Why are girls so horrible

[Janinebutcher79]

Dd10 is in a small class and some of the girls are just so bloody horrible and nasty. I get frustrated as I want my dd10 to stick up for herself but she wants to take the higher ground, which is lovely I know but I worry about her being taken advantage off!

Who needs men to be sexist when we can do it ourselves?

😂Feel better?

I agree that petty bitchy behaviour can exist among mums. I made friends with a mum a few years ago through a mutual friend, thought we had a lot in common etc. Then one day I was with her when people were chatting in a group and she started bitching about another mum being - wait for it - 49. This is a group of women who are mostly around 40ish and it's seen as a hilarious thing to gossip about that someone else is older and facing 50 and ha ha what a loser.

I was 49 myself at the time, she just didn't know it! I didn't say anything but let that friendship slide.

Have also seen nasty bitching from mums about kids in the class who aren't doing as well, reading scheme levels etc. Kids are going to pick up on that attitude.

Dads have an influence too of course - we just don't overhear what they're modelling to their kids so much. Because of the sexism that prioritises men's careers so it's mostly mums in the playground to start with.

Some children and teenagers are very badly behaved, for a variety of reasons. Eventually, everyone finds their own group of friends, the difficult ones often improve as they mature, some don't. If your DD is navigating things ok it is best to let her manage. It is a learning process. As pp have said, keep a close eye on it and liaise with the pastoral care person at school if it gets out of hand.

Why don't we just say some human beings are nasty, but in different ways.

Just ignore those posters looking to derail your thread, they are as bad as the school girls you are talking about. I’m pregnant and really wanted a boy for many reasons, but one of them was not having to deal with girls falling out / ostracising, etc. My sister has boys and has never had any of these issues their entire lives! They are grown up now. No dramas, nice, easy going friendships. Whereas my friends with school aged girls complain constantly about how nasty girls can be 🤷🏻‍♀️ facts are facts!

@Momicrone so that is your contribution to a thread asking a question, to reply by pointing out how op should have worded it? Helpful indeed!

if you can't actually offer any support, plenty of other threads you can police on.

Erm, because the OP is specifically referring to girls

Dangerouslybored - as a parent of both, I see it as a childhood thing, not a gender thing

My dd is 14, ds is 16 and I can honestly say from our experience that girls can be bloody mean.
Dd has had several set of friends over the years and they are all snitchy, bitchy, self centred and down right mean.
Maybe dd has just been unlucky with her choice of friends but ds has never had this issue.
I experienced the same when I was in school but dh says he never did.

10 is the point at which (from the point of having once been a ten year old) that this happens in every group of girls I've known - I think it's the start of puberty hormones, along with greater understanding and the increased realisation that the world is not that nice a place really, and you could become the victim if you don't fit in.

I'm sure it's why the age of criminal responsibility is set at 10 - the original lawmakers had ten year old girls.

@converseandjeans 100% this I experienced bullying in highschool but had my friendship group and was happy but that driffted as we got older and me and DH were 1st to have kids, when I had my kids thought I had found my new tribe and been accepted as an adult our kids are best buddies but being a FT worker I found it hard so when I felt accepted I thought it was great fast forward to February 2020 just before the pandemic my mental health suffering due to health issues and got told by 1 on a night out "go home just go home you have had a face on you all day" (was in great pain and pain relief not helping but wanted to be with friends celebrating the occasion I had been participating but due to pain not all giddy and maybe i should never have gone) I went crying my eyes out noone said anything, fast forward 2mths same 1 dropped my sons birthday present round, I had not been communicating to anyone as I felt a burden, unwanted and because I couldn't keep on top of my pain which meant my mentally health suffering, she dropped the present at the door my son said thank you from a distance and 30minutes later she removed me from the friendship group WhatsApp because I hadn't said thank you from a distance though i sent a group message saying thank you. The pandemic helped me as I then didn't have to face anyone, talk to anyone and put myself out there to be ridiculed some more. Now in 2022 i struggle to take my kids into my village for fear of seeing these mums and how they made my depression turn to thoughts of suicide, a depression brought on by pain and lack of sleep made worse by rejection at an already low point. My son is still friends with their kids still on the same sports teams. DH experienced the same as he was trying to cope with me, with working the pandemic out of the house with another issue that occurred so he removed himself temporarily from the dads group to get head space when he asked to rejoin one of the dads said they had all discussed it and as it was their safe space they didn't want him back in.

This is 40 odd year old people and still they behave like teenage bullies. I'm slowly getting my mental health back but I have had to come to terms with a lot of things and know when I have no choice but to attend things they are at that I will be ignored but that maybe the safest thing as I do feel like punching the ring leader now which is not who I am or want to be

When a post about men being, say, rapists, ceases to get NAMALTs all over the thread, I'll stop saying "don't tar all girls with the same brush"

Everyday sexism is insidious and not picking it up is how it carries on.
So far so good.

