Page 38 of my three hundred dollar Educational Psychology textbook (which, I see, is now on sale for about $70.00 cheaper than what I paid for my used copy sonofa..!) says this: “Relational aggression refers to behaviors specifically intended to damage another child’s friendships, social status, or feelings of inclusion in a peer group. Such behaviors include gossiping, rumor spreading, and excluding someone as a way to control them.”
We all know this as Mean Girl behavior (although research shows that boys, despite the stereotype, participate in it as well). We all might NOT know that it is considered bullying and it is more damaging and more pervasive than overt physical aggression.
I think most of us can remember back to middle or high school and having to deal with that girl. Some of us were, perhaps, lucky enough to belong to the inner coterie of the Queen Bee. By compromising ourselves only just a little we were able to avoid the worst of her nastiness. The rest of us, particularly myself, were dead in her crosshairs.
This is the part where I relate a particularly painful episode in my life and hope that I can remain honest while protecting the innocent and guilty alike:
My middle school class consisted of about 19 kids. Most of us had been together since kindergarten. We knew each other and our families fairly well. There was this one girl… Well behaved, well-dressed, academically and athletically successful. Her parents were well-respected as were her older and younger siblings.
She was, all told, a raging, fetid nightmare.
And she hated my guts.
I was on the fringes of girl society. The consummate Beta. I wasn’t pretty, trendy or cool. I was just smart enough, funny enough and creative enough to be a threat to the Queen Bee and because I was also known for bazaar outbursts and emotional intemperance, my legitimate complaints about her meanness were overlooked as jealousy or dramatism and I suffered, suffered, suffered.
Early in my seventh grade year the girl on whom I was most emotionally dependent called my house and said that we had to “break-up” because Queen Bee thought I was a bad influence. After half an hour of both of us bawling our heads off, me for obvious reasons, her because she is really a very kind and good person and knew she was doing something terrible, I ended up feeling horribly sorry for my friend (who eventually recanted and apologized during the tear drenched phone call) and declared war on Queen Bee.
Much like the Allied Forces early in World War II when faced with Nazi aggression and expansion, I had previously responded to her hideousness with conciliation and effacement. No longer! From then on I resolved to hate, hate, hate Queen Bee and never give her a moment’s rest for being mean to me and for putting my dear friend in such an awful position.
My zero-tolerance, scorched earth campaign predictably led to an escalation of viciousness and sniping from both sides. Her cold war tactics involved excluding me from “secrets,” snickering, jibing, the occasional nudge in P.E. and many of my belongings ending up mysteriously “misplaced.”
My response was open, verbal aggression. I did not sit quietly and let her answer the questions first. I practiced the heck out of my clarinet and began to threaten her First Chair status. I played my guts out on the volleyball court and beat her, once or twice, during skills test. In other words, I no longer sat quietly in my Beta role… I openly challenged her. And had her running scared.
Queen Bee was a clever monster. She normally kept her tactics covert and was considered to be “such a nice girl” among the adults at school who were completely oblivious to the grand campaign occurring under their noses. But one day… One bright and shining day when I very nearly landed myself in a mental hospital or, at the very least, suspended… She slipped.
That momentous day I was, to a rapt audience of our boy population of juvenile delinquents, regaling the latest round of tales featuring my notorious, not-that-much-older-than-us Uncle. My Uncle was my link to the criminal underworld of our school. He partied with the older brothers and friends of my classmates. He and his closest friends (one of them is now regularly featured on a very popular Discovery Channel show involving boats) were like gods to my less-than-likely-to-succeed classmates and the fact that they all hung out at my house was a source of envy and disgust among those who could barely pretend not to be interested as I related their every move, musical choice and conversation.
Queen Bee could no longer take seeing me the center of attention. Even that attention. In obvious agitation she blurted, “Well! Your uncle needs counseling!”
I know now that when time seems to slow down or stop it’s actually the result of an enormous surge of adrenaline which allows your senses, reflexes, muscles and mind to operate in hyper-drive. At the time it seemed like magic that I was able to levitate across the room, over desks and collapsing bodies, on a trajectory which would have driven my clawed hands directly into her astonished, fear-filled face.
After that everything went sort of black. The next thing I remember I was struggling in the grip of the second best social studies teacher and second best music teacher in the whole wide universe, Mr. Woodworth, who was shouting at the sobbing Queen Bee, “Go to the office! I heard the whole thing! You can’t go around saying things like that about people’s families!”
It was the best day ever.
Queen Bee is pretty much universally remembered as a “great kid” with lots of smarts, ability and potential. When I make a remark about how vicious she was people respond sort of half-believingly and say something along the lines of, “Well, you were such an odd child.”
It’s annoying.
The lesson to be learned here is that even the kids who seem like the best kids… Perhaps especially those kids… are not always the nicest people when the grown-ups have their backs turned. Some 60% of kids in middle school have experienced or have witnessed bullying and it most often takes the form of covert “relational aggression.” As parents and educators we need to keep our eyes, ears and hearts open for this sort of bullying and victimization.
I will, in Part 2, relate how ignoring these events can create unhealthy patterns of abuse and victimization which can stick with a child for a lifetime.
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