Daughter super jealous of another girl in class

[cheshirecat2913]

Hello.
My DD 14 has struggled with being jealous of other people for a long long time… most recently of a girl in her class. Said girl is good at everything, you know the sort. DD has said to me it’s very difficult because this girl is better than her at everything - she said and I quote ‘she gets better grades than me even when I try, even in my favourite subject; if she surpasses me in my best subject there’s no reason for me to be here, I’m useless, I bring nothing to the table.’ The girl is also good at sports (DD isn’t and hates physical stuff), the girl has a lot of friends and seems to be quite popular (DD doesn’t have any of this) and this girl also apparently has a good home life and self esteem (The girl has a family whereas DD only really has me and is an only child.) DD’s been jealous of this girl since last year and her self esteem is plummeting at astronomically high levels. It’s difficult to watch.
WWYD??
(unsure if this is right place, first time here :-)

I feel for your daughter, it sounds like she is unhappy.

But this other girl has the right to a happy life and to achieve as much as she can. Your daughter obessing about it isn't healthy and won't make her friends, I wouldn't want to be around someone who was trying to beat me at everything. Does your daughter have ASD? Often autistic people can fixate on people like this as they struggle to understand group dynamics and why someone else is popular if they aren't when they always follow x rule to be popular for example.

I would get her some therapy, as there will always always be people better than you at everything, and it will be a miserable life for her if she always wants to be the best at everything and is miserable if not.

Does she have any friends at all OP? I think that's the bit you need to focus on and cultivate. The other external bits she can't change about herself. There will always be someone 'better' than all of us in life.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD):

Core Traits:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.

Motivation:
Driven by a need for attention, validation, and to maintain a sense of self-importance.

Empathy:
While they may feign empathy, they struggle to truly understand or care about the feelings of others.

Behavior:
May manipulate others to achieve their goals, often exhibiting entitlement and arrogance.

Remorse:
May experience some remorse, but it's often superficial and tied to their own ego.

Treatment:
Can respond to therapy, but treatment is often challenging due to their lack of insight into their behavior.

"I bring nothing to the table" is a very unusual phrase for a 14 year old girl. Have you asked her where she got that from, or what this mythical table is?

Being successful in life isn’t about being good at things. It’s about happiness and luck.

Bloke I knew had everything - looks, money, beautiful family - until he had a freak accident and is paralysed from the neck down.

A woman got the job I wanted but there was a car crash that took out a couple of employees soon after so it was such a sad place to work.

Think about all the pop stars and celebrities who seem to have everything then don’t.

I am not wishing bad things on people. But your Dd should see how lucky she is now. She presumably has her health which is something to be cherished. She has potential to do a lot in the future.

The up side of her trying to get better grades is that she’s more likely to achieve them.

Perhaps if she volunteered as somewhere for people less fortunate than herself, she would see things in a different light. Make her look outwards inside of in.

Standard approach - help your dd to become better than herself, i.e. let her compete with her yesterday's self, not with that girl. Explain nobody is perfect. Concentrate on your her and help her.

The problem is that jealousy eats away at people and stops them being their best because everything is about others.

MIL was best at school. Head Girl, went to uni in 1954, captain of the sports teams. Her life panned out to be very mediocre and she became quite bitter.

When I was at school there were a couple of golden girls. Always in the top three, real Hilary Wentworth types (Twins at St Claires), popular with pupils and staff, sporty, musical, became Head Girl/Deputy Head girl. They didn't carry on achieving, they gravitated back to their provincial home town and never set the world on fire. One would have thought they were the leaders of tomorrow. The quiet, mousy girl who went into nursing because she thought medicine was too demanding fkr her is now the CEO of a major Health Trust.

The perfect Penny's at school rarely extrapolate to the most exceptional after school.

The thing that is deeply wrong with the UK education system is that the traits for school success are not the same as the traits for successful lives and I think those who remember their school days as their happiest have led pretty boring lives afterwards.

She might need some counselling but actually I think she needs an enormous kick up the backside and needs to learn that she has to be nice to everyone, get over her feelings, which are nasty, and focus on herself rather than everyone else.

I would suggest your daughter needs to find her own 'thing'

eg Phab Club https://phab.org.uk/
Young Farmers https://www.nfyfc.org.uk/
Fire Cadets (see local fire brigade website)

that kind of thing, where it's something she can learn new skills away from school and make new friends

OP you may wish to have this moved to maybe the Relationships board.

I think you've made a start by posting here, you've recognised it's not OK.

You're getting heat here for saying it's "silly" but I'm sure you know it's more than that, hence you posting.

This is a brilliant post - people forever compare themselves with the people who are better off and never bother to look at those who are worse off. Exactly this.

It is difficult, but your daughter needs to realise that - in school at least - all she can do is HER best. The only person she's competing against is herself. School isn't a competitive sport.

