Mean Kids

For some time now I have worried about my little Lili being hurt by mean girls. She is a sweet kid by nature and very social. She thinks everyone is her friend and will go up to about anyone to start a conversation. I love this quality about my little Lil but have worried that one day it could make her an easy target by mean kids. Last week as I sat watching my baby romp around in her ballet class I realized that it was beginning. The other girls in the class were a little older and it seemed, had known each other for some time. They weren't "mean" per say but there were a few things that I saw that just made my heart sad. Like as they were cleaning up the orange cones and Lili was helping, the older girls wouldn't let her put hers away until after they had put theirs up. I know, it doesn't seem like a big deal but it brought back a flood of memories from my youth that were anything but pleasant.

Yesterday at the park there was another apparent run-in with a mean girl. I don't even know what she did or what she said but my Lili started crying and said she was being mean. On first impulse I got up from the park bench and ran over to comfort her. I picked her up and let her cry on my shoulder. After my initial reaction (and wanting to go yell at the "mean girl") I realized that maybe I was not doing Lili a bit of good by running to her rescue. Sure she is only 3 and doesn't understand yet why people are not so nice sometimes, but she has to start learning to stick up for herself. The last thing I want for her is to be a target like I was.

I don't remember very well what I was like as a child. I can imagine that I was much like Lili and thrived on social interaction just as I do now. Only back then when kids were mean to me I didn't do anything other than cry about it for a while. Too many times I was the subject of abuse by my peers like the time when I went swimming at Jennifer Bailey's pool (my best friend at the time) and Jan Caplis stepped on my head while I was under water in an attempt to drown me. Who knows why but I continued to be friends with those girls. That wasn't the only incident. In eighth grade some girl named Kim (luckily I can't remember her last name) spread nasty rumors about me to make everyone hate me. Like eighth grade isn't hard enough. There were many more incidents most of which I have blocked from my memory because of how traumatic they were but I do know they happened. My only defense was to become less social, less trusting and more withdrawn. It wasn't until I got to college that I was able to come out of my shell again and trust my peers. Other than a few room mates from hell, the people were nice. Maybe though it was that I had changed, that I had matured enough to know who I was and to realize that other people should not determine my happiness.

Now my challenge is to somehow instill in my little girls that other kids are not the dictators of their world, that they are.And that they can choose to let things affect them or not. What a challenge that will be for me since I myself didn't know how to do it. I'm not even sure what to teach them to do when someone says or does something mean. Maybe I'll just enroll them in karate! The hardest part is knowing that I cannot protect them forever from the harshness of this world. The only thing I can hope to do is teach them how much worth they have as daughters of God and pray that they will have confidence in knowing how much they are loved by Him and by me. And as I send them out into the cold cruel world I also hope that their run ins with mean kids are few and far between.