Bullying and bitchiness by older colleagues

[swipeup347]

My 19yr old DD has suffered with anxiety since covid. She has always been a very very good girl and has never got in trouble no detention or isolation at school. She is now working and finding the behaviour of older women towards her as a youngster in the workplace really hard. They always blame her when things go wrong. I do agree she isn't very emotionally resilient but she is so scared of doing something wrong and her colleagues know this so she is an easy target. Her friends who work find this a problem too and I see some older women being quite nasty to the younger employees in my organisation.

I have been a little hard on her and told her that this is life and she will encounter bitchiness alot and although it isn't nice she just has to suck it up. But it got me thinking why should younger people have to put up with this behaviour. She is a target for bullying as she is so quiet and timid and will always do as an older person asks her even if she thinks it is wrong. How can I try to make her more emotionally resilient?

I used to get this at work all the time, in more than one new workplace. They seem to target people who they think are sensitive. I can only assume they feel threatened by new young faces? The things that worked for me are (1) understanding this is how they are (and it’s not personal), (2) mastering the “I DGAF what you think” face (grey rock / not listening), in response to comments (they mostly give up on targeting you), (3) keeping distance from them as much as is possible. They don’t change.

It’s so hard seeing them go through this, my daughter’s 14 and already quite sensitive, so I can really imagine how your daughter must be feeling in that kind of environment. It’s awful when kindness gets mistaken for weakness.
I don’t think you were wrong to try to toughen her up a bit, it comes from wanting to protect her, but you're right, she shouldn’t have to just accept bad behaviour. Finding the balance with resilience is really tricky.
I'd actually recommend the the Luna teen wellbeing app (weareluna.app) has some brilliant content around confidence, boundaries and handling difficult people, my daughter’s found it really helpful already (there's articles, videos, a Q&A feature, mood tracker). It might give your daughter the confidence to start standing up for herself, without needing to completely change who she is. Hope this helps.