Leslie
03-09-2003, 10:05 AM
I read Dr. Bradley's book in November and thought it was great. My husband is reading it now and I have recommended it to many friends. Interestingly the book addressed many issues that we fortunately haven't had to deal with yet, and yet we are facing a situation that isn't really covered (or at least I can't remember that it was).
We have a son, 10.5, and a daughter 13.5. Our daughter is the reason I'm posting. She is attractive, thin, creative, sensitive, smart, and sometimes even pleasant----even to her parents.
She has always been something of an over achiever- straight As for the most part. I never ever had to ask her to clean her room, do her homework, etc. And she read all the time- sometimes a book a day. In fact, not all that long ago our main concern about her was really that she is so high strung and high maintenance, and she always seemed to feel everything really deeply.
So last year she started a new middle school where she knew only a few kids. I had heard it was a very cliquey school and we are now living in a small midwestern college town. She tried hard to fit in, but has never really had much tolerance for the back biting that girls tend to engage in. She made friends with a group of girls, but went through the year without being noticed by most of the kids.
This year in about October she began to get more interested in experimenting with her appearance. This was no problem with us. My husband and I both work for a University and we are used to our own students looking many ways and have found that many of our best students are expressive in their appearance. We told her that as long as she avoided permanent things like tattoos and piercings, she could pretty much dress or fix her hair how she wanted. She really likes Gwen Steffani from No Doubt, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Osbourne, so she began to dress more punk, and had me dye large streaks of blonde in her medium brown hair (she was considering pink). We really thought she looked very cute. She was adamant though that she was not trying to emulate anyone, but express her individuality. Also, her sensitivity became more extreme and she is very cause oriented- animal rights, antiwar, etc. She tends to embrace those who are “outcasts.” She saw an old retarded man in the library one day and just began to cry. I understand these things because I am a bit like that myself and she has grown up with us adopting unwanted animals of all kinds and so forth.
Almost immediately she got a negative reaction to appearance by most people, and it has snowballed. I am not even sure I can relate it properly, but I will try. It started with “Hey Avril” and things like that, then as near as we can tell, rather than our daughter putting up with it, she copped an attitude right back. The teasing escalated and her attitude became more extreme. She didn’t really tell us what was going on for a while, so we are just now “getting involved.” I will say that all though her immediate friends don’t really dress like her, they are still her friends, and that hasn’t changed all that much thankfully. There seems to have developed this division of kids, which I know is not unusual. My daughter calls the other kids “preps,” which they find insulting for some reason (preppy not being used as it was when I was in school) and they call her and sometimes her friends- although mostly her- stoner, goth, and most recently dyke, lesbian. The really crazy thing to us is that our daughter does not dress all in black or hardly any black at all, so she is hardly Gothy, she is not into drugs (she understands our zero tolerance policy well, we know where she is and who she is with at every minute, and she wanted to be a DARE mentor in high school, at least at one time, so this is really silly.) and even more stupid, she looks quite the opposite of dykey and has had a few of the standard Jr. high romances.
There are about 6 boys and 1 girl at the school that are the worst, although many more participate passively. These kids follow her in the hall and hassle her, they do it in class, and it’s gotten worse and worse. My studious daughter’s grades plummeted in December in all her classes except reading, but is it any wonder with this sort of **** going on at school. She says school is just not as important to her as it was.
There are two things going on here as far as I can tell. 1. The other kids are close-minded and obnoxious. 2. My daughter has been burned and is focusing all her energy on expressing herself and not giving in to anyone including us.
About a week ago, there was a substitute in their history class. The substitute heard first hand the kind of abuse that my daughter was taking and told her after class “You don’t have to put up with this. We can stop it.” My daughter tried to get her to drop it, fearing it would only become worse. Rightfully the substitute would not, and spoke to the other kids. Of course, as my daughter predicted they blamed her for getting them in trouble. My daughter has begged me not to go to the school or call parents, because “it won’t help.”
We are struggling with what to do. If we were in a bigger place with more tolerant and varied people, I think this would be easier. Unfortunately the reality is different. We did go to the school secretly and my husband and I talked to the counselor and the assistant principal. They understood, although the counselor, who I feel is biased and probably feels my daughter is unnecessarily stirring the pot, says that the so-called “preps” feel my daughter is labeling them. The assistant principal assured me that they would be watching for it and I think he will. If a substitute can see it in one day, I don’t know how the other teachers can allow it go on all the time.
My daughter knows how I am hurting for her and agreed to tone down her clothes and makeup to see if it gets better. We still sometimes argue in the morning about her clothes though, which is crazy in itself, because actually I don’t care how she dresses, except that it ultimately brings more pain to her. She also agreed to quit calling them “preps” and responding to their stupidity. I told her that it would probably take a while but I thought that if she quit reacting to them when they hassle her, then they would not be rewarded by doing it. This is hard to understand when your 13 though. Two boys in particular are relentless and they will not quit. I was so upset Friday that I was shaking after she told me about them following her through the halls calling her a dyke and a lesbian. I will be at the school on Monday to inform them of what’s happening, but so far I have avoided calling parents. I wonder if there is anyway to make it quit.
In regards to her grades, she is working to get them up, and she says she wants to get a 4.0 in high school because she wants a scholarship so she can move to a bigger city.
