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!

I would agree with this and extend it to years 4-9 in our experience.

I've got lots of nieces and nephews and girls are worse for the nastiness. Definitely.

Both the eldest two girls (not siblings, cousins) were basically not very nice between about 8 & 10 in particular. Luckily their parents a) believed teachers/other parents when reports of nasty behaviour occurred and b) did not tolerate it, imposed consequences and nipped it in the bud. Both are now the other side of it and are kind and pleasant but it too real vigilance and persistence from parents.

Fortunately when they tried to drown her on a school trip a parent governor witnessed it and things started to change

I wonder what the parents thought of their little darlings if they found out about that. It's to be hoped there were serious consequences. That is horrific.

Yes of course there's always the exception, incidents like that are remembered because they were so rare.

They're not. Some are.

Yes.

I have one of each and this is my experience. Particularly around age 9-11.

It seems to be a common experience 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Anecdotally it’s rarely the girls you would expect who are the nightmares. The vaping girls from the lower income parts of town who congregate in scary looking groups and get into trouble with teachers have always been perfectly decent to mine - it’s middle class girls with adoring parents that have been the trouble. Which is why the “escape via private school” route doesn’t really work either.

I wish I knew! When I was that age I remember wishing I was a boy as they didn't seem to be so horrible to one another. I also wanted to leave home and move in with my older sister and her boyfriend so I could go to a different school and get away from bullies.

My mum got the brunt of my sadness and anger, I am still ashamed of some of the things I said and did when I was that age. Bless her, she pretended not to remember whenever I tried to apologise. 💔

It's definitely the worst time of a girl's life IMO.

Thankfully by the time I was around 15 I found some nice friends who helped me blossom and who I am still in touch with 40 years later.

p.s. If you haven't seen it, watch the C4 social experiment documentary called "Boys and Girls Alone" from 2009 where they put same-sex groups into a house to live together for a week while their parents and psychologists watched on video. It ended up (as you would expect) with a Lord of the Flies type situation in both cases. Caused a lot of controversy at the time and apparently some of the participants had long term mental health effects.

Boys can be very, very nasty too. But I agree it seems to come a bit later, not in primary school.

@carolineshaw I said ‘competing over attention OR boys.’ I think, in a less patriarchal society, there would be less bitchiness, TBH. I doubt it would be completely erased.

I suspect they weren't told, I was told I couldn't be told of punishments or what parents said or anything. There was no evidence of the girls being punished.

When they finished at primary school a few weeks later my DD got no awards despite being really well behaved, very good academically, always having jobs to do (she loved doing library duty, looking after little ones, helping in the office as it meant she was away from the bullies) and sat at leavers assembly listening to kids getting rewarded for doing far less. The kids from the different classes did sketches, could be music, dancing or a little play. The boys in her class did a sketch, she wasn't in it, but she was mentioned as sort of the star of it. They had always been supportive but I could have cried and wanted to hug them all. They had the last word.

For me those boys were wonderful examples to the girls and to the teachers of how to support a bullied child.

Year 7 from my experience can be a tumultuous year for girls. You get a combination of still very hands on parents, including controlling / helicopter, and parents, who step back completely when the children still need guidance. And new found freedom leads them to becoming a little bit feral.

Secondary is an opportunity for new friendships and the children are suddenly thrown in a situation, where they’re mixing with other kids from very different backgrounds. Coupled with this, hormones are raging and rapid brain development means they make silly decisions and are not capable of thinking things through or looking at things from other people’s perspective.

Your dd will meet a lot of children the pool is a lot larger and what you tend to find is girls tend try on different friendships for size and chop and change until they find the kids they get on with. Then come silly fallings out and tribes, the latter of which are both positive as you feel accepted and negative eg the sporty kids don’t like / mix with the emo kids etc.

My dd is in yr9 and the girls are still incredibly sensitive but they do have a bit more emotional intelligence and empathy is starting to return. Despite dd being well liked and not creating that much drama in comparison to her peers, she still has her moments and I was told she was pretty unkind to another girl at the beginning of year 8 when she thought she was defending one of her good friend’s honour.

