<p>Your definition of bullying is not the definition used in schools today. How often do you go to work and have someone comment on your ugly outfit, the 10 pounds you recently put on, or that honker on your nose (in front of your coworkers)? And if they did, what would be the point? To make themselves feel better at your expense…aka Bullying. Please don’t give young mean girls a pass for this offensive behavior. Weather or not you agree on what is the best option OP’s D, please don’t trivialize what is happening to her. It is bullying.</p>
This is not the definition of bullying the schools are using today. Simply making the occasional nasty comment, even publicly, isn’t bullying. The OP realizes this. Calling every nasty behavior in schools “bullying” demeans the experience of those who are truly bullied.</p>
<p>What definition ARE the schools using these days? From Massachusetts anti-bullying laws of 2010:
</p>
<p>One girl occasionally commenting negatively on my complexion doesn’t rise to the level of bullying. It just makes her mean and obnoxious. A larger or older kid or group of kids who repeatedly and intentionally target me with nasty comments and behaviors would be bullying.</p>
<p>To use your example, one co-worker telling me I’m fat wouldn’t be bullying either. It’s just one obnoxious co-worker. A superior at work who repeatedly and intentionally insults me in front of other would be bullying, because it would be repeated, targeted and there would be a power imbalance.</p>
<p>Don’t throw the word “bully” around lightly - you lessen the horribly painful experience of kids who are truly bullied. It’s a popular media term, but not every cold is the flu and not every nasty encounter is bullying. </p>
<p>Neither the OP nor her daughter are using this term. I don’t know why everyone else insists on using it.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic or uncaring. It’s entirely possible the OP’s D’s experience may worsen and there may need to be adult intervention or pulling her out of school. But her question is “When Do I Give Up?” and my answer is “Not yet.” </p>
<p>In an ideal world, kids and adults wouldn’t be mean to each other. It’s never right or justified. But here’s the long-term consequences of trying to protect our kids from every negative experience, from the Dean of Students at Boston College:</p>
<p>There’s a serious flaw in your prescription, lafalum. You are assuming that being exposed to adversity will teach someone how to deal with it. If someone gets bullied, your argument goes, they will learn how to deal with bullies. And then everything will be hunky-dory. That’s not always true, any more than being exposed to abuse for being colorblind will make someone able to identify red. In your experience, were the same people social targets every year, or did the victims change? Because if the same people were the victims year after year, like they were in my school, then we have pretty good evidence that being bullied doesn’t teach someone how to avoid being bullied.</p>
<p>I was exposed to bullies. Plenty. Alas, I never learned how to deal with them. Lots of people just don’t have the social skills and awareness that will enable them to pick up that sort of thing, and being bullied doesn’t mean the fairies come down and grant a person the abilities they lack. Being bullied and abused taught me… what it feels like to be bullied and abused. On that subject, I am an expert.</p>
<p>OP, if you think that your daughter is one who is socially skilled, and who will pick up the ability to deal with bullies by being bullied, then leave her in school.</p>
<p>Lafalum, your definition of bullying includes this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I.e., your definition of bullying seems rooted in the idea that “real” bullying is physical, that no kid need be intimidated by another kid the same age or size.</p>
<p>In fact, I was never once physically attacked (unless you count the time someone put tacks on my seat, hoping that I’d make a humiliating scene in class when I sat down – it worked). My bullies in school were the same age (same school year), and most of the girls who bullied me were actually smaller than I was (I was tall). Does that mean I wasn’t really bullied?</p>
<p>Look, at age 58, I can now see how I could have dealt with being ridiculed and ostracized. Over the years, I’ve developed 100 zingers I could now use on those 13-year-olds who made my life a living hell. From a distance of 45 years, being the punchline of a joke (yes, I was literally a punchline) doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Today, I could shrug it off or, more likely, reflect on the emotional deficits of someone who gets such a kick out of humiliating another person. </p>
<p>But the point is, I wasn’t 58. I was 13. I was not equipped to fight it, or understand anything about it except how unhappy it made me. Adults who weren’t socially bullied as children perhaps can’t understand how much misery it causes and how much damage it does. But they should IMO refrain from minimizing the pain it causes, or advising kids to just get over it.</p>
<p>As I read through this thread, hoping for a good answer for the OP, I keep thinking about the girl who bullied me repeatedly during middle and high school (including such priceless remarks as “you don’t belong here”). About five years ago she asked me to be her “friend” on Facebook and eventually I accepted. About six months ago, she confided in me that her older sister and mother have ridiculed her about her weight since she was 12 AND STILL DO (it was part of a private conversation after I posted that I had lost weight). Small surprise that she turned it around and bullied others. </p>
<p>But like LasMa, I was 12 to 16 then and I’m 58 now. And it’s only in the last few months that I have found it in myself to be friendly with her. (We have many mutual friends who are real friends of mine; it was a very small school.)</p>
<p>Kind of a curse of having choices, I guess. I wonder if that makes you/your daughter more picky. For my kids and me, the speculation of not going back would have never, ever crossed our minds.</p>
<p>Same. Quitting school because of one mean girl? Really? Sounds like your daughter needs a self-esteem boost. You can help with that by helping her to explore things she is good at that and learn to value herself without regard to what a mean girl thinks or says about her. Who cares? That attitude in my opinion is the best defense against mean girls.
