Daughter super jealous of another girl in class

Just a question: wouldn't thus reinforce the idea that she is in competition with this girl? She needs to understand that everyone has their own journey. We are not in a race to one destination. We are on different journeys to different destinations.

I agree, counselling if you can afford op. If not positive reinforcement as well as discussing the idea of different journeys

'your DD could easily do better than this girl if she worked harder'

'she can change reality if she works for it'

That's never a given. Despite a growth mindset. And absolutely feeds into jealousy. Some people are just more able than others in certain this. It wouldn't matter how much I trained, I could never be an elite basketball player.

Different if you were saying in a different area- but you aren't.

That isn't a nice trait at all, OP. Also that your daughter thinks that her counsellor 'doesn't do a good job'. Fine not to get on or like someone but that's a level of arrogance that needs addressing.

It does seem to be an odd mix of low esteem AND a superiority complex.

I suppose though one could have a superiority complex and the existence of this other girl is challenging to OP's daughter's sense of self as being the best/needing to be the best. Hence the obsession and dislike.

Family therapy for you and your DD would be helpful. A lot to unpick I suspect.

You need to get your child some help with their self esteem.

Jealousy is an ugly trait. Giving up and being a quitter is also an ugly trait.

How does she know that this girl doesn't have hidden issues? How does she know that this girl isn't under huge amounts of pressure to succeed.

I was good at everything. Straight As. Very sporty. County level for 2 sports. Played 3 instruments. It sucked having pushy parents. It sucked that people treated me like shit for being good at stuff.

Not all is as it always seems on the surface.

I think taking her out of her own head is the key. That might be volunteering, or new hobbies, or just getting out and seeing more of the world, or films that might help her look at things from other perspectives.

I also think it's strange and odd that people are saying academic high fliers then aren't "successful" and gloating over it. There are lots of different measures of success. For me, my goal was to earn enough to have an interesting and fulfilling career whilst still spending lots of time with my children and doing all the school runs etc. I never had an aspiration to be the CEO of an NHS trust or whatever. My academic achievements have helped me achieve my vision of success. Plus I loved (and love) learning for its own sake, not purely to earn more or have a higher status

That isn't a nice trait at all, OP. Also that your daughter thinks that her counsellor 'doesn't do a good job'. Fine not to get on or like someone but that's a level of arrogance that needs addressing.

I agree with PP that unchecked jealous can lead to all sorts of violent behaviour.

If this were my daughter I would be finding out of school activities that this objectified girl doesn't do - just for the sake of meeting new and unconnected people. I would also be finding someone for my daughter to speak to professionally because getting a reputation for being difficult in school can quickly translate to being singled out and everything, every tiny little thing, being leapt on.

As a last resort I would change schools.

@cheshirecat2913 may I ask, have you ever been to therapy?

Would you consider it?

When our children are struggling with one emotion dominating and causing problems, it can be helpful to look at ourselves and examine our own feelings, or our own parents feelings, around that issue.

For example, My mother is controlling and narcissistic and loves to judge others, it’s her favourite way of feeling better about herself. I used to be very judgemental too (and horrible to myself!) until I started to see where my patterns were learned from. Just knowing how it came to be like this helped me let go, and be more forgiving of myself and others.

That’s just an example, your situation is different, but I do think that as a mum therapy should be mandatory! We carry this huge weight in trying to bring up our kids right.

Bringing stuff to awareness and talking about it is immensely powerful as it gives you the choice to change it

I'm auhd and so is my daughter,

What do you say when she brings up this girl?

You need to not engage about this girl any longer. Your dd is obsessed at this point isn't she, ( not meant in a nasty way, from.my own experience asd people to tend to get obsessed with people or their perceived actions )

You need to just disengage.

My dd is very similar but in the sense of being picked on. It's normally not. It's tit for tat kid stuff...... but, if I give her too much attention about anything school wise, she runs with it. She will come out talking about whichever child has upset her, for days, she looks for slights ect

Just disengage and be very straight, I'm not talking about this with you anymore. It's been over a year now and nothing has changed.

This girl doesn't live in your house, isn't part of your family, why is she taking up so much headspace from you and your dd?

She's obsessed over her this long because essentially you have let her. Both of you need to pack it in and just stop talking about her. Distract. Change subject ect

There’ll be a ‘this girl’ in the new school. And every school. The problem is OP’s daughter’s thought process, and that’s going to follow her around until she deals with it.

Bit drastic, but as it's such a intense and long-lasting obsession, would you consider moving schools so that your daughter no longer sees the girl?

This isn't the issue. If the other girl wasn't around, there would be someone else to blame. There will always be people brighter than her, better looking, more popular. How do you build her self esteem to deal with that without creating an egotistical monster? Your daughter has serious mental health issues and I feel you as a family, seem to go along with her. She was supercilious about her counsellor and stopped going. Did you firmly tell her not going wasn't an option? Did you find another counsellor? She has a terrible attitude to other people and that needs dealt with, not swept under the carpet. I feel sorry for her but this situation could get very messy

I mentioned possible narcissism in my sister.

