Is this now normal 8/9 year old girl behaviour?

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Those with girls in year 4 (so age 8/9) - is it normal for the girls to be absolutely horrible to each other? I am getting so exasperated by the daily accounts of sly comments, very blatant attempts to cause upset feelings and undermine others confidence by starting rumours, dirty looks, plus also when did 8/9 year olds start talking about buying skincare at Sephora, applying lip gloss in the classroom, wearing crop tops on mufti day and sneering at those in the class who don’t 😳
is this normal? Or is it just the school I’ve clearly stupidly sent DD to?
Advice welcome! Thanks!

I think he's at a bit of a crossroads unfortunately. He's always played with the girls rather than boys so doesn't have any good boy friends. All the girls are now changing, arguing, bitching and he can't relate anymore, hoping he will make more boy friends soon!
These were lovely little girls that I've had many days out with and now they are snapchatting, being really nasty about each other, make up etc, just acting a lot older than they should be IMO

And yes it was the girl who seemed to have unlimited access to Tiktok who was the problem..

They were arseholes to each other when my 23 year old was that age.

when I was that age, I had my fair share of nastiness. Kids can just be pricks to each other (and so can adults).

I can relate to everything you've said there, OP. My DD is Yr 4 and her 'best friend' has turned exactly like this. It began at the end of Yr 3.

The wee girls in my sons class (age 8 and 9) have phones, they send each other absolutely vile messages, wear skin tight leggings as trousers and are wearing blush, gloss and concealer. Its absolutely wild to me, I still played with Barbies til I was about 13!

Sadly true in the case of both my daughters. Absolutely heartbreaking and both were in single year classes at school. I just could never work out why they had that behaviour, growing up and conforming is soo hard. The obvious reason would be insecurity on their part but I still can’t fathom the nature of the how and why. Teaching children kindness, acceptance and empathy is so underrated. It comes from carers/parents/ teachers/ other adults and society in general.
sadly bullying tactics go and grow into adulthood when it’s never addressed and changed at a very young age. It’s a no brainer to install kind values at any age and it being age appropriate. Not rocket science . My experience of especially my neurodivergent daughter being on the receiving end. Awful for any child or adult to feel shunned

DD is way too gentle natured for this shit, which I think is half the issue - kids know they can be arseholes to her and she won’t fight back. we practice role play responses all the time to no avail.
I wouldn’t even describe her as being particularly young for her age at all (likes gymnastics, art and crafts, going to the cinema bowling swimming all very normal stuff for an 8/9 year old?! ) dresses fairly on trend but age appropriate (in my opinion, no crop tops etc) but the bitchiness and the constant trying to elbow her out of the way/make her feel uncomfortable is obviously upsetting but also starting to piss me off…..I’ve had a word with her class teacher who said “that’s girls” 👀 (great support)

It’s their mothers that’ll have contributed towards this attitude. What 8/9 year old would know of Sephora otherwise.

Not at our school, but dd8 changed schools at the beginning of yr3 and I could definitely see this happening at her old school. We moved house which gave the opportunity to move schools which we took due to some low level bullying (even though old school was commutable) in yr1 into yr2 and some of the parents were already talking about the girls being just like teenagers at the same time, which I really didn’t like

Year 4 wasn't great for my daughter with loads of drama, arguements and general unkindness, year 5 has been much better so far. Thankfully the school was on it and targeted the main offenders with 'friendship groups' to try to get them to explore the impact of their behaviours and it did help. They also broke up some of the less helpful friendships when moved into year 5, which has been really helpful.
Year 4 came with loads of tears and strops, processing what had hapenned during the day. This year has been much much calmer. My daughter has also matured a bit and learnt to say 'that's not ok, please don't speak to me like that' and gone and found others to play with, learning when to leave unhelpful friendships behind and move on. This is my biggest tip I think - empower your child that it's ok to stand up for herself and to explore other friendships rather than trying to hang onto one's which don't 'feed her heart' as we put it.

What the hell are parents thinking, giving phones to primary age kids.
I despair, honestly

My son aged 20 said no-one should have tik tok, not even me or his dad. Children definitely should be banned, in fact they shouldn't have smartphones until mid teens. He was adamant that it was a cesspit of a site.

