Little terrors in pigtails

Did you know that four year old girls are snarky? Well if you didn’t, then you probably don’t have one in preschool.

My sweetie has come home on several occasions upset to the point of tears because two of her classmates decided they “didn’t want to be her friend” that day. Wow.

I remember those days, but for me they didn’t come until the fifth or sixth grade. Where could a sweet, innocent little girl learn behavior like this? And why isn’t someone beating the crap out of her for being a little bitch?

Like any paranoid mom, I went straight to the teacher and asked her what the eff was going on with these little girls. She gave me the scoop and it was none to pretty. There are a couple of ringleaders who decide which girls will be friends with which each morning. These little terrors in pigtails are mean girls in training. They will get the girls to gang up on one or two of the others and make them cry all day. I was told that my daughter had spent entire days in tears because of it. Why wasn’t I ever told, I asked? Well, they were just trying to handle the situation themselves. Apparently, it wasn’t working very well.

Of course, this threw me into a paranoid frenzy of watching the classroom video cameras pretty much all day. The stop motion display of the low-bandwidth video didn’t make it easy to see what was going on, but that didn’t keep me from trying. I even watched on my iPhone. When that didn’t ease my worries, I asked the teacher about it – every day. I asked my daughter about it – every day. And then I realized I could either make her paranoid like me or give her some skills to deal with this bullying.

I told her when one of these girls tell her she’s not their friend that day, just laugh at them and walk away. Or say, “Whatever!” And if she feels like crying, walk away and don’t let her enjoy watching it. Turns out, these tactics actually worked.

They almost worked too well. The first time she laughed at one of the girls and walked away, the little girl burst in to tears. Is it wrong that I felt justified? And I giggled? Nah, I didn’t think so either. Now, they are all friends and the bullying has chilled some. I’m proud of Ava for standing up for herself. I hope she can keep up the confidence.

What worries me is that as she gets older, it won’t be that simple. I was bullied and dealt with mean girls all my life. Hell, I just had to disassociate myself with a coven of 35 year old bullies earlier this year. But, that’s a story for another day. Who am I kidding? That’s enough for an entire novel!