Queen Bees and Wannabees - Rules of Girl World, Part 1

When I found out I was moving to 4th grade this year I knew I had to attend this seminar through a local ISD. Having two girls of my own and teaching an age group that is trying to understand their social status I thought it would be helpful to make myself aware of this ever so hard to figure out "girl world."


(These notes are from that conference by Kelly Smith, M.S.)

How would you define bullying? We usually think of something physical right? What about these words - persistent, intimidation, manipulative, control, and power?

Did you ever think about how a group of girls does better if it's an even number? Girls always end up pairing off. I got to see this in action in my own house.  My daughter had two friends over (twins) and one sister was by herself while my daughter and the other sister played together.  It wasn't deliberate, it just happened. So next time you plan your daughter's birthday part and one girl can't come, making it an odd number, invite someone else so it's an even number of girls. 

This battle for position and social status begins earlier than you might think...age 4-5. Have you ever heard this, "I won't be your friend." or "You can't come to my birthday party." We often dismiss it as a "kid thing", a stage that all kids go through. That's not true...it's a power struggle and it's just not nice and we need to teach our daughters (and all kids) not to say such unkind things.

Aggression in girls is often between their closest friends. There are three types of agressive behavior in girls:

• relational aggression - between friends
• indirect aggression - spreading rumors
• social aggression - damaging self esteem or social status (Did you ever know a girl that had to change schools? This might have been why.)

To a girl, friendship is as important as air. Therefore, the number one fear in girls is isolation. Have you or someone you know ever thought, "One bad friend is better than no friend." Girls don't directly confront because in girl world conflict = loss. That is why so much of this relational aggression between girls is covert and doesn't get dealt with.

How many times has a friend asked you if they did something to upset you and your response was, "No, everything's fine." See what I mean?

Some people think this is a social skills problem. It's not. It actually takes a lot of skill to cause these problems.

Here are some resources the presenter highly recommended. This seminar wasn't from a Biblical perspective so I threw in Dobson's book.

I'll be doing a follow up post explaining the roles among a group of girls (that was a real eye opener) but they can definitely be applied to any group.

Some resources:

Bringing Up Girls by Dr. James Dobson
Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons
Queen Bees and Wannabees by Rosalind Wiseman (great for parents and daughters to read together)