It’s no fun teasing someone who doesn’t give a flip.</p>
<p>Agree with Lafalum or don’t, but it seems to me that some posters are setting up a straw-woman version of her views.</p>
<p>No one is saying that the appropriate response to honest-to-goodness bullying is to just suck it up and learn to be the bigger person. What people are questioning - fairly enough, given the information at hand - is if what is going on here rises to the level of bullying and, even if it does, if it rises to the level of bullying that would warrant withdrawal from school midyear without trying anything else first. I don’t think any of us, including OP, have enough information to make that call.</p>
<p>Throwing someone into a swimming pool because it will force them to learn how to swim works for some people but not others. Yet some of the others might have become excellent swimmers if they were taught to swim.</p>
<p>People often need to be taught how to deal with various types of adversity. Without help, they will either fail to learn to deal with that type of adversity or they will deal with it in maladaptive ways. </p>
<p>I was bullied, too – most miserably in seventh grade, when I moved to a new town and new school. The previous summer, I had gone to a Girl Scout summer camp I loved, but one of my parents’ conditions for allowing me to go to camp was that the “sturdy tie shoes” the camp required would become my school shoes until I outgrew them or they fell apart. I was unmercifully teased by half the girls in the seventh grade because I had to wear those out-of-fashion shoes. I never learned to deal with it. I became a loner and went through junior high with no friends. And when my parents asked me if I wanted to go to camp again the next summer, I said no, even though I loved camp. (By then, I had outgrown the shoes, but I wasn’t going to go through THAT again with another pair.)</p>
<p>There had to be a better way to deal with that situation. But to this day, I don’t know what it was. Somebody must know, though. And if that person could have taught me what to do, the experience might have been beneficial for me. As it was, though, it simply sucked. And I didn’t learn a thing.</p>
<p>Remember, once again, I’m not talking about full-blown bullying. The OP says there is ONE girl making nasty comments about her daughter. That may eventually become bullying, but at this point it doesn’t sound like it.</p>
<p>Also, I’m not assuming being exposed to adversity will automatically teach someone to deal with it. But being pulled out of what at this point appears to be a fairly isolated, manageable situation certainly won’t teach one to deal with it. It teaches you that you can’t handle difficulty. That you have to be protected. That other people get to decide whether you are happy or not. </p>
<p>I am not unsympathetic - I have my own D’s 9th grade story of being the subject of salacious, untrue rumors that spread rapidly through her school and beyond, and being ostracized by her friend group, but I’m not going to share the details here. Suffice it to say it was probably the toughest time of her life and I’d never ever want to repeat it. It left scars on her. But would pulling her out of school have changed anything? I don’t think so. She’d still have the scars of being betrayed by her friends, but she wouldn’t have the experience that came from struggling through it and coming out the other side stronger and wiser. I truly wish it had never happened, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else - but once it did happen, I don’t think running away from it would have helped.</p>
<p>So, the girl is already in the swimming pool and in many ways doing just fine. It seems the question is whether or not to pull her out because she has hit a rough spot. Maybe, her mom could use this as an opportunity to teach her daughter some of this dealing with adversity stuff. Running away seems counter-intuitive.</p>
<p>Yes, but to continue the analogy, every time she goes in the water, her eyes sting. Leaving her in the pool might teach her to tolerate the discomfort, but it won’t teach her to get rid of the problem. To get rid of it, she needs someone to tell her that there is such a thing as swim goggles, help her to obtain them, and teach her to use them properly.</p>
<p>What could this girl be taught about her current situation that is equivalent to this advice and help with swim goggles?</p>
<p>I just don’t get why this has to be OP’s D’s problem. The mean girl (and her posse) should be the ones who are getting the lesson. The adults need to let them know their behavior is hurtful and unacceptable. I think the school counselor can easily set up a meeting to discuss this. Then the school can monitor if things have changed. The school has an obligation to provide a safe environment (emotionally as well as physically).</p>
<p>It’s a little shocking how rarely people on a parent’s thread mention the role of parents in these things. Schools cannot possibly and probably should not be expected to deal with these piddling personality conflicts between 12-year olds. They happen. </p>
<p>Again, no-one said anything about being unsafe.</p>
<p>She’s not doing fine! She’s f-in’ miserable and has been miserable for a year and a half! Isn’t a year and half long enough for this experiment? If she were going to learn how to deal with this adversity in a timely manner, she would have learned already. </p>
<p>I’m kind of wondering why no one who was bullied in school is stepping up and defending the wonderful teaching qualities of ostracism and abuse. I’m thinking that the people who say it’s not so bad were, um, on the other side of the bullying experience in school. I know you’re saying it’s not so bad, but yes. It is so bad. This girl wants to say goodbye forever to the friends she has so she can leave this place.</p>
<p>She’s doing fine academically and has a nice group of friends. She is miserable because of a skin problem and self esteem issues. Obviously, being picked on more won’t help her and no-one said it would. But learning some perspective about one mean girl is possible.</p>
<p>My S had " one mean boy" who decided to target him in 9th grade. He was miserable for a long time before he finally came to me saying he couldn’t deal with it anymore. I called his teachers that had he and the mean boy in the class. They said they hadn’t really noticed the behavior but were supportive about watching for it and making sure it didn’t happen in their classrooms. </p>
<p>The mean behavior moved to the hallway(nothing physical, just intimidating). We notified administration. They contacted S and asked him how far he wanted them to take it. He said it needed to stop…now. He was not afraid of this boy outside of school so was not worried about retribution. </p>
<p>The VP brought the boy into the office with three other administrators and a police officer. They had a referral already written and the police officer had a complaint for bullying in front of him. The bully balled like a baby and promised to never interact with my S in any way. He was sent back to class with the knowledge that one slip up and “the process” would begin.</p>
<p>My S is a senior now and never had another problem with the bully again. My point is that there is no need to “put up with” the type of behavior that went unpunished back in the day. Schools are lawfully (I think) responsible to deal with it. Do they find it annoying? Hardly. They are tired of these kids creating a negative environment and are more than ready to step in.</p>