Why are girls bitchy? well yes, they are trying to establish their place in the pecking order among other things. The question we should be asking is why they pick bitching, ostracising and so on over a swift punch and a scuffle? Why aren't boys (generally) bitchy? Because that's "girl behaviour"

In general we should bring up our children - all of them - to be kind to their peers. They don't have to be friends with everyone, but they don't have to be mean either.

In the meantime, OP, all you can do is reassure your DD that she's lovely and take it to the school

What on earth are you on about?! What do you imagine you are bringing to the table here?

My blood runs cold at the “small class” smugness no a nightmare from a happiness perspective! Ensured both mine at big schools nice deep friendship pools so if it goes to shit you have plenty of other options…

Why is it smugness?? Lovely if your kids make friends so so easily some of us have kids that don't.

So are you actually going to offer any advice other than how you think the post should be worded,

Just to say it is not always upbringing, and girls do not necessarily learn problem behaviours from their mothers.

I have a friend who is the nicest person in the world, who had a hard time at school. Her older daughter is just like her but the younger daughter (who was born beautiful, confident, sporty and academically successful with little effort) is a Mean Girl. Her mother is fully aware and keeps things under control to the extent that she can, but the truth is that being very socially dominant is rewarding in itself. Many of the children who are upset at being excluded would engage in the exact same excluding behaviour if they were in a position to do so.

Oh and boys can definitely be bitches too, including my DS.

Having been through the same thing, no real advice, but it will pass, I'd just prefer not to see everyday sexism as brefugee said

I agree with you, OP. I don't think you are sexist either.

I have three grown up daughters so went through this for some years and in my experience it was almost always girls who were the worst behaved, with a couple of exceptions.

Boys seemed to mostly just have a fight and then get on with their lives whereas girls were bitchy, spiteful and could bear grudges for weeks or months.

All you can do is be there for your DD. Help her to approach the staff if she is in difficulty.

Ignore the politically correct brigade on here. Their opinions don't matter and their advice has so far been unhelpful and irrelevant. They are derailing the thread.

OP I agree with you, my DD has had almost constant friendship problems from the age of 8. She is 12 now. In our experience it usually starts with a 'Queen Bee' or 'Alpha Female' who likes to dominate and the other girls would rather agree with her or follow her about than stand up for themselves. This results in my DD being left out as she doesn't want to fit in with that.

She's had girls who say their mum "would be proud" if she hit her. She's had girls say their mum would "slap" them if they identified as LGBTQ+. So in my opinion it is partly a learned behaviour - the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

My son (10) has barely fallen out with any of his friends and if he does, they forget about it and move on the next day.

I'm generalising in my post, of course. Though in general it does stand.

Who needs men to be sexist when we can do it ourselves?

Oh God someone’s going to start with the #NAGALT
(Not all girls are like that instead of NAMALT not all men are like that)

I’ve only got 2 DDs, so my experience is only of girl friendship groups (including my own experience at school). One DD went to a large ish local primary school, one went to a tiny, tiny village primary school.

Both experienced horrendous times with falling out/name calling/blatantly excluding them from stuff/suddenly dropping them for no reason/plotting/scheming/reforming into new tribes, but for both of them the problems didn’t happen until secondary Year 7-9. Same things happened to me at school 40 years ago. I don’t know if this stuff also happens with boys? Would be interesting to hear.

It's just girls. Catty, gossipy, a lot of subtle oneupmanship. Even in my 30s, I find working with men much easier than women- much more
straight talking.
I went to wedding a while ago where a few women I went to school with attended. It was like I was 16 again. Lots of sly remarks and sniggering. Horrible.

I have worked in a girls’ secondary school for well over a decade so have experience of thousands of teenage girls. Girls aren’t horrible. They have falling outs and arguments and occasionally physical fights, but the issues pale into insignificance compared to what local boys and mixed schools are dealing with involving boys.

In the community that my school serves parents are generally a lot more worried about their sons than their daughters. A number of the girls that we teach have lost brothers to gangs and knife violence. It’s not uncommon to see families where the girls finish A Levels, go to university and move on to professional careers whilst their brothers end up in prison or worse.

Perhaps in more privileged communities it is different.

I also think it important to point out that a lot of the time girls described as “bitchy” are actually exhibiting a response to trauma. The proportion of girls who have some form of ACE is incredibly high. From abuse or neglect in the home, witnessing domestic abuse, sexual harassment or abuse (by boys they know but also adult strangers in parks, on buses and trains etc)… there is a huge amount of unresolved trauma that damages girls and affects their interpersonal relationships.

I see the professionally offended are out in force today. girls can be bitches surely that’s uncontroversial 😅😅apparently not