Odd Girl Out (38 page)

Not being able to help her daughter was devastating. "You're a mom, you're supposed to be able to fix everything," Elaine said, "even if you know that's not true intellectually. Emotionally, you want to. It may have been one of the first true moments when I realized that I wasn't able to protect her." Tears slid down her cheeks. Elaine told me about when Joanna got her vaccinations, about the involuntary tears that came at the sight of her daughter's pain. Thinking of Joanna's anguish over Amy, she could not help but wonder how her daughter was truly feeling inside. "These moments may define you," she said, her voice heavy with emotion.

Sorrow is a binding energy between mother and child, arguably the most visceral response a parent has when a child is hurt outside the home. But parents of victimized girls report feeling a range of emotions toward their daughters, including anger and frustration.

How is it, a mother wonders, that my child could endure such cruelty from her best friend all week and then skip cheerfully down the driveway to spend the night there on Friday? How could she have lain in my lap crying so hard she nearly tore my sweater gasping for breath, and now giggles on the computer as she instant messages and types her secrets into cyberspace? How could I have had my heart broken and stomped on as a witness to this pain, stayed up nights anxious in the dark, been inspired to cruel fantasies against another child, wanted even to wring her mother's neck, and today my child acts as though it is me who is crazy, unhinged, irrational, and unforgiving?

In particular, it's the girls hurt by their close friends who pull parents along on their emotional roller coaster. During the darker days, a parent is exhausted with the caregiving her daughter's sadness demands. Moments later, she rubs her eyes to ensure she sees correctly. Her child, full of smiles, behaves as though nothing is wrong. Understandably, her impulse is to seize the child by the collar and rattle some old-fashioned sense into her. But it's the daughter who often thinks her mother is crazy.

As girls grow older, moving with increasing self-reliance through the labyrinth of their social world, the gulf between mother and daughter widens. Mothers may struggle to understand the social choices of their daughters. The girls' tendency to return to their bullies, to tolerate the meanness—behaviors that strike their mothers as patently absurd—appear strangely logical to the girls. For some girls, anything is preferable to isolation, no matter how passionate their parents' entreaties.

What defies logic to a mother is unmistakably clear to her daughter. Thirteen-year-old Shelley practically punches the table, furious at her mother's cluelessness. "She doesn't understand that you don't just go and tell someone, 'I can't believe you've done something so mean to me.' It's just not how you handle a situation!" When Erin, profiled in chapter three, reconciled with her friends, her mother was dumbstruck. "I just really was worried. I was really angry at these kids. I didn't want them near her. I didn't trust them. I was afraid they would propel her back into this." She added, "People have said to me, 'You have to be forgiving.' People I respect! My reaction is, Wait, you weren't standing there! You didn't feel the hatred that their eyes were sending out and cutting the air with a knife!"

Of her daughter, Linda confided that "it was hard to live with her not taking my advice. I pushed too hard. She was passive. I wanted her to do something. It felt so awful that she wasn't doing anything. I knew someone was hurting her and she was not taking care of herself. But I couldn't do it for her anymore."

For some mothers, the sight of their daughter's surrender to abuse is an infuriating sign of weakness. One mother was astonished at her daughter's irrational behavior. Her two tormentors insisted they were born on the same day, in the same room. "Rebecca knew their birthdays were different but she
still
questioned her own belief!" she said. Especially when mothers have worked hard to model assertive behavior to their daughters, the frustration can be intense. Andrea, Maggie's mom, explained. "When I tried to push, she would just say helplessly, 'I can't, I can't.' There were times when I would feel angry at her because I'm such an outspoken person. It was hard for me to remember when I wasn't, so I would want her to speak up. I would give her the words and everything. Why couldn't she do it!" The weakening connection between mother and child during this difficult period makes approaching the crisis of bullying even harder.

 

fate

Stereotypes about females and aggression play a powerful role in the approach of some mothers to their daughter's ordeal. A girl who has a punishing experience can grow up to become a mother who is suspicious, anxious, and angry about her daughter's peers. These women watch their children's pain through the lens of their own suffering. Explaining her decision not to speak up when her daughter was victimized, Mary said, "I can't always jump in and pull her out of a bad situation. It doesn't change when you grow up. There are still adults who are just as backstabbing as little kids." She later became frustrated when I pressed her, and as her daughter looked on, she exploded. "I mean, girls are just—I don't have a lot of girlfriends! Because you have to know who to trust. And I don't think girls are as nice as boys in the long run. She has to learn how to choose her friends!"

One Sunday morning, Margaret led me through a swirl of children who raced around my waist, slid in socks across the foyer floor, and pounded up the stairs squealing. "It's a little crazy here," she said, rolling her eyes and smiling warmly, "but I hope we can find somewhere quiet." We headed into a room that looked like it was used about twice a year. Margaret had asked me here to talk about her daughter, Chloe (see chapter seven). Her face clouded as we sat down.

"I don't know what it is," she told me, hands clenched in her lap. "I look at her and I see sparkling water. It's a clean slate. Every day is just a wonderful thing. She sees the world, she loves people. And she's run into some very strange things with girls.... It's just this backbiting, this jealousy, this I don't know what it is."

Margaret was as awed as she was alienated by her daughter's beauty and brass. "I was in a different position," she said simply. Nearly thirty years ago, her clique chose a new girl to be picked on every week, and it was almost always Margaret. Sometimes they would pretend she didn't exist, and Margaret would hide and eat lunch in the library. Her feelings of hurt were still fresh today. "You really depend on your friends for acknowledgment and recognition and normality," she said. "Then they suddenly change how you trust people and whether you do trust people." Since then, she said, she had been hesitant to make new connections with people. She was less trusting. She gravitated to men because with women, "How can you know who's on your side and who's not?" Margaret said she is the most lonely in a crowd. Even when friends come to dinner at her home, she finds herself lingering over dishes, alone.