I think it all sounds normal tbh. Dd is in yr 5 and one of the older ones in the class. Her and her friends all love Sephora/skincare/preppy stuff as they call it. Don’t see how it’s a problem as long as you manage it. Dd is allowed some make up within reason (mostly lip gloss and blush) to experiment with, and moisturiser or sunscreen (nothing with acids or peptides or loads of ingredients). Not sure about crop tops tbh, have never looked that closely but they all wear what they like on mufti days. Have never heard of any arguments about clothing or kids being singled out, but the girls do bicker about other things, there seems to be more than with the boys. My dd struggles as she is so much older than most of the other girls and they can be overly emotional. They all have what’sapp on their phones and some girls are allowed tik tok and snapchat. We don’t personally allow that just because it’s hard to keep an eye on what content they’re seeing, but most kids in her class already have phones. Ours is a private school with 20 to a class.

they are horrendous to one another and the bullying can be out of control. What is really critical at that age is to keep them off social media. The sooner you give your child Snapchat and constant access to social media via phones, the sooner they’ll either be the target of barbs or being the one doling them out.

It’s probably not that new. I remember my son at that age telling me the girls in his class all seemed to love drama. He didn’t get it, he’d say to me, we’re only nine why don’t they just chill’ 😁

Yeah, my 11 year old isn’t allowed it.

Because I know what a cesspit it is, I argue with absolute pricks on it daily. But I’m 46, give not a single fuck and love it. I wouldn’t want a child exposed to it.

Mine is Y5, they have the usual squabbles every so often but nothing big, a handful and into crop tops and skincare but not in a big way, they might want they own face wipes and moisturiser, mine is crazy about glow butter from home bargains, really good and the pink one smells amazing.
They love make up for parties/school disco but aren’t obsessed with it and thankfully they all accept each other and aren’t mean to anyone not into those things.
Hope it settles down OP

I didn't know about Sephora until my DD9 told me, it full of kids in there with the parents buying them things.

The girls in her class are very much like this, a group of them (DD included) watched mean girls at a sleepover a few weeks ago and now they wear something pink on Wednesdays, only wear hair up once when week etc and I've had to really emphasise to her that the point of the movie is not to be a mean girl. She's genuinely not mean to other girls but there seems to be a lot of drama involving other girls and boys which I hear about when she's on group calls and some of her friends definitely seem to be turning into little twats buy I'll help DD navigate how to be kind and choose her friends.

She's still into lol dolls, barbies, reading books but also likes skincare, fashion, music, roblox etc - it's an interesting age!

Nastiness between girls really ramps up from years 4-6. The makeup, skincare, fashion thing is dependent on the make up of the year group. IME the year groups made up of lots of younger siblings (particularly girls with older girl siblings) tended to get into fashion/ skincare and makeup earlier as they are exposed to it through their older siblings. Year groups where most of the children are oldest siblings or only children tend to be a bit younger in their interests. It's the same with phone/gaming usage. Younger siblings year groups seem to have phones/ gaming interests younger than those made up of mainly oldest or only children.

Strap yourself in for year 6 onwards. DRAMA

These ones are also TikTok addled too!

Y6 was horrendous for us. I think they become big fishes in a little pond and are more than ready for the challenge of secondary school.

I agree. My DD is only in reception but I see it with people I know. The bullies "popular" girls from my school have girls who are like this because of their mothers. They peaked in high school and are so desperate to relive that popularity they're grooming their daughters to be the same.

This is so true, I’ve never thought of it before.

My DD and her friends seemed to grow up much slower than the girls in my DS’s year.

But now I think of it, almost all of the girls in my DD’s primary school class were the eldest children in their families, whereas in DS’s class they were all the younger siblings.

Listen, my “skin care” consists of me washing my face with aldis cheapest shower gel in the shower. I’ve not worn make up in 25 years.

My 11 year old knows every product going. It comes from her mates, not me.

Just like I was supposed to believe at 11 that Jesus magically gave you a baby when you got married. My parents would have been fucking horrified to know that I knew all about sex from the playground.