<p>It is funny how this simple little word brings out all kinds of interesting variations in our common cultural fabric. Certainly gender is part of it, and I’m wondering if maybe geography is another? Specifically I’m wondering if the tendency to respond negatively to the word “nice” may be stronger in places where there is more social pressure on girls to maintain a “veneer,” as mousegray puts it, of niceness.</p>
<p>When I said I wouldn’t describe my daughter as “nice,” I didn’t mean that her behavior isn’t nice, but that isn’t necessarily what would come to mind in describing her. She would never hurt another person intentionally, even their feelings, but she is very matter-of-fact and not particularly warm. If someone needed something, she would definitely help them, but she wouldn’t give a hug and nurturing. In some ways, she’s more like a stereotypical guy – takes charge, gets things done, and doesn’t have a lot of patience. So, no, I really wouldn’t say that she’s nice because that word connotes to me a gentleness that my daughter doesn’t possess at this time in her life.</p>
<p>As far as geographical tendencies, some might think that Southern girls would be raised with pressure to be “nice” (meaning perhaps submissive in a stereotypical sense) but that could not be farther from the truth in our experience. My d attended a very competitive all girls high school where the girls are taught to think for themselves and expected to become independent, successful young women. They regularly compete against a neighboring all boys school and the girls do not like to lose to the boys. No social veneers oozing submissiveness here. Personally, I don’t equate niceness with being a doormat. I equate it with treating people the way you would want to be treated in the same circumstances. Friendly, considerate, kind, empathetic, helpful, sincere.</p>
<p>Too often, being “nice” is not the same as being “good”, but is often seen as an equivalent, and that’s where I have a problem. </p>
<p>When my D was small, she was very shy with strangers and would not reciprocate when spoken to by a stranger. I would never force her to “be nice” to the nice man who wanted to chat with her on the bus, because I felt it was a somewhat coercive situation and I wasn’t going to force her to participate in it. I guess it’s the coercive nature of “niceness” that bugs me. I draw a direct line between my allowing my then two-year-old D to not play along or to not be pleasing to her ability to stand up to social pressures later, in middle school and HS.</p>
<p>zoosermom, I think I would like your D2.</p>
<p>I’ve always tried to convey to my D that kindness is a sign of strength, not weakness. It’s the fearful and insecure people who are the most cruel in high school (and in adult life, too, I guess).</p>
<p>One concern I have with all this Queen Bee, Wannabee Rosalind Wiseman stuff is that by analyzing the behavior of girl cliques so closely and obsessively, we go a long way towards validating it and making it more important than it really is. A lot of kids go through some mild social adversity in high school. If the parents are sympathetic but don’t make a big deal out of it, then the girl can work through her hurt, gain self-respect by searching out a different peer environment, and realize that high school is not life. I remember feeling great comfort, when I was my daughter’s age, in the realization that high school social cliques are irrelevant five minutes after graduation. A lot of anxious attention from my parents or guidance counselors over occasional peer problems would have made me more, not less, nervous.</p>
<p>A huge disappointment to me was the realization that behaviors I thought I was leaving behind in high school persist in many adults.</p>
<p>^^^
True, but the adult world is larger than h.s. and it’s easier to avoid mean people or brush them off.</p>
<p>“It’s the fearful and insecure people who are the most cruel in high school (and in adult life, too, I guess).”</p>
<p>NJSue, I have seen this theory, but have not seen any research to support that it applies to either the most cruel or the frequent bullies of either gender. Although I do think that many insecure people do turn to bullying those they think they can (for example, poor, uneducated whites turning to neoNazism), I have seen no sign that such well known common bullying types as Queen Bee girls or jocks are insecure–and why would they be?</p>
<p>I also disagree with your apparent assessment of school bullying as “mild social adversity”–if it were mild, victims would not be so upset, even many years later. Further, I htink the anlysis of Queen Bees, etc is more valuable than you do, as until recently, bullying among girls had received scant media attention and the research has helped alert parents and schools to this issue–although I still thik too little is done about it.</p>
<p>Finally, although I agree with you in the adult world “it’s easier to avoid mean people”, that is seldom the case in the workplace, especially if the bully or harasser is a co-worker or, worse yet, your boss. Especially in these economic times, it is often very difficult to change jobs to get away from a bully.</p>
<p>Women and girls will always be catty whether it is in high school or in the work force. It does not simply get better with college because their personality will always hold true. A woman that enjoys creating drama, gossiping, and being two-faced will remain in that persona for the rest of her life until she chooses to change it. I know many women in their forties with children that act the same as my 9th grade classmates did.</p>
<p>The key is to know who you are and be confident in yourself. Sure there are a lot of women that gossip about me at work but I don’t let it bother me. It’s their waste of time, not mine. This doesn’t meant that I’d let them walk over me, no, I’m not nice to them (which is a complete opposite because I’m a relatively nice individual), and I refuse to give them the time of day. In return, they are unable or even intimidated to say anything directly to my face and if I don’t hear it, I don’t care.</p>
