COPING WITH SOCIAL CRUELTY AT SCHOOL Come early adolescence (around ages nine to thirteen), relationships among children at school can become very harsh and hurtful. Why? Because, suffering from loss created by the separation from childhood and from anxiety about uncertain growth ahead, early adolescent students jockey for personal and social security at each other’s expense, engaging in social cruelty to survive. When talking about the social cruelty at school that starts around grade three and continues through grades six or seven, we are not talking about "bad" kids. We are talking about "good" kids treating each other badly to cope with the developmental insecurity, social instability, emotional vulnerability, and frail self-esteem created by early adolescent change. In a world where everyone is easily hurt, hurting others first becomes a way to prevent getting hurt yourself. If your child is experiencing a significant amount of social cruelty from other students, you must provide emotional support, social strategizing, and, if the cruelty is excessive, with the child’s permission, adult intervention at the school. If your child is initiating or collaborating in social cruelty, he or she is only "poisoning the well," and must be told to stop this mistreatment. At a time when children feel personally insecure, social security through being popular seems like the Holy Grail. "If only I could be really popular, then school would be okay." But the problem is, popularity is an exclusive club, membership usually limited to a classroom few (the popular crowd), who use niceness to cement relationships with each other, and meanness to keep others out. To make matters worse, popularity is often not the sanctuary it seems, because the more popular you are, the more social envy there is, resulting in gossip and rumors attacking your reputation to bring you down. Popularity can be lost in a hurry when, for reasons usually to do with rivalry, supposed friends turn suddenly against you and cast you out. Students at this age can fall victim to social cruelty from INTIMIDATION (bullying, threatening, vandalizing), from EXCLUSION (being ignored, not selected, rejected), from HUMILIATION (nicknamed, teased, put down), and from having REPUTATION ATTACKED (rumor, gossip, slander). For many parents, reading this portrait of social hardship at such a young age will clash with their image of childhood innocence and fun. Social cruelty is neither innocent nor fun in early adolescence. It is real. And parents need to stand by with support and coaching should their child face this unhappiness to a significant degree. Here are a few pieces of helpful advice parents can sometimes give. About TEASING, explain, "Teasing is not about anything wrong with you. It is about another person wanting to be mean to you. Because people usually tease about what they fear being teased about themselves, you can truly say that teasing shows a whole lot more about the teaser than it does about you. Then just ignore what they have said." About BULLYING, explain, "Usually it’s not bullying that’s so much the problem, as fear of being bullied. So be brave and ask yourself, ‘How would I act if I were not afraid?’ Consider how the bully predicts you will respond, and then act to violate that prediction. There is no such thing as a self-made bully, so don’t act in ways that invite bullying, and don’t react in ways that encourage bullying." About GOSSIP and RUMOR, explain, "You don’t control your own reputation. No one does. Gossip has more bad to say than good, and the more popular you are, the more reputation you have to lose. Secrets are the most powerful gossip to tell, and slander is the most destructive—lies that are told as truth. Remember, anyone who gossips to you will gossip about you." About GANGING UP, explain, "There are three roles in ganging up—bully, follower, and victim. The bully has power, but also is personally disliked. The follower escapes mistreatment, but also loses self-respect. The victim gets attention, but believes mistreatment is deserved or unavoidable. I don’t want you to act in any of these three roles." At this age that is so complicated for friendship at school, it is helpful to have other social circles outside of school to which the child can belong—extended family, neighborhood, sports, church, special interest, for example. That way, when social relationships get hard at school, the child has other social outlets to enjoy. You can roughly assess the degree and nature of social cruelty your child is experiencing at school by asking your child if he or she is regularly experiencing any of the common social or personal hardships listed below. People gossiping about you People laughing at you People spreading rumors about you People teasing you People calling you a hurtful nickname People not wanting to sit with you at lunch People ganging up on you People cutting you down with an insult Quarrelling with a good friend Growing apart from a good friend Having a good friend turn against you Having a good friend share a secret you confided Feeling jealous when a good friend wants to be with someone else Seeing a friend change into a different person Being bullied Having possessions stolen Having belongings vandalized Receiving prank calls that hurt your feelings Having to go along with a dominating friend Having someone threaten "to get" you Feeling scared to go to school some days Having to fight to prove how tough you are Having to hide feeling hurt and pretend you don’t care Worrying if people will like you Feeling bad about your appearance Being excluded from a party when your friends were invited Having people write notes about you Having people say things about you that are not true Feeling shy at a party and wishing you were outgoing Having someone break up your best friendship Wishing you had a best friend Wishing you had as much as other people Having a good friend compete with you Having people want to be your friend only because you’re popular Having people not want to be your friend because you’re not popular Being spoken to one day and ignored the next Feeling trapped by a friend who is too possessive Feeling you don’t have the "right" thing to wear and others will notice. When social cruelty reduces social safety at school, studies usually suffer because the victim of social cruelty becomes far more preoccupied with daily survival than concerned with accomplishing daily work. Social cruelty reduces academic focus. Most of these feelings and experiences are subsurface—not observed by teachers or reported to parents, so these adults are woefully ignorant about what is going on. The code of the school yard ("You shouldn’t tell on other people") keeps children keeping this experience secret, and adolescent pride ("I should handle hard stuff by myself") keeps the young person from disclosing a lot of school suffering at home. Although no child escapes all these hardships, most children navigate this complicated social passage okay, without major injury or lasting hurt. However, if you have an adolescent who is already hurting from some major unhappiness, part of your job is to monitor what level of social cruelty occurs. So, in light of this information, what should a parent do? Of course, this list of social cruelties given here is very incomplete. However, use it to prime the pump of discussion with your child. If so inclined, he or she will be able to add other kinds of bad feelings and mean treatment that can happen at school—some directly experienced, some only witnessed. If you will ask your child to check which behaviors and feelings on this list square with his or her experience at school, you both may be surprised. You child may be surprised that you actually know what is going on, and you may be surprised to hear how much social cruelty your child is coping with. The goal of this exercise is to normalize discussion of this hard experience, get you and your child on the same page, give your child an empathetic listener to count on, and help your child strategize to alleviate what is going on. So long as you arm your child with fresh choices to help cope, he or she will feel empowered and not act like a helpless victim in the face of social cruelty at school. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. For permission to use, contact the author.