So, your daughter is a mean girl!
We all know mean girls and unfortunately, have probably each dealt with our fair share of their antics. Maybe, you’ve been the mean girl at some point in your life. Or Perhaps, you’ve been the victim of a mean girl. You may have had to teach your daughter how to deal with mean girls. And maybe, just maybe, you realized one day that you’re raising a mean girl! What do you do now?!
First of all, the fact that you recognize it is probably 90% of the battle! Good job, Mom! It can be so difficult to recognize in our own children because we love them and we see the best in them! As a mom, you see every side of your child. You might see the sweet little girl who still cries on your shoulder when someone hurts her. She couldn’t possibly be a mean girl, right?
Wrong! Even the most loving, kindest, most humble mothers can accidentally raise a mean girl. Remember that! (But we are going to revisit this too!)
My first-ever job as a (student) teacher was with seven sections of 9th grade English. Ummmm…that will get you a lot of teaching experience in one semester! I still remember one of the meanest mean-girl students. Y’all, I am telling you, this girl was an “it’s-taking-me-all-the-self-control-I-have-not-to-slap-you” snot!
I absolutely dreaded parent-teacher conferences. She was earning a C in my class (and I was being incredibly generous because I was a student-teacher who was going to change the world)! I remember seeing her mom’s name on my schedule and feeling like I was going to have to breathe into a paper bag! I was also pregnant and suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, but do you think I could have started vomiting and needed to go home? Nope.
Her mom sat down at my table, asked me a couple of questions about why her daughter was earning a C in my class, and after I showed her some samples of her work, she was satisfied. Then, to my surprise, she said, “I know my daughter is absolutely awful right now. She is my daughter, and frankly, I can hardly stand her. So, thank you for putting up with her every day. I know it cannot be easy.”
Wow! I have been a teacher for 20 years and I have never had a parent be so completely honest and kind…and have a daughter who was such the opposite!
But when you realize that you’re raising a mean girl, what in the world are you supposed to do? Or what happens when a girl you love, for example, a niece, a friend of your daughter’s, a sweet girl from church, etc. becomes a mean girl and her parents don’t seem to see it? How can we help?
What to Do When You Realize You’re Raising a Mean Girl
- Look for the root–
There is a root to all meanness. The cause for this behavior might be different in each specific case, but for the most part, there is always a reason for it. Your mean girl will most likely not be able to tell you the reason. You will have to dig for the root!
Unkind behavior almost always roots itself in selfishness to some degree. Maybe your daughter is mean because she doesn’t feel like she is getting enough attention. Perhaps she has felt rejection in some way and wants to protect herself by being the “rejector” instead of the “rejected.”
She might be dealing with hormones and mood swings, and in an attempt to feel in control, she is mean to others. This way, they will know her wrath if they don’t give her her way and comply. Your mean girl may have found that the meaner she is, the more popular she becomes (why is this the case?!), and that is feeding her need for more attention.
There are endless possibilities, but usually, it’s rooted in selfishness.
But–we need to talk about this no matter how uncomfortable it may be.
There is still that simple fact that most mean girls are being raised by mean girls. So, as uncomfortable as it is, you may need to dig deep here and ask yourself if your daughter is learning any of these behaviors from you.
I am always humbled when I see some of my worst traits in my children! Yes, they are born sinners, but they also are learning how to do it well by watching me sometimes! Gross.
Looking within is never a bad idea when it comes to recognizing and dealing with sin in our children’s lives.
- Look for the best–
When dealing with mean girls, looking for the best works on two levels.
First, you have to be willing to look for the best qualities in your daughter, even when she is downright yucky. Try, as hard as it may be, to still see those great qualities in her. Most likely, she still has a soft heart under all that “ick”, so try to bring that out in her.
You may need to work hard at this! If your daughter is pretty far gone before you notice that she’s a mean girl, you may really need to put time and effort into showing her the world around her and how people are affected by mean girls.
If you’re needing a good book to start with, I highly recommend Out of My Mind. (By the way, I get ZERO money for recommending anything to you and ZERO money when you purchase through the links on my website so buy it wherever you want to buy it from! And yes, I’m doing the blogging thing “wrong,” but I’m not willing to sell my soul in order to make money!)
Don’t just give her a reading assignment. Read the book together and talk about it! And if you see a glimmer of kindness or hope, HANG ON to it for dear life! And do whatever you can to keep bringing that out in her!