<p>Some are jealous and some just have problems in their lives. Every girl that I’ve encountered that has teased me were either jealous of my success or something about me or had a horrible life.</p>
<p>I’m a junior in college now and was probably raised similarly to your daughter. Though it doesn’t seem so by the very nature of this post, I’m a pretty humble person and definitely hate tooting my own horn. I have an impressive resume, or so I’ve been told. I’m nice to my parents because I know they deserve it (they love that I send them flowers on my birthday), helpful to my siblings, caring to my friends. I’ll bend over backwards for my friends and have on quite a few occasions. I love it. I’m starting to really live the idea of “treat others as you’d like to be treated” and it’s so rewarding. I’m all about treating my friends and family as well as possible–from random acts of kindness to an always-listening ear to advice when it is sought. </p>
<p>I used to think that, as a giver of such genuine friendship “services,” that I’d also be the receiver of them. This wasn’t always the case, especially toward the end of high school. It’s hard and hurtful to see these things happen and to have them happen to you, and I definitely wish your daughter weren’t going through this right now.</p>
<p>Though it was tough, I started distancing myself from my rude friends and replacing them with my current ones. I kept with my old crowd in name only–I’d sit with them at lunch or go to their parties, but when it came to the big drama of my life, I stopped turning to them and started turning to my new group. It helped tremendously.</p>
<p>It’s hard to find a new group of friends. Perhaps your daughter has a few friends in her group with whom she’s closer? Maybe those few would be better targets for your daughter’s nice gestures, so she’s not so offended or hurt when the others are rude to her. Not that she should treat their rudeness with rudeness on her part too–rather, I just think she should stop giving them such fabulous treatment when they’re not treating her respectfully too. I bet she’d be a lot less hurt by the rude girls if she didn’t have such an interest in them treating her nicely–ie, because she went out of her way to be nice to them in the first place, she would expect the same from them.</p>
<p>Good luck to your daughter! And I’m happy to report that as I’ve gotten older, girls have gotten less catty and more genuine. It’s hard to find them sometimes, but definitely worth the effort. My two best girl friends are some of the strongest women I know, and I’m proud to have them in my life.</p>
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<p>This is simply absolutely not true. </p>
<p>I work with senior executives, senior university staff and many faculty members like myself. I have worked all over the globe with men and women coauthors, and co-teachers at various universities. I do consulting on the side as well. And I have zero memory of working with women gossiping or being catty toward me or any of this other HS nonsense. I actually can’t think of any women I’ve worked with that do this to others either.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine actually studies gossip, ostracism, and bullyng in the workplace. The data does not support that women are doing this more than men. It’s just ugly stereotyping.</p>
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<p>When did I say that women are doing it more than men? Do you think you have the right to compare your work environment when every other working persons? Or do you assume I’m simply making up stories about how female co-workers gossip and spread rumors about myself and others? My experiences are different than yours but it doesn’t mean they are less valid.</p>
<h1>88 yabeyabe: I guess I don’t see catty girl behavior (my “mild social adversity”) as “bullying.” To me, bullying implies a persistent, focused combination of psychological and physical intimidation rather than being ignored in the lunchroom. And I know from firsthand experience that this second kind of behavior can cause great pain, but adult interference is unlikely to fix the problem. Indeed, it’s likely to make it worse.</h1>
<p>I do think Queen Bee types are insecure because they need power over others to feel good about themselves. They need acolytes. That is a great weakness, whether or not the Bee herself recognizes this when she is seventeen years old.</p>
<p>A young person who is constantly and persistently rejected and bullied by peers does indeed have a major problem requiring adult guidance and intervention. But the situation described by the OP is not that. I suspect that her daughter has the coping skills and perspective to get over this and find new friends who are a better fit for her college years.</p>
<p>My experiences are different than yours but it doesn’t mean they are less valid.</p>
<p>I find that we all have goggles that color our vision, we see what we expect to see whether it is there or not, and what we spend our time doing and thinking about * is who we are*- whether or not we want to accept it.</p>
<p>When people have a chip on their shoulder, they also notice others who do as well, and that seems to validate their thinking patterns. They aren’t comfortable thinking outside the " box", they are happy in their rut- even if they aren’t happy, if you know what/who, I mean.</p>
<p>The NY Times did an article recently on the view of many working women that heir female peers and bosses were not as supportive as they expected. Wendy Wasserstein’s acclaimed play, The Heidi Chronicles, had a similar theme. This is not to say that men are better on average.</p>
<p>In my experience in the workplace, I often saw women at the same level who were not supportive of each other, often because they saw each other as rivals for a limited number of promotional opportunities that they thought were available to women, sometimes because they did not want to be considered part of a “women’s group.”</p>