I work in academia and I like to remember the quote "Everyone here is smart, distinguish yourself by being kind". Because it's ultimately our character that is important in life, how we treat others, how we deal with life's ups and downs. There will always be those who know more, have more, can do more etc. In life we have to play the cards we're dealt. I'm fortunate to have friends that I've had since primary school - so I've known them and their families for 40 years now. We've all had successes and happy times in our lives - but also some awful times. It's only in the past few years that I've sadly come to truly understand the analogy of life being a rollercoaster for everyone. For young people that can be hard to understand, especially if they are only seeing a curated, select snapshot of someone's life on social media.

There was a girl that fixated on my dd in this way. It was actually very disturbing.

OP, you seem to have dismissed the school's safeguarding concerns as "silly" and you seem to have accepted your dd's decision to disengage from the counselling. I'm just wondering what you think needs to happen next to help your dd get over this?

What are you doing to work on her low self esteem? And how are you currently attempting to challenge her thought processes?

Will this get worse when she is an adult?

It sounds like your DD has some deep-rooted issues around being "the best" that she needs to unpick before it ends in disaster.

You seem very dismissive of the schools concerns as well, which is also worrying.

Comparison is the thief of joy. Someone who is better looking/academically better/richer may have stuff going on you know nothing about. In 10 years time they may be dead/homeless. You can only worry about yourself. Spending time envying others is futile. But you can use it a springboard to improve yourself.

This sounds like a personality disorder to me. Does anyone else in your family have these unpleasant traits OP?

I would focus on distracting her as PP have suggested, keep her busy elsewhere so this jealousy doesn’t consume her to the extent she acts on it.

It's not silly. If this was a boy obsessed with your daughter the way your daughter is obsessed with this girl, you'd be complaining if the school weren't keeping an eye on him.

Can your daughter join groups that the other girl has no involvement with? Establish things that she does that she can not compare against the other girl.

Once she stops comparing herself to her peers she will be okay. Sadly with the rise of social media this has become harder for our youths in todays society. The sense of pitting herself against her peers is hard but with correct support she can shift her mindset onto her achievements and focus.

This one person isn't hindering her view of herself, her own poor mental health is. If it was't this girl there would be someone or something else. Unhealthy thought patterns like this often stem from some sort of trauma....which might not even have seemed like a trauma to you or it might be something you think couldn't possibly have affected her. Something like the loss of a parent, divorce, a big unsettling move, even things like bring in hospital as a child. You mentioned it's just the two of you, is her father on the scene at all? Have you any ideas what might be behind all this? If you don't mind me asking, how is your mental health and self esteem?

Does she engage in any activities where the outcome is totally subjective like art or music or writing? Maybe a focus like that could help, where your daughter could strive to find her unique voice/style in a more free form setting.

sounds like this other girl is nailing school, that doesn’t say anything about her future (in my industry being a “high achiever” tends to actually hold people back). And as loads of pp have said, nobody knows what’s actually going on for this “perfect” girl.

God high school was brutal, I’m feeling sorry for everyone here.

It's always interesting on this sort of post how you get responses knocking the other person.
"The people who were good at school, never really made it" type answers.

OP. I don't think those sort of answers will help your dc at all. Those would be encouraging her, by saying that she can wait and hope they fail. What you are wanting to do is raise her up to not mind what others achieve because she is confident in herself.

I do agree with what others had written that you seemed to be doing her down. From the first post, I got the impression that she was struggling academically and not good at anything. Later you tell us she's doing well.
So when she tells you something, concentrate on how well she had done, tell her you don't care how well others have done, it's her that matters and praise if praise is due and sympathise if she hasn't done as well as she wanted but no sympathy if all it is is comparison to the other girl.

Get her into different things. I wonder whether volunteering, being treated as an adult would help? My ds found something which he loves because he felt he was treated as an adult at that age. It's made a huge gain in his self-esteem because he's gone through school (in his words) "not good enough to get rewarded for being good, but not bad enough to get the rewards for not being bad".
Maybe a charity shop, or if she's into acting, you may find backstage work gives her more of an adult feel (under 16s have to be chaperoned for on stage, but not backstage). Or if she could help with a younger group at her drama school. Something which makes her want to be more adult-like and feel that she is gaining. That may give her the mental growth she needs to not care about this girl.

I agree. I had a “friend” who was jealous of me ( and others) and it grew to ridiculous proportions. It started out being things that kind of made sense and escalated to being jealous of me for insane things like having a zit on my nose.

Get your DD to read Othello. Jealousy really does “ mock the meat it feeds on” and can ruin otherwise happy lives.

it’s just this one person that seems to be hindering her view of herself

The other girl isn't hindering your ads view of herself - your daughter is hindering her own view of herself

The perfectionism, giving up easily if she thinks she won't be the best, and escaping reality via gaming makes me wonder if it's worth looking into the possibility of ADHD. Possibly it's been masked well at primary but is becoming increasing difficult to do so at secondary level and this is how it's manifesting.

I'd really try to push the narrative that what other people do is none of her business - she is the most important person in her life. Boosting her self-esteem and resilience by focussing on what she can and does achieve.