could have been hurtful to a younger girl (even if she was being annoying), D1 felt really bad. I asked D1 to put herself in the girl’s shoes (a younger kid on a bus with a lot of older girls and not feeling wanted), and she got it. I am glad the mom called me because I wouldn’t have been able to have the “teaching moment” if she hadn’t called me.</p>
<p>My daughter was cut out by a bunch of mean girls in HS. It was nightmare. When I tried to talk to one of the moms that had been my friend as well, she said she could only worry about her own kid. That was the end for me. D had a very rough senior year… but is now very happy in college. Interestingly, the younger daughter of the woman I spoke to apparently fell into the same fate as my daughter when she hit HS last year. karma is a *****.</p>
<p>How would one monitor the Twitter conversations? People gripe about Facebook, but one can friend their kid as a condition of being allowed to join, and then monitor the posts.</p>
<p>oldfort, kudos to you. Many mothers would have stopped with “hard for me to believe that my seemingly perfect kid could be mean to another kid.,” would have cut off the conversation, and it would have gone unchecked, with any number of possible outcomes. Instead, you listened, and this launched a great learning experience for your D. She’s probably more empathetic than the average woman as a result.</p>
<p>It is why I would give the mean girl’s parents a chance to do the right thing. If I was unsuccessful, I would do what I need to do to make the harassment stop.</p>