<p>I also saw some sharp differences between women who had decided not to have children to allow themselves to be workaholics and women who wanted both children and careers. </p>
<p>Also, the pioneering women who made difficult advances in the 1970’s often clash with younger women, sometimes on the basis of “I did it on my own, why should I hep you?”, sometimes on the basis of “Why should I mentor you just because you are also female?”</p>
<p>That said, the notion that men mentor younger men over drinks or golf after work is usually overstated–men are not very supportive co-workers, either.</p>
<p>My D is going thru a lot of this right now. She’s that girl that almost any other girl in her hs would change lives with in a second - pretty, athlete, good student, liked by teachers, class officer, doesn’t whine, never lacks for attention from guys (despite being one of the least “flirty” girls she knows). From the outside she looks like she’s got it all. </p>
<p>She’s got everything except long-term, reliable good friends.</p>
<p>Freshman year, it was her middle school friends who had fun with a rumor that D was pregnant.</p>
<p>Soph year, she thought she had found a friend she could trust. But after almost a year, that friend moved on to a group that drank. She also decided she and D could not be friends with the same people, and launched a campaign to alienate D’s other friends, by doing things like telling them D “didn’t want” to hang out with them, when the truth was she never told D the friends were hanging out. That she did all this while D’s grandmother was dying just made it that much worse. D didn’t retaliate, she just waited and decided her “real” friends would figure out what was going on. They did… but it took them 4-6 months. </p>
<p>Senior year, those two “real” friends are on D’s varsity team. The team was really unhappy with their coach, and asked the captains (including D) to talk to coach and explain their concerns. D did as she was asked. The next day the coach benched 4 players, including D’s 2 “real” friends, and said she did it “after talking with the captains.” D never told her to bench her friends! She told the friends this, but despite their professed “hatred” of the Coach it took them a week to decide that maybe D was telling the truth… or maybe she wasn’t but they were “over it.” Well, D’s not over it. She doesn’t trust them anywhere near the way she used to.</p>
<p>Tonight D was in tears. “Why can’t I keep friends? What’s wrong with me?” I wish I could tell her that college will be better. I hope it will. I think it will… but I can’t promise that.</p>
<p>As for things improving when you grow up… in some cases yes, in others, no. D used to be in an EC that involved travel. She wasn’t in the “in” group in that EC. The moms made sure I knew I wasn’t in the “in” group of moms, either. And I supervise a number of women in their 50s and 60s. The childish, exclusionary, petty, gossipy behavior I’ve seen among these women on a daily basis would put a high school girl to shame. </p>
<p>sigh</p>
<p>Lafalum - no advice here. I am sorry about what your daughter is going through. It’s not easy to watch and be powerless to fix the problem. It’s good she has you to confide in and let off some steam. For a long time I was the only person D1 could discuss many personal things because she didn’t trust anyone in high school. She also wondered why she couldn’t have a “best friend” whom she could tell everything to. Now in college, she has one closest friend, but the friendship developed slowly over a year period of time. Both of them seem very out going to other people, but deep inside they are loners and are very independent. It works for them - they do their own things, but come together when they want to, or when there is crisis (I am not on call as much now). What’s surprising is few of her friends (boy and girl) from HS have become better friends since they went off to colleges. I don’t know if it’s maturity or lack of competition. </p>
<p>Hope she feels better after a good night sleep.</p>
<p>Wow, Lafalum. So sorry for your daughter. I’m sure she knows deep down that she’s OK and will find better friendships eventually, but that doesn’t help a whole lot in the here and now.</p>
<p>Reading your post, what amazes me is not so much that HS girls are so mean to each other, but how much time and energy and (in a nasty sense) creativity they put into being mean to each other. Boys can be mean too, but they’re not so ambitious about it.</p>
<p>Lafalum, I now look forward even more to you posting of your D getting into the school of your dreams.</p>
<p>And, at some point when it will not hurt your D, I hope the coach is held accountable for his awful conduct.</p>
<p>NJSue, the history above is why I would agree with your definition of “bullying” as requiring “physical intimidation”. Can we at least agree that it is “harassment”, which, in the legal definition at least (sexual or racial harassment), does not require a physical act?</p>
<p>Emeraldkity: “what we spend our time doing and thinking about is who we are- whether or not we want to accept it.” Yes. That’s why dwelling on those who have let us down and hurt us in the past is counterproductive, as we’re only allowing them to hurt us over and over. Acknowledge, accept, and move on. “Living well is the best revenge.”</p>
<p>Yabeyabe: Sure, harassment need not be physical. Bullying, harassment, meanness, rudeness, “mobbing” --it’s all bad and I’m not trying to condone any of it. However, there are degrees of adversity and I see so many college kids (I’m a professor) who fall apart over what are really pretty minor and predictable social difficulties (a breakup with a boyfriend, a fight with a roommate). They seem to lack the coping skills that students had a generation ago. Are kids so much meaner to each other now than they used to be? I don’t think so. So why are kids so psychologically vulnerable? is it because they believe that it’s actually normal to be liked all the time by everyone?</p>