Playground Politics: Bullying and the Queen Bee

Image by Profound Whatever via Flickr

Truth Tuesday

Just in time for National Bullying Prevention Month, there have been a number of heartbreaking stories in the news about children committing suicide because they couldn't stand being bullied anymore.

CNN is running a weeklong special called Stop Bullying: Speak Up and my Facebook page has been flooded with people sharing Ellen DeGeneres' message about bullying. I've spent the better part of the last couple of weeks in my role as an Education Expert writing articles to address whether or not Zero Tolerance works in schools and whether Zero Tolerance can work in schools.

It's tragic. It's sad. It's worrisome to me as a parent and the stories are uncomfortably familiar. In fact, all week I've been thinking about my own experience and thought it was well time to share.

The kids race off, chasing dandelion fluff and each other, while I stand in the middle of the playground. Backpack slung over one shoulder, water bottle dangling from my hand, I'm confused, squinting in the sunlight, not quite sure where to go. The trouble is I don't really fit in. I try, but my timing is always a little off, my interests not the same, my clothes not exactly right.

Yeah, I hear you when you say you've heard it before, that you know the story.

"Find your niche," you advise.

"You don't have to be like the others, it will be okay," you're aching to say in reassurance.

"Everybody has a hard time finding their place, but in the end we all find a group of friends to chase dandelion fluff with," you tell me with a knowing smile.

It's decent advice. Hackneyed and a little cliched, perhaps, but decent advice nonetheless. For a kid.     But I'm not a kid. I'm thirty-six years old.

The backpack slung over my shoulder was shoved at me by my own child as he ran off to play Star Wars with his friends. The water bottle is his. The social awkwardness? That's all mine.

I'm not the only mother on the playground, of course. There's a cluster here and a cluster there, all literally circled around the Queen Bee.

We all know the Queen Bee, right? She's a little older than the impressionable first-time mothers and uses that to her advantage. She's dressed in expensive casual and her makeup is just so. She knows everybody's name (well, at least the names worth knowing) and all the children's names. They spill from her lips drenched in the lightest taste of gossip and Knowledge with a capital K, so that the worker bees know she's paying attention. After all, that's important, isn't it? If the Queen doesn't know what's going on with your child, how will you ever stop circling the hive?

It amazes me that ten, fifteen, twenty years out of high school people are still playing the clique game. At this point, though, it's beyond silly, it's dangerous. What are their kids learning?

They are learning:

• It's okay to exclude people who don't live up to your standards.
• It's fine to make others feel left out.
• There are some people more worthy of your attention and some who are not.
• Telling stories about people is OK, whether you know them to be true or not.

Dan Olweus, the researcher sometimes referred to as the "pioneer" of bullying research and the creator of the very successful Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, has identified a number  bullying behaviors. Among them are a handful that sound exactly like what the Queen and her followers are modeling for their children. For your consideration, Olweus' words:

• Saying hurtful and unpleasant things
• Making fun of others
• Completely overlooking someone
• Deliberately excluding someone from a group of friends
• Trying to get other students to dislike another person

As parents we're vigilant for signs that our child is being bullied or, as much as we hate to admit it, signs that our child is the bully, but are we self-vigilant enough? I know that there have been times when I've made comments about other people in front of my children that I shouldn't have made. Sure, when I've caught myself doing it, I've stopped, apologized and explained why I shouldn't be saying such things, but I'm not always quick enough to realize what I've done.

Being bullied and feeling left out is awful, no matter what age you are. How can we expect our children to find the strength to survive it if there are mothers like me out there who still feel lost on the playground?

 

Comments

[Dr Rosina McAlpine]

What a thoughtful and informative article on bullying. Thank you. Bullying is such a complex topic with no simple solutions, but I truly believe that helping our children develop personal power with good self esteem, resilience and other key life skills is a really good start. Here's a short article with ideas on that topic
http://childrendevelopment.org/children-development/skills-for-life-%e2%80%93-self-esteem-and-resilience

[Katherine]

Wow. Thank you for broaching such a loaded and important topic. I too have felt the awkwardness when the kids run off to play and you're left with the other mothers, wondering what to talk about. But I feel fortunate that in my community the Queen Bees are pretty welcoming of newcomers. (At least to my face - and I don't care what people say behind my back.)

I wonder if there's another mom on the fringes you could befriend? This summer at the pool I felt at such a loss until I noticed another mother also with nobody to talk with. She is drop dead gorgeous and thin, so I admit I had discounted her, assuming she'd be snobby. But she turned out to be just as shy and eager for friendship as I was.

[AlsoAwkward]

This post resonates! I am in your shoes, Truth: Worried about what inappropriate behaviors I might be modeling for my children. And feeling like I don't fit in.

You are right. There are no easy answers. I guess all we can do is keep on keeping on. I know I for one need to develop a sense of humor about it.

Because when you stop to think about it, it is kind of funny, in an ironic sort of way.

[anonymous]

Having just posted a personal blog on this topic and receiving a lot of positive and negative feedback I was so glad when a friend posted this article to my facebook wall for me to read.

[Rachel]

I have just posted a personal blog on the topic of bullying and received a lot of positive and negative feedback. I thought it would help to be honest about my experiences, partly because I had become exasperated and also in the hope it might stop. Unfortunately, if anything it may have got worse as the Queen Bee is now playing the victim.