Welcome to Round three of the Parenting Roundabout podcast for the week of May twenty
ninth. I'm Catherine to Lecco, and I'm here with Nicole Ritics Hello and
Terry Morrow. Hello. We're moms of teens and young adults, and when
it comes to parenting, we've been there, done that, bought the T
shirt. But we're still waiting for that day when we'll reach the finish line
and have no further need to lay down in a dark room with a wet
rag over our eyes worrying about something or other. Wednesdays come plained day here
on Parenting Roundabout, and today we're complaining about mean girls. So Nicole found
this advice column, So Slight has an advice column called care and Feeding that's
like parenting related stuff. And this question was awful. It was a parent
talking about how their adult daughter, who's like twenty one or something um was
so mean to basically everyone, I mean, her siblings, her siblings,
romantic partners, other people in her high school. It just sounded like an
awful person. And this this person, this parent, was like, what
can I do about this awful child that I birthed? Yea, So it
was really sad but raised more more significantly, Yeah, what did you do?
What did you do? And the answer was like, this girl needs
therapy, And basically was what the advice was, because I mean the parents
were trying, you know, they basically disinvited her from family meals because she
couldn't, you know, because she made it so miserable for the other siblings
and she just was not getting it so well. But so then we thought,
you know, we could we could discuss mean girls we have known or
our kids have known, or possibly have we been. I don't I know.
When I was in like about fourth grade, I had a run in
with a group of girls that just decided that they were no longer I was
not part of the group anymore, and you know, like moved my desk
so that it wasn't by theirs and all that all that's kind of stuff.
But I was snot because there were other girls in the class that I thought
were you know, beneath me. So I would rather sit by myself than
you know, stooped to their level, which was ridiculous, of course.
So I feel like I've had the same experience where people were mean and excluding
to me. But then I was also mean in excluding to other people.
So and maybe that's just a natural phase the girls go through. You know,
I'm just sorting yourself out, I guess, right, But sometimes it
seems so clear that the people who are being mean to you are bad and
unfair, but you're just expressing a preference. You're just you know, you're
just being yourself. You're you know, if you happen they feel your mean,
that's just you know, their perception. So it's hard sometimes, especially
elementary school. I think by the time you get to middle school, high
school, I think you know who the mean ones are, But for a
while there were all it will mean, yeah, well have you had to
deal with this as a parent. Well, my problem as a parent is
that, you know, with kids with this abilities, With a daughter with
disabilities, I could sometimes see that she was doing things to cause people that
caused people to be mean to her, and then I can also see that
sometimes she was being mean to other people, whether she knew it or not,
And I could kind of always see the other kid's point of view,
which is a confusing and terrible thing for a Parentid's wants, but it's like,
well, you know, you're kind of throwing yourself at that person and
if they don't, you know, I want to be your friend, you
maybe need to not do that. There's other people that would like to be
your friend. I don't know. It was very complicated, especially in high
school, is very complicated, and I you know, I don't think we
ever had any significant bullying situations, just situations which were is this actually somebody
being mean or is this a misinterpretation of social cues? Right? Right?
Is meaningful? I mean, you would like to think that everybody will just
be nice to people who you know have difficulties, but that's not That's a
lot to ask of kids. Degree. I don't know, what did you
guys? Did you guys have your kids have run in with mean girls?
Um? I mean not significantly. Like Kristen's high school is very very big,
so there's a lot of people that choose from you know. So she
had a core group, but she there is a couple that were kind of
the bane of her existence and she was actually forced into in their senior year,
one of the girls in her group befriended the ultimate mean girl that was
mean to Kristen and brought her into the circle of friends. Yeah, so
Kristen had to really like adjust to that and play nice, and then as
soon as high school was over, it was like see yah, yeah,
but yeah that was hard because this other girl had not been very kind over
the years. And I grew up in a very small town and there weren't
a lot of people to choose from. And I think that's one of my
biggest complaints about small towns, is that it's not all warm and fuzzy because
there are no other options of your peer group is so small, right,
and so you're with those people from candad Art and all the way through high
school and things get nasty. So yeah, anybody's singing a move into a
small town with young kids. Don't save yourselves, save your kids the trauma.
Yeah, because people just get you know, they get tired of each
other, and then they form different groups and oh it's like the whole drama,
endless drama. Yeah. My daughter had she had this pretty big friend
group and at some point, I think it was basically during her senior year,
it like spractured, you know, like a big chunk of the group
just cut off another chunk. And so so my daughter was, you know,
she was in this group that wasn't on the outs, but there were
like four or five of them, you know, so they weren't they weren't
alone. So they named their renamed their group text that was for their new
smaller group called the Resurrection. So good for them, Yeah, good for
them. Yep. And they're still all, you know, good friends.
And the other ones some of them have just like I'll be like, whatever
happened is someone? So she's like, I have no idea. She won't
talk to anybody like wow, me, or she won't talk to me,
so I don't know what's going on. Wow, Yeah I know. Um,
the boys is just a whole other story. Seems like they I don't
know. My sons had the same friends since middle school, so there's never
really been any major drama with them. But yeah, sometimes they are or
they just deal with I don't know, maybe just deal with it and talk
about it. But yeah, but I think really just having people to choose
from it's really really helpful. I do have a friend whose daughter has strung
both a lot, and even even though it is a big school, um
it's just been it's just been bad. And um, you know, both
she and I, but for different reasons, have been like cannot wait till
this is so over. And you know, we talked about how like we
felt bad, like kind of wishing away that that year, that senior year.
But we both were like, can we please just get to the Finnish
fund right right and to the to the point where her daughter was afraid or
started having anxiety about going to the graduation ceremony because she was afraid people would
boo. I know, Oh that's so sad. I know, oh yeah,
I know that's that becomes that sho and that stuff doesn't go away.
It doesn't matter how m therapy you get, just that kind of stuff just
never goes away. But I think the only redemption or the only kind of
closure you get is if your mean girl turns out to be kind of you
know, just maybe a little less successful than you in life. Yeah,
yep, it's called karma. Yes, that's right. It's hard to be
a mom through all of this too, because you maybe get triggered by some
memories of yeah, yes, and then you want to like fight this battle
for your daughter, which you really can't do. There's no place for you
to fix this, right, And also you know you're automatically on your child's
side, and you really don't necessarily know the whole entire story exactly, so
that is very hard. Hard. This is why, you know, if
we could put a little camera in the kid's backpack so everything goes on,
that's all we need, you know, because it's like, you know,
my daughter would say somebody was bothering her, but I didn't know if that
person was really intentionally bothering her or just as a misunderstanding. If I could
have known, then I could have either explained to her what's going on,
or gone and punched the girl, and the nose wondered the other I'm going
had a clear path. Yes, once again making the case for the camera
and the best surveillance is all I'm asking, just seven surveillance purely for beneficial
purposes. Yes, right, of course, it's not out of curient interest
at all, for the good of the child. All those mean girls from
our past have podcasts. I bet they don't. Well, we better get
ourselves out of here. Yes, yes, where we see something means he
writes a mean comment. That's right exactly. We'll tune in tomorrow when we'll
obsess about mementos we can't get rid of and then on Friday to see what
we've come up with for our Roundabout round up picks this week. Find all
our episodes at Parenting roundabout dot com and talk back in the comments there,
on our Facebook page or on Twitter, where you will find us at roundabout Chat