5yo girls - is this normal?

[shroomsshroomsshrooms]

And what should I do?

DD is 5. She's been very close to friend A since nursery. They are both now friends with another girl, B. They're all meeting up later.

DD was doing some colouring and decided to draw pictures for A and B. It was clear that she chose the nicest picture for A. She then decided to put stickers on the pictures and again chose the biggest and best ones for A. It sounds like a complete non issue I know, but the way she was talking as she was doing it really did make her sound like a 'mean girl' : "A can have this one and B can have this one"... "Now A's got 5 and B's got 4" etc, all in a kind of 'mean girl' voice.

I tried to talk to her about it and asked how she felt when she was saying these things. She said she felt happy and that B had been mean to her first (and recounted a clearly made up example of this). I told her that if B was mean then she didn't have to be friends with her, but that it didn't make it ok to be mean back.

This is just one example, there have been others... She's a good, kind child most of the time, and I've always thought she has very good social skills. But every now and again she comes out with something like this and it almost feels like she's emulating a bad character from TV (Amber from Sophia the First?!).

Any tips? Is this normal 5yo girl behaviour? I don't want to make it into a bigger issue than it is, but I also don't want her to develop into a bully!

Bumping for any tips/thoughts!

Totally normal! Five year olds do not have the comprehension of consequences in the way you do. Before anyone jumps in of course they know one thing leads to another I mean the way adults understand it. She likes one girl more than the other. One girl has been unkind. This is her way of working through and expressing that emotion. While she may well want the girl to see that she is less favoured she hasn’t thought much beyond that. You can try and reason with her but some things can’t be reasoned and her brain is really not capable of understanding nuances.

Interesting post. My 5yo DD also sometimes surprises me with doing/saying things that seem to be really quite goading to peers - showing off about having a bigger house, for example, and even showing off parents to an adopted friend. I find it shocking but I do also think there are layers of meaning I’m applying to these situations as an adult that she’s really not at all aware of, and she’s just testing and learning. I do question and correct - thats how she’ll learn - but I try not to worry too much that it means she’s a psycho! (I hope it doesn’t mean that…!)

I'd like to know this too!

Mines not quite 5 yet but almost, I've always thought her to be kind and caring and for the most part she is but recently I've cringed at a few 'mean girl' moments. She told a little girl at soft play to stop following her and her friend, when the other girl was clearly just wanting to join in and it broke my heart.

We have lots of chats about being kind, making sure people are okay, treating others how we want to be treated etc and I make sure to make to go out of my way to highlight and celebrate kind behaviour, but I guess it's just another learning process for them to go through. Hopefully as well as us teaching them they will learn through other children what things make them feel sad so not to do the same to others?!

Thanks all - this makes me feel a bit better. I was a bit worried I'd come back to a mass of posts telling me that my child was an irredeemable b*tch!

To clarify @mondaytosunday , I don't think the other girl has been mean to her. Well, she probably has been at some point, but the tale DD gave me this morning was clearly made up on the spot!

Yes, glad no one has been along to degree that are kids are in fact all awful!

I wonder whether there’s some socialised ideas of the “good girl” going on here for us? (I assume we’re all mums on the thread so far? And mum of daughter is a very particular position.) Even the language available to describe this - “mean girl”, “bitch” - is so clearly gendered. I wonder whether we’d react any differently to boys presenting these behaviours? Not that the behaviours are desirable of course, but maybe we read it in a particular way, and react in a particular way or to a greater degree, because of cultural ideas of girls as nurturing, selfless, subservient etc.

I don’t come across this type of behaviour in boys

Yes, the girls in DD’s class inc DD are always doing things like this.

We do jump on it, as does their teacher but it seems to be a phase. Last week DD deliberately tried to leave her “best friend” out of a game she was playing with someone else, then when she was told she had to include her she kept changing the rules so the friend couldn’t win.

She got sent to the headteacher for that. She is usually the most kind, obedient, empathetic child but now and again she’s an absolute witch.

I’m told there’s a fair few years of this with girls to come.

Yeah I am quite conscious of how gendered my language has been and I worry about that too (I worry about a lot of things 😂). I would like to think I'd feel the same about a son doing these things but I only have DD so can't say for sure. I do try to be clear that she doesn't have to be subservient/share her favourite toys etc, but it's the tone of voice and the crowing/power play that drives me crazy. It's so horrible and I find it very hard to explain in 5yo language that she doesn't have to be friends with everyone but it's not ok to behave like this!

Girls are awful. I’ve got a 12 and an 8 year old DD’s. Most of the time if they’re not being catty to others themselves, they’re on the receiving end of it. You sometimes get a few weeks of respite in-between before the cycle starts again.

We’ve had nights where my eldest has sobbed over her friends being mean to her and the next week she’s waltzed off with the others leaving a different friend out and I can see the pattern happening with my youngest again now and it’s been going on since year 2.

😭😭😭