"So I was the dark one," she told me. "Distrusting. I was not happy. But I don't want to prejudice my child into thinking that everyone's terrible." It's hard. The rules of girlhood are, if anything, more elusive today. Chloe had been punished by her girlfriends because she played football at recess with the boys. "In two years," Margaret said, "it may be normal to play football. And then has she missed the boat? The rules are always changing. You never know what's right and what's not right. Who's in and who's not in. What's good and what's not good."

She felt less than optimistic about Chloe's impending physical maturity. "My daughter," she said, "is going to be a knockout. And I am amazed by her confidence. She walks around, shoulders up, head out, and she seems like she loves herself. I never had that," she added. Margaret felt certain Chloe's confidence and beauty would intimidate everyone around her. I asked why.

Margaret had only her experience of women today, informed so powerfully by her plight as a child, to guide her thoughts about her daughter's future. What came most often to mind was the unshakeable feeling of being judged by other women. "We're always comparing whose roots are longer: 'Oh, she needs to go have her hair done. Oh, she's getting heavy.' We're always judging because we're holding the mirror up to ourselves. Her roots are showing; are mine? If my roots are showing, are they all talking about it?"

It was the same thing with her daughter's social life, she told me. "Your kid has learning issues in school," she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. "It's a family secret. You're having trouble with the teachers. You're the only one who's having the trouble. You don't tell anyone." Later, she confessed, "We all know you'll be looking at the other person and judging them."

Margaret believed the women's movement failed to unite women and, as a stay-at-home mom, felt patronized by working mothers. She was often ashamed at social gatherings. She told me about a friend who asked her in amazement, "What do you
do
all day?" She grimaced. "We don't respect each other. Why can't we stop looking at each other's roots? We're all going through it together, and we should help each other out. If you're a working mom and I can help you, let me help you! We're still racing against men," she said. "Why do we have to race against each other?"

When I think about parents and bullying, I am reminded of the safety instructions you hear on a plane: if cabin pressure is lost, put on your own oxygen mask before helping your child. Currently, parents face unacceptable barriers to supporting their daughters through social crises. They need a new language to talk about girls' aggression. With a vocabulary to approach schools and speak the truths of girls' relationships, a parent can take back some of the control she needs. Empowered by the knowledge that so many of her peers share this experience, she can raise her own voice. Parents will raise stronger daughters who can know their own experiences as a shared, common chapter, and still grow up to cherish other women.

In this chapter, you'll get the best of what I've learned after a decade of teaching and working with thousands of girls, families, and educators. I have collected the wisdom and strategies of the most able professionals and seasoned parents, along with the voices of girls who have advised me on what works and what doesn't when they need help.

Some of what you'll read may seem obvious or intuitive. This is true enough, but keep in mind that when it's your own child who is suffering, rational thought can go out the window. When that happens, you may operate from a place of emotion and impulse, rather than reason and reflection. Consider this chapter an anchor to keep you grounded, a trusted voice of reason to bounce off your own feelings and ideas.

 

the first response: empathy

I asked every woman and girl I interviewed to rate her parents' response to her ordeal. Overwhelmingly, the most effective parents were the ones who actively listened. These mothers and fathers inquired every day about how school went. They held their daughters when they cried. They accommodated special requests, whether it was going to school later, being picked up within seconds of the last bell, or preparing a special meal. Elizabeth, from chapter seven, confided that "if it weren't for my Mom, I'd probably be demented. She respected my need not to say anything and my need for her silent presence. [I needed her to] just hug me, hold me."

The foundation of these gestures was empathy, an attempt by each parent to connect with a child's emotional experience. Your daughter is hungry for empathy when she is struggling socially. Remember that girls live in a peer culture that often denies or invalidates feelings:
you're being too sensitive, I didn't do that, you took it the wrong way, I was just kidding.
With so many voices saying her feelings are unfounded, she needs you to help authorize her experience. Empathy may feel like a meager contribution, but it's immeasurably important.

Yet empathy can be the first thing to go in a moment of panic or anxiety. Parents struggle for two reasons. First, when the alarm bells go off, we want to put out the fire. We assume—understandably—that we can make a child feel better by making the problem go away. Parents are habituated to this from the moment of a child's birth: feed when they are hungry, sleep when they are tired, hold when they cry. Yet as your child grows more independent, and her peer culture becomes more influential, it will become almost impossible to make her problems "go away." (In my experience, most girls come to accept that long before their parents do.) The overwhelming desire to solve the problem short-circuits the empathy muscle.

Second, empathy is painful. It involves slowing down to acknowledge and think about your child's feelings of hurt, rejection, or sadness. This can be an anguishing experience for parents. Connecting with these emotions can make you feel powerless and overwhelmed, so it's understandable why so many parents would prefer to spring into action. Linda recalled her response to her daughter with some regret. In hindsight, she said, "I wouldn't have pushed so hard [for her to fight back]...Otherwise it becomes about what I want instead of what she wants, and sometimes I think I made that mistake because it was so painful to watch."

An empathic response to a girl being targeted might sound like the following:

"I'm so sorry this happened."

"That sounds awful."

"If I were you, I would also feel really——."

"It sounds like you're feeling pretty——. That makes a lot of sense."

Empathy is not the same thing as expressing emotions. This moment is not about you sharing your feelings. It can be extremely uncomfortable for a child if her parent weeps or loses strength at the moment when her daughter needs it most. The message sent is that you need to be taken care of, not the other way around. And your response might influence your daughter's willingness to keep confiding in you. She may believe it's in your best interests not to know the messiest feelings she has, that on some level it is not acceptable for her to share them with you.