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 :-)

Well, maybe that's the way @cheshirecat2913 looks at the world? It can't have come from nowhere ...

I have a DD who is high achieving. Top sets at school, county netball, top 10 nationally ranked athlete etc. There is a girl at her school who has become fixated on her and is quite intent on destroying her life. She’s spread vicious rumours at school, e.g. DD is anorexic, lies about things DD has supposedly said about others to destroy her friendships. It’s now at the point that she’s joined her out of school athletics club to infiltrate and destroy her out of school friendships as well.

It’s quite frightening the level of hatred and obsession this girl has about DD - who keeps herself to herself and just goes about doing her homework and her 20 odd hours a week of sports training. From a parent on the other end of this, please try and get your DD some help. It does sound unhealthy and it’s great you’ve recognised it. I’d suggest finding something this girl doesn’t do and get her involved in that so they’re not directly competing with each other. My DD doesn’t play football for example, she’s never picked for the girls football team, she’s also hopeless at music, but this girl doesn’t see that at all, she just sees that she captains the netball team. Which is really quite a small part of the overall school experience.

I think the comments about these kids not always doing well in later life applies to the OPs dd tbh! She’s trying to build herself into a person that is top of the class etc but that’s not where future success lies

often ‘those kids’ who are considered ‘perfect’ are very kind people and that’s the trait that sees them ultimately go on to have a good adulthood.

the academic superstars who are unkind with it don’t tend to have people jealous of them!

One of my daughters grew very jealous of a girl at school. The girl came from a wealthier large family. She was very clever. Athletic etc. lovely girl.

my dd was becoming very fixated on this girl. I found it very worrying much like you. What actually broke this unhealthy behaviour was my dd being around less fortunate people. I volunteer and took her along on a few things. She then decided to help out at a local stables that gives disabled children the chance to ride and interact with the horses.

she soon realised how lucky she was and she found a lot of pleasure in helping people.

I think sometimes teens become too focused on what they don’t have and forget how fortunate they really are.

it’s lovely that your dd can confide in you. You sound like a great mum x

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.

Thank you for saying that @MargaretThursday The posts dismissing the "perfect Pollies" at school are in the same mindset as the OP and her DD.

OP, what did you say when your DD told you her counsellor wasn't very good at her job? I'm a bit astounded that you wouldn't challenge an unqualified 14 year old making a judgement about a trained professional ...

Your DD is not silly - she is going through a tough period of adolescence, and you should be focusing on her, not the other young girl, nor dismissing the school's concerns.

I once read that jealous feelings are great because they tell you what you want from life - then you can use that knowledge to work towards what you want.

Your DD could easily do better than this girl if she works harder - it's in her hands, she just needs you to tell her she can change reality if she works for it.

Even things like charisma/social skills etc can be taught with some practice.

Self-confidence and lack of jealousy - some people are born with it, some are not, I am afraid. My sister's little daughter was looking at herself in the mirror age 3 and would say 'gorgeous hair' - and she had the thinnest, most pathetic hair and my sister was worried that it would never grow and would lament (loudly) about how non-existent (!!!) her daughter's hair was. Her little daughter? Water off duck's back! Her daughter filled out a bit when a teenager and her mum was trying to restrict her diet, whilst her daughter used to refer to herself as 'a skinny legend'. My sister is now on her to 'put some makeup' on and her daughter is convinced she is gorgeous without any makeup. Same goes for clothes - she has one 'default' outfit and wears it to uni all the time. Convinced she is a film star appearance-wise. Literally deluded self-confidence. Where from? Nobody admires her at home or at school?

I love the sound of this kid.

It's not 'deluded self confidence' btw. She has self confidence- despite her mother it seems

Does your daughter interact anyway with the girl she’s jealous of? Or does she just let off steam about it all to you? I think the diagnoses of personality disorders are a bit premature 🙄

I echo others.

I would see if there is something your DD can have as 'hers' where she can excel. Something this other girl does not do. And I would be very very focused on decent therapy. The fact the school has identified she is a risk to other people due to her jealousy is not something to be dismissed lightly- it's very serious indeed.

Jealousy is a normal emotion and as a pp said can actually be useful in that it can drive people to pursue what they want. But this sounds like your DD needs some specialist intervention before it becomes something really toxic. For her own sake as well as she must be so unhappy with it.

Gawd. Why say this?

Sometimes you absolutely can't be better. Despite more work, more effort etc etc that's totally delusional.

Why not spin it around and admire someone else for their achievements?

My kid will never be an olympic hockey player- but that shouldn't impact on their joy of playing hockey and neither should it make them be insanely jealous of another kid who may have the talent to get there.

Sadly, it is your DD who is hindering her view of herself by making comparisons with others. School is such a short time in the scheme of things and she needs to focus on her own future (not what she imagines will be someone else's) so that she can grow, develop and be her best self. It doesn't matter that this may, or may not, be "better" than others. She will not be living their life.
I do wish her well, and it will be hard to change her thinking, but she is lucky that she has her life, and not others (think Gaza, Ukraine, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc.) where she would be having far greater struggles to focus on.

this. I suspect that the girl is kind of....but not entirely....a sort of excuse mechanism.....a sort of "oh I'd be ok/better/happier if it wasn't for xxx" maybe she could understand that there will, for most of us, always be people who seem to excel at everything and that all too often those people are not as golden and as happy as they appear to the rest of us.

