Page 39 of my was three hundred dollar, now on sale for a hundred and twenty dollars Educational Psychology textbook says that “relational aggression appears to play a more important role in peer status than does overt aggression,” and “Because popularity and aggression are related to academic engagement and later disruptive behaviors, teachers need to identify and eliminate aggressive behaviors.”
This is the part where I tell about a disturbing instance that still causes me to fly into a rage.
My first big Service Unit event as a Girl Scout Troop Leader was called the “Cans” film festival. As a collective, Troops in the area host a kid-friendly movie at the local middle school, provide snacks and charge an entry fee of canned food items which are then donated to the local food pantry. Kung-Fu Panda was the movie. It was a great success.
Barring one little incident.
Our Troop was in charge of collecting and delivering the cans so during the movie the girls just visited and watched the film. My co-leader and I wandered about keeping an eye on “proximity issues” and keeping the kids out of the hallways. In my wanderings I happened on a little girl, about 11 or 12, bawling her eyes out behind one of those big yellow trash cans. I asked her what was wrong and she replied, “Nothing, nothing.” But went on crying like her heart was being crushed into jam.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a coterie of girls peering from behind a corner, whispering to one another and I thought, “Ah-hah… little bitches.” At that point I gathered up Ms. Niagara Falls, handed her my six-month-old baby and said, “I need your help.” and bustled her over where we were boxing up the donated canned goods. She sniffled for a bit but then got busy playing with little Morgan. After she’d calmed down I asked her what had happened, why she was so upset and she still didn’t want to talk about it. She then asked if she could call her dad to come pick her up so I gave her my cell phone.
After she’d been picked-up, the pack of ravening hyenas who had most assuredly been responsible for the waterworks edged up to me and asked where so-and-so had gone. “Did she go home already? Jeeze. She never stays to the end of things.”
At that point I nearly committed several crimes but managed to restrain myself to the following:
Listen up, girlies! I know exactly what you did and I heard exactly what you said. That kind of behavior is disgusting and you all deserve to be expelled! You should be ashamed of yourselves! Hurting people with words is just as bad if not WORSE than hitting them with your fists. I hope you get the exact same treatment from your friends that you gave that girl. I’ll bet you anything that you will, because people who treat one person like that will treat another person like that just as fast!
Or something very close to that.
Immediately another Troop Leader jumped in to tell me a bunch of nonsense about “girls that age” and how they have to “sort things out” themselves and that its “normal,” blah blah blah… My response was, “So, you’d let a group of boys beat the crap out of another boy under your supervision? That’s supposed to be normal, too!”
Then I stormed off in a huff.
Research on bullying, overt physical or covert relational, clearly shows that victims suffer emotionally, mentally, academically, socially and often end up hurting themselves or others because of their negative experiences. How can we justify standing by and watching children get treated like dirt and made to feel worthless by their peers because we consider it “normal” or we think they’ll eventually “sort it out.” Like a pack of social-jockeying hyenas, they will sort it out and the unfortunate underdogs will end up dead or gone.
Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to spot the Mean Girl behavior but we absolutely must have a zero-tolerance policy toward it, just as we do with fighting among children. The pricey textbook clearly states, “Given the link between relational aggression and negative outcomes, teachers should be on the lookout for instances of relational aggression and react as swiftly to these aggressive behaviors as they do to instances of overt aggression.”
No ifs, ands or buts about it.
So. If you are a parent, teacher, administrator or adult who works with children in some other capacity, what are you going to do the next time you hear something like this:
“Oh. My. God. You totally wear the weirdest outfits to school. Do you like wake up in the morning and take crazy pills or something? Hahaha… Just kidding! Like, omigod! Don’t be so sensitive!”
No comments:
Post a Comment