This
morning, as I turned to leave after dropping my youngest daughter off at her
classroom, her teacher motioned to me. ‘Could
I have a word?’ she said, and my heart froze because I know that ‘a word’ with
a teacher generally means that your child has been involved in something unsavory.
My child,
it turns out, had been part of a group of girls ‘accidentally’ pushing other
girls in the playground. The pushing
resulted in one child going home with a bump on her head and another—one of her
best friends--going home in floods of tears.
While I was
disappointed to hear this, I wasn’t surprised.
My daughter is part of a tightknit group of friends and just last week
it was she who came home in floods of tears because none of her friends would
play with her during playtime. ‘I sat in
the mud by myself,’ she wept. I was concerned, but reassuring. After comforting her, I suggested that she confront
her friends and let them know how sad they were making her. Maybe they didn’t
know that her feelings were hurt. Maybe
they didn’t realize that she felt sad. I told her to speak to us or to speak to
her teacher if it happened again. I
instructed her older sister to look after her and make sure she was ok when she
saw her. And I spoke to her teacher,
who, in turn, spoke to the girls in the class about the importance of kindness.
Fast forward
a week later and the tables have turned. Now it’s my daughter causing the
tears.
As a child
who was bullied, I find it easy to side with the victim and baffled by why one
child would treat another unkindly.
Bullying wasn’t tolerated in my family.
I have a very clear memory of being in the swimming pool with my cousin
and a friend. At some point, I decided
to lord it over one or the other of them, resulting in tears and hurt
feelings. My dad had me out of the pool
in seconds flat and, with his face in my face, made it very clear that my
behavior was unacceptable. Shamefaced
and , I spent the rest of the time by the pool in a chair, while my
friend and cousin continued to enjoy themselves.
That said,
it’s easy to see how tempting it is to slip into the seat of power and out of
the seat of persecution. It’s protective
to be the one who is telling the others how to act and what they can and can’t
do, to push down those who are weaker to ensure that you aren’t the one getting
pushed, even if it results in hurting the people you really care about.
These days,
women need to band together. We need to
be teaching our girls from a young age that hurting each other is hurting their
futures. Instead of following the pack
and ganging up against other girls, they should be standing up for each other. Instead
of badmouthing and ‘slut shaming’, they should be supporting each other. Instead of targeting each other’s weaknesses,
they should be celebrating their differences and accomplishments.
Tonight, at
our house, we’ll be having a serious conversation about what it means to be a
girl in the world these days. We’ll be
talking about how important it is to be true to ourselves, to stand up for
other girls and to not be afraid to be kind, even if it means confronting your
best friends in the process. I hope that
by reinforcing the values that I try to live by as a grown woman—be kind, be
tolerant, be helpful, be non-judgmental, love yourself, respect yourself and
don’t back down—I will, in turn, help my girls to continue to become amazing
girls of the world.