Not ops child.

But sharing similarities in childhood and where it unfortunately ended up for my sister, since no real help was provided for how miserable she felt as a child.

I hope op can afford to keep sending her child to therapy as it at least gives a glimmer of hope of something sinking in for her so that she doesn't have a hope of ending up anything like my sister.

Edited to say we also believe my sister is ND but undiagnosed as she would not see anybody about anything. She would be in denial.
.

I would see a psychiatrist not a counsellor. I think she needs to distance herself from this girl as a means to remove the fixation also. Can you imagine a boy posting this about a girl you’d be terrified.

That’s a huge drip feed! Why didn’t you mention her autism and ADHD diagnosis from the beginning?

@WaterMonkey I wrote 'peak in secondary' - no spiteful implications and not being dismissive. It was a way to help OP explain to a teenager (in language they understand!) that people who succeed in school do not necessarily become very successful in life (not saying the girl in question won't of course). Obviously, since then, the thread has moved on quite a bit and I adjusted my view based on new info.

I wouldn’t listen to anyone on this thread saying she is a narcissist or has a personality disorder. She’s too young for those issues to be reliably assessed, and there are so many flags for neurodiversity that that should be checked out first. If she’s struggling with adjustment, masking, and maybe having all kinds of issues related to those things, then her maladaptive behaviours are really a sign of her underlying suffering. It’s not a flaw in her personality and it would harm her to have it placed in that framework. Many ND women are misdiagnosed with PDs.

edit: sorry, only just saw your update! Ignore me

This doesn’t surprise me sadly.

As PP asked, what happens if she does something wrong and gets called out on it? Does she make it impossible to criticise her? Would she deflect any blame? Would she have genuine remorse?

just read your update. She's neurodiverse definitely. Have a look at ADHD Love on YouTube. Poor kid. She needs to understand she's wired differently and start to be kinder to herself.

She's using external yardsticks, like tests and friends etc as a way to measure her self-worth.

She needs to understand that self-worth doesn't come from measuring yourself against other people. You inherently have self-worth if you believe that we are all equal, which we are

Ask her, how does a disabled person compare herself to your DD?

Does she think the disabled girl, same age as your teen, in a wheelchair, who might be mentally disabled, is worth nothing?

That that person should 'give up' because she'll never have friends, she'll never have a job?

We all have a right to be on this planet, whether we achieve lots or very little at all.

Society will try and tell you you're a failure but it's not the case. We all have to try with what we've got from where we are, otherwise, what is the alternative? Fall into the abyss? The pool of self-pity?

Also, some people thrive in school but don't do well in the real world.

You really need to educate yourself with much better answers to her questions so as to help her validate herself and her experiences differently. Read some Brene Brown, understand perhaps more about neurodiversity - the voice in your head is a killer - look up Spectrumy on Facebook. Find role models who have done badly at school, like Steven Bartlett, who made nothing of himself at school due to ADHD but now has a huge YouTube channel - and maybe watch some of this content on adversity and how to overcome it. There's a ton of self-help material you can find to literally rewire your brain. Look up Lewis Howes.

We are all born with a different set of 'ingredients'. It's not her battle to try and attain something she wasn't born with, it's her battle to have the courage to live her life with what she's been given and make the best of what she's got.

Right now she sounds a bit victimy. It's a sort of unconsious self-sabotage that's common in people, especially young people. "I'll never succeed because of X".

If you give up, you've already failed. If you keep trying - you have a chance to win. so don't give up.

Blaming others it just an excuse not to try if you're truly honest with yourself.

Look up Jack Ma and see how many times he failed to get into Harvard. There are so many stories of resilience and eventual success. Find them. Ask ChatGPT if necessary. She needs to change her mindset. She can have a good future. School isn't everything, nor are fake friends...

Good luck.

Yes, it would be helpful to reflect on this. Her reaction to that one counsellor not working out for her, whatever the reason, was to dismiss the counsellor as not being very good at her job. If she goes into counselling being oppositional like that then it’s not going to work as well.

i probably wrote something that suggested “this other girl is peaking too soon” but I didn’t actually mean it in that way and I imagine the same for many others. What I meant is that the standards by which the ops daughter is assessing both herself and this girl are standards that don’t really mean much outside of that environment. So I think it could be actually helpful for OPs daughter to understand that school grades are not the measure of a persons worth (and indeed that perceived success and happiness aren’t necessarily bed fellows).

I say this as someone who had all A’s at school and was popular and fairly sporty. The real world was a huge shock to my perfectionist teenage self!

(I do agree with everything you say, just wanted to clarify on the spiteful implications of mine and probably a few others contributions).