So true. My Dad had a degenerative neurological disease that started in his 40s. He was never bitter or resentful that he got this at a relatively young age. He looked at people who were less able to do things, and felt sad for them and lucky that he could still walk etc. This is the attitude to cultivate.
There will always be someone better than you at something. Even if you become top in the world at a sport , as you age a younger person will take that place. You might win an Oscar and in a decade be almost forgotten. We all like to have things we are good at, but what is most valuable about us is the enduring uniqueness of us all as people. What makes us loved and lovable is the combination of qualities that only we have.
If your daughter gets too stuck in this mindset then life will be miserable. You really don’t need to be the best at everything to be happy. You can focus on being the best that you can be.
Your daughter’s mindset is very self obsessed and inward looking, which is obviously a mid teens state to some degree, but happiness comes from looking outward and just enjoying other people’s skills, enjoying your friends, not feeling in competition with them.

Everyone can improve. And taking steps towards improving something you work on and getting better actually does marvellous things for people's self esteems.

Take a look at all the stuff on the "growth Vs fixed mindset". What I say is backed by research - if OP wants her DD to develop better self esteem then this is the way to do it

Yup. That's what I thought reading said post. It's a life lesson that you can't always be better than everyone else, regardless of the amount of effort you put in. Because that's life. And coming to terms with that hard fact is just part of growing up.

OP telling her daughter she could 'easily' do better than the other girl with hard work is not helpful. The reality is she may not. It's also unlikely that this other girl is better than everyone else in the things she's good at. They're just in a very small pool at the moment.

How do you know her DD could do better if she works harder?

Life doesn't work like that.

DD needs to stop it.

You must speak to her and re- enforce the fact that Girl has nothing to do with her own success or failure. This girl has zero business being in her thoughts.

She has be highlighted as a concern. That is serious. You DD needs to understand that she can control her thoughts, and needs to substitute a safe object or fictional person for this girl in her thoughts.

I understand how hard this must be to witness, but I think it’s important to be honest about what’s going on here. The issue isn’t the other girl, it's your daughter’s response to her. That’s not something the school can realistically fix.
Pastoral teams are usually there to manage day to day concerns that affect behaviour or learning, not to provide long-term emotional support. Most pastoral people aren’t clinically trained, and with limited time and resources, they tend to work reactively. It’s not realistic to expect them to deliver what is essentially therapeutic work. If you, as her parent, don’t know how to support her with this, it’s unfair to assume the school will.

Your daughter sounds like she’s struggling with low self-esteem and possibly a fixed mindset in believing that if she can’t be “the best”, there’s no point trying. That’s serious, and if left unchecked, it can spiral. But the presence of a high-achieving peer hasn’t caused this. It’s exposed it.

You say she thinks there’s nothing wrong with how she’s thinking and this is exactly why therapy would help. Not because she’s broken or “acting out”, but because she’s got stuck in a way of thinking that’s painful and self-limiting.

If she’s already rejecting the counsellor at school, it might be worth exploring someone with a different approach or a better fit. School counselling is usually very short term anyway, and your DD needs long term counselling.

It’s difficult and it's expensive, but this is a long game. Your DD needs help to build a sense of self that isn’t based on comparison. No school can do that for her.

I think you should try to help her to realize that this girl is literally nothing to do with her. There will always be someone who is prettier, cleverer, more popular, richer... it's normal. Your daughter has put her self worth into the hands of someone else instead of realizing that her self-worth will never be anything to do with anyone else. It's hers and hers alone. Once she understands this it will be easier for her to start working with her own envious thoughts.

This is really tough for your daughter and wonder why & when she started basing her self worth on being the best?

What is the rest of her personality (eg, is she shy?)?

I agree with others that she needs proper counselling, not because there's anything wrong with her but because she's going to hit some dreadful mental health problems later on if she doesn't tackle her underlying insecurities. It can take a few go's to find a counsellor who one clicks with so I'd persevere with getting her there.

She will certainly struggle at university if she struggles so much when she's not the best at her studies, I've seen it before, so she needs to learn how to deal with it.

The fact is that it doesn't matter how good we are at something, there is always going to be someone who is better. Even successful Olympians will have their number 1 spot challenged. For sports people, age and injury catches up with them, in academia there will be someone else who's quicker, sharper and in drama there will be someone who's style of acting is more popular (though not necessarily better).

It's really hard for someone who's built their identity around being No.1 in the class to accept that someone achieves more highly than them and when it's the become the core of their identity then it should be taken seriously.

Can you identify why she might have latched onto this being the focus of her personality? Did she feel ordinary or inadequate in others aspects of life beforehand?

@RosesAndHellebores She’s not actually mean to anybody else, she’s very sweet, this is just her internal monologue.

@bigfacthunter She writes but she’s slowly giving up because again even though its subjective she hates everything she writes and thinks it isnt good enough.

Children don't develop in a vacuum - where is she getting these ideas from? Are you prone to jealously? I think you many need to challenge some of your thinking OP (your throwaway line about "you know the sort" is quite telling). How about you model good behaviour and offer to go to therapy with your daughter? Show her that you value the idea and that it l therapy isn't about "fixing" her but exploring how the pair you relate to each other and how this then helps you relate to the wider world.

@limefruit Nope, she only talks to me about it. She’s well-behaved around the other girl but I know it’s hard for her to do that.