The second aspect in looking for the best is to constantly be seeing the best in other people. I know a mean girl. And I know her parents well. They are good people who are doing their best to raise their family. There is a lot of good to be found in their parenting!
But I have noticed a trend with them that is very difficult. Every time we’re together, they talk about their daughter, in her presence, like she is the greatest athlete in the world! They put down every other person on her team. (It doesn’t matter what sport she is participating in at that time, she is ALWAYS the only competent person on the team!)
None of this is true. They are seeing the best in her, but not the best in other people.
I think this is a slippery slope and probably one of the biggest causes of accidentally raising mean girls. They have the “looking for the best” in their daughter down pat!
But if you only see the best in your children, they might think they are better than others. This breeds meanness that stems from arrogance.
On the other hand, if you only see the best in other children, yours might feel criticized and inferior. This breeds meanness that stems from fear and over-compensation, or a general lack of attention.
You have to look for the best in your children, and teach them to look for the best in others! (And really, that’s almost always a win-win!)
- Remind her of her worth–
What is feeding your mean girl’s ego? What is fueling her bad attitude? Is she, all of a sudden, worried solely about her outward appearance? Or her performance in an activity?
If so, she may have forgotten where her worth comes from! And if she has forgotten that her worth comes from the Lord, she has probably forgotten that others’ worth comes from the Lord too!
Remind her today. And remind her again tomorrow. She will need many, many reminders of how much she is worth to the King of kings–the One Who thought she was worth dying for!
- Don’t make excuses for it and do discipline bad behavior!–
This is hard…especially if you’ve become really good at looking for the best in your daughter! But meanness needs to be disciplined. It is so easy to make excuses for our girls’ bad behavior because we see the reason for it. Maybe we see that she is struggling with her self-confidence, and the last thing we want to do is to take that away!
I know! It’s so hard! But you love your daughter dearly–and that means you have to love her enough to discipline mean behavior.
I don’t have a mean girl at this point, but I do have one daughter who can be incredibly rude. It is so hard to know how to handle it sometimes, but I do need to handle it! I need to crack down on her rudeness, or in a few years, I’ll have a full-fledged mean girl! (I might anyway!)
There are all kinds of ways for me to make excuses for her behavior, but the bottom line is that her rudeness is simply not okay and it needs to be disciplined!
- Be patient and pray–
This one is probably the most difficult because it’s hard when we can’t just fix things! (Now we know what our husbands feel like when we vent to them!)
But be patient with your girl. Pray that the Lord will teach her and convict her in His gentle and loving way. Pray that He will pursue her heart and draw her near to Himself! He’s not finished with her yet and no one is ever too far gone for Him!
Final Thoughts on What to Do When You’re Raising a Mean Girl
For most of you reading this, the fact that your daughter is a mean girl is breaking your heart. I have so much compassion for you! I have been where you’re at–when our children’s behavior disappoints us. And I wonder how many times the Lord has been in the same place…only with me!
And yet, God is so patient with me! He is kind and loving and gracious and He always sees the best in me! He works on my heart gently and lovingly.
This is exactly how we need to approach correcting mean-girl behavior. We can approach the situation with gentleness and kindness and with LOTS AND LOTS of grace, but also with loving discipline.
Of course, we want things to be fixed immediately, but it may take some time. Hopefully and prayerfully, it will just be a phase that your daughter is going through, but again, don’t just leave it there and allow her to cause damage to someone else’s life while she “goes through a phase.”
A friend of mine told me about two sisters that live in our area. I don’t know them, but she said, “They are just amazing, godly women!” But then, she went on…
“They actually grew up attending the same school as my sister and me (A couple of states away–small world!) and they were the ‘cool girls’ because they had gone to public school and knew just how to wear their uniforms fashionably.” She went on, “They were very mean to us–especially to my sister. And many years later, one of them felt so awful about how she had treated her that she actually called to apologize to her. But, my sister was kind of like, ‘Um. Okay, but that damage is done’.”
So, even though she had asked for forgiveness and my friend’s sister was able to forgive her, the damage was done! And that’s reality.
Remind your daughter that we don’t get to just undo our actions! I was told once that “People will forget what you say. They’ll even forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.”
Make your daughter feel the way you want her to make others feel. See the best in others and speak highly of them! Remind your daughter of her worth, but expect her to be humble enough to recognize that others have the same worth that she does. And be patient and pray for her! You will never regret it!
RElated: Raising Kids Who Aren’t Self-Absorbed!
