When 4-year-old Emily walks through the door of her Concord preschool, it’s almost as if she’s stepped into a scene from a tot-sized version of “Mean Girls.”
She approaches a small group of girls, wanting to say hi to one she considers a friend. But the Queen Bee of the group will announce: “You’re not playing with us. You’re not our friend.”
If Emily protests that the girl is her friend, the 3-foot-something Queen, in classic divide-and-conquer fashion, will say, “She’s not your friend!”
Sometimes the exchange leaves Emily in tears and her tormentor enjoying a brief moment of power, says Emily’s mom, Allison.
It’s fair to guess that more than a few readers — especially women — will find Emily’s situation painfully familiar.
What’s perplexing and upsetting for Allison and other parents is that the name-calling, teasing and social exclusion is happening to their daughters in early elementary school, kindergarten or even preschool. The 2004 film “Mean Girls” called this catty, back-stabbing manner of social interaction the girl world’s “sneaky” style of fighting.
Experts say “relational aggression” — as opposed to the punching, shoving and physical aggression more common among boys — is a daily reality for some girls, including those at young ages.
A report from the U.S. government’s “Stop Bullying Now!” initiative says that peer aggression is common among children ages 3 to 5. And a Brigham Young University study found that girls as young as 4 use relational aggression to assert dominance and their place in the social hierarchy.
Girls who are too young to read or write — or to log onto social media sites to shame social rivals — still are capable of “sophisticated” strategies to exert control over others or to be the center of attention, the BYU study says.
Social scientists don’t have the longitudinal data to show whether girls’ socially aggressive behavior is a new phenomenon or whether certain girls today are any more vicious than their counterparts 20 years ago. Society probably is paying more attention because it has become attuned to how various forms of bullying can damage kids’ self-esteem and hurt reputations, says Rachel Simmons, author of the 2002 book “Odd Girl Out” and co-founder of the Oakland-based Girls Leadership Institute.
But until recently, most anti-bullying efforts focused on boys and physical violence, she says. For a long time, girls’ aggressive behavior was “often hidden, indirect … unexplored,” she adds. “It’s not even called aggression, but ‘what girls do.’ “
To some extent, what little girls do is developmentally normal — even if it’s unpleasant for parents to watch and victims to endure.
San Leandro marriage and family therapist Ronald Mah says young kids, with their brains still developing language, impulse control and other social and emotional skills, often argue, grab for things, get frustrated, cry and say mean things to one another. “They are exploring and experimenting in the world, gaining a sense of self and mastering how the world works.”
Allison knows as well as anyone that conflict is one process by which kids find their identity, test their power and learn to be social beings. She was a preschool teacher and director, an early childhood education instructor and now manages programs for an Oakland-based education research agency. (She asked that her and her daughter’s actual names not be used because she’s working with the school on a solution.)
But even though spats, power plays and rivalries are features of girlhood, adults shouldn’t shrug off negative behavior, especially if it’s seriously damaging.
“I absolutely agree that some of these behaviors are a normal and typical part of what young children do to figure out their place in the world,” Allison says. “But when the intensity becomes so great, when the behavior becomes intentionally cruel, repetitive, consistent and targeted, that becomes more alarming to me. I do hear ‘girls will be girls,’ but it’s like we’re setting up girls to accept that this is the way it is when they become women.”
Raising girls to be confident, assertive and successful adults starts in early childhood, she adds.
Other parents and experts agree it’s important to help girls learn to resolve conflicts. “We can teach kids that they can repair relationships,” says Laura Konigsberg, head of the K-8 Lower School at the private Bentley School in Oakland.
But intervening in girls’ rivalries is a tricky business, says author Simmons, whose daughter is almost 3. Parents shouldn’t swoop in and try to fix every situation, she says. For kids to learn to manage conflicts, they need to try things out, make mistakes and take responsibility for their own part in it. If her daughter came home and said someone was being mean to her, she would listen sympathetically but expect her daughter to talk to the girl first before she got on the phone to the teacher or the girl’s parents.
Simmons adds that her daughter is going through a phase where she’s “experimenting with aggression,” and she’s starting to face the fact that other kids don’t want to play with her. “It makes me sad to hear that, but it’s important for kids to not always be protected from their actions as long as what they’re doing isn’t really harmful.”
Amy McClain agrees that intervention in girls’ conflicts is a delicate business. She is director of special projects for Soul Shoppe, an organization that runs anti-bullying programs at elementary and middle schools throughout the Bay Area.
If parents intervene, she says, they need to check their own emotions at their door and approach the situation in a “warm and loving way.” If a parent happens to catch a group excluding one girl from play, the parent can get down on the floor with them, talk to the group about why such words are hurtful and redirect the kids to a game that doesn’t leave anyone out.
Beau Coffron, of Fremont, says he and his wife are finding “teachable moments” in the occasional, painful “mean girl” episodes his daughter, now in second grade, has endured since preschool. “It’s usually a few other girls who decide they don’t want to play with her today,” says Coffron, who blogs about fatherhood at Lunchboxdad.com. “This can be a reminder for her not to treat other people that way.”
He adds that his daughter’s teachers are sensitive to the social dynamics of the classroom and steer his daughter to playmates who don’t participate in the “drama.”
In the case of Emily, Allison wishes her daughter’s preschool teachers wouldn’t wait until “circle time” to talk to all the girls about being respectful; young kids are more likely to stop bad behavior if the intervention and consequences are immediate, she says. Still, her main goal is to help her daughter gain the confidence and skills to assert herself in any difficult social situation that will inevitably come her way.
“You don’t ever want someone to be hurtful to your kid, but at the same time, I can’t stop it from happening, and I’m not always going to be there.”