My dd’s friend went to a school with one class intake and very few girls. I know the scenario you’re describing. She is the same age as dd and has found friends. It took until now to completely distance herself from the girls blowing hot and cold despite having several other friends.

Your dd will work it out with some guidance from you. Secondary parents really don’t tend to get involved with other parents. If you want to prepare yourself, you could perhaps read up a bit and google books aimed at parents for teens. Untangled, for example, is free to read atm if you have Amazon Prime and covers year 7 onwards.

I’m my experience the girls are far worse then the boys. The boys tend to have a fall out and it all blows over. They’re less set in their cliques, less likely to gossip and analyse the ins and outs of everything and tend to be more inclusive. Obvs this is a generalisation

my experience of the girls tends to be more around talking about other children, being very clear about who is and isn’t included and ganging up with the queen bee. i think girls play much more at mind games where as boys are more physical and straightforward on the whole

i have boys and girls all teens

JaninaDuszejko · Today 12:30

The statistics for violent crime tell us that men are at least 20x more likely to commit violent crime than women. And those stats don't include rape which is exclusively committed by men.

Well, that's hardly surprising in a country which doesn't call sexual assault by females rape. In other countries they call it rape.

And if you are suggesting that only men are guilty of rape/serious sexual assault that simply isn't true. Women have forced men to penetrate them and female paedophiles and rapists in prison often use objects to penetrate children or other women.

Violent women make the headlines because of their rarity, 'man kills girlfriend' is not news, it happens every week.

Women who murder are far less common that men certainly. Most men and women are not violent but at the extreme ends of the bell curve men will be 99% of the most violent and women 99% of the very least violent. However, lots of women are violent. They are violent to their partners (male or female) and violent to their children.

Let's not live in a make believe world where women are all angels.

You're not wrong, girls and boys handle disputes in different ways. If boys have a row it may lead to fisticuffs then next day all's fine, I do know it can get far more serious eg knives but in general it's over. Girls have a row and it can simmer for years and years. If I told a girl off in Year 7 she would still remember it, in detail, when she left on Year 11.
In my career I taught in all boys, all girls and mixed schools, believe me, the all boys were the easiest!

Why DS used to be friends with a boy and I think the relationship was more like the ones girls have. The other boy got really upset if he played with anyone else and I used to get loads of messages off his mum about their friendship and how her son was upset that little Elvis had played with someone else that day. My DS just wanted to hang out with everyone and found it so intense he stepped away. His mum went mad and we all had a massive falling out.

A year 10 girl was expelled for repeated violence at dd’s now former school. It included a knife, although it wasn’t actually used. A year 9 girl was subject of a managed move to another school for violence. This failed and she has been allowed to return and was slowly reintroduced to the school population. Dd says no boys have been expelled. I’m not saying boys are innocent things, just that stereotypes are not helpful.

Because "kids" encompasses both boys and girls... 🤷🏻‍♀️ What's the problem?

I can't think of one similar incident from when I was at school.

You know you are right actually. The ones that have not been like this with my dd do have lovely mums and sadly although it is fewer I think you are right in that the Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! Reminded me to be thankful of the more positive friendships!

I went to an all girls' school - they were pretty horrible but I can't comment on whether it would have been better at a co-ed school. The sixth form was mixed, but the kids had grown up a bit by then in any case so things were better.

If boys have a row it may lead to fisticuffs then next day all's fine, I do know it can get far more serious eg knives but in general it's over. Girls have a row and it can simmer for years and years. If I told a girl off in Year 7 she would still remember it, in detail, when she left on Year 11

my son's head of year said that to me in Y7! He said the problem when the boys fell out wasn't the boys themselves, it was their parents (mothers) (see other thread about parents controlling friendships).

Good idea I think I saw a book about it actually. I just hate how these girls are at times although I know it’s not all the time!