I hate that she has to compromise for these morons, and I know she is hurting terribly. How do you deal with your kid being ostracized? I don’t care if she’s popular, but this is just crazy. And I think it makes her act even more extreme. So far we aren’t dealing with curfew issues, driving, and some things that will inevitably come, but everyday is an emotional roller coaster.
We have a son, 10.5, and a daughter 13.5. Our daughter is the reason I'm posting. She is attractive, thin, creative, sensitive, smart, and sometimes even pleasant----even to her parents.
She has always been something of an over achiever- straight As for the most part. I never ever had to ask her to clean her room, do her homework, etc. And she read all the time- sometimes a book a day. In fact, not all that long ago our main concern about her was really that she is so high strung and high maintenance, and she always seemed to feel everything really deeply.
So last year she started a new middle school where she knew only a few kids. I had heard it was a very cliquey school and we are now living in a small midwestern college town. She tried hard to fit in, but has never really had much tolerance for the back biting that girls tend to engage in. She made friends with a group of girls, but went through the year without being noticed by most of the kids.
This year in about October she began to get more interested in experimenting with her appearance. This was no problem with us. My husband and I both work for a University and we are used to our own students looking many ways and have found that many of our best students are expressive in their appearance. We told her that as long as she avoided permanent things like tattoos and piercings, she could pretty much dress or fix her hair how she wanted. She really likes Gwen Steffani from No Doubt, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Osbourne, so she began to dress more punk, and had me dye large streaks of blonde in her medium brown hair (she was considering pink). We really thought she looked very cute. She was adamant though that she was not trying to emulate anyone, but express her individuality. Also, her sensitivity became more extreme and she is very cause oriented- animal rights, antiwar, etc. She tends to embrace those who are “outcasts.” She saw an old retarded man in the library one day and just began to cry. I understand these things because I am a bit like that myself and she has grown up with us adopting unwanted animals of all kinds and so forth.
Almost immediately she got a negative reaction to appearance by most people, and it has snowballed. I am not even sure I can relate it properly, but I will try. It started with “Hey Avril” and things like that, then as near as we can tell, rather than our daughter putting up with it, she copped an attitude right back. The teasing escalated and her attitude became more extreme. She didn’t really tell us what was going on for a while, so we are just now “getting involved.” I will say that all though her immediate friends don’t really dress like her, they are still her friends, and that hasn’t changed all that much thankfully. There seems to have developed this division of kids, which I know is not unusual. My daughter calls the other kids “preps,” which they find insulting for some reason (preppy not being used as it was when I was in school) and they call her and sometimes her friends- although mostly her- stoner, goth, and most recently dyke, lesbian. The really crazy thing to us is that our daughter does not dress all in black or hardly any black at all, so she is hardly Gothy, she is not into drugs (she understands our zero tolerance policy well, we know where she is and who she is with at every minute, and she wanted to be a DARE mentor in high school, at least at one time, so this is really silly.) and even more stupid, she looks quite the opposite of dykey and has had a few of the standard Jr. high romances.
There are about 6 boys and 1 girl at the school that are the worst, although many more participate passively. These kids follow her in the hall and hassle her, they do it in class, and it’s gotten worse and worse. My studious daughter’s grades plummeted in December in all her classes except reading, but is it any wonder with this sort of **** going on at school. She says school is just not as important to her as it was.
There are two things going on here as far as I can tell. 1. The other kids are close-minded and obnoxious. 2. My daughter has been burned and is focusing all her energy on expressing herself and not giving in to anyone including us.
About a week ago, there was a substitute in their history class. The substitute heard first hand the kind of abuse that my daughter was taking and told her after class “You don’t have to put up with this. We can stop it.” My daughter tried to get her to drop it, fearing it would only become worse. Rightfully the substitute would not, and spoke to the other kids. Of course, as my daughter predicted they blamed her for getting them in trouble. My daughter has begged me not to go to the school or call parents, because “it won’t help.”
We are struggling with what to do. If we were in a bigger place with more tolerant and varied people, I think this would be easier. Unfortunately the reality is different. We did go to the school secretly and my husband and I talked to the counselor and the assistant principal. They understood, although the counselor, who I feel is biased and probably feels my daughter is unnecessarily stirring the pot, says that the so-called “preps” feel my daughter is labeling them. The assistant principal assured me that they would be watching for it and I think he will. If a substitute can see it in one day, I don’t know how the other teachers can allow it go on all the time.
My daughter knows how I am hurting for her and agreed to tone down her clothes and makeup to see if it gets better. We still sometimes argue in the morning about her clothes though, which is crazy in itself, because actually I don’t care how she dresses, except that it ultimately brings more pain to her. She also agreed to quit calling them “preps” and responding to their stupidity. I told her that it would probably take a while but I thought that if she quit reacting to them when they hassle her, then they would not be rewarded by doing it. This is hard to understand when your 13 though. Two boys in particular are relentless and they will not quit. I was so upset Friday that I was shaking after she told me about them following her through the halls calling her a dyke and a lesbian. I will be at the school on Monday to inform them of what’s happening, but so far I have avoided calling parents. I wonder if there is anyway to make it quit.
In regards to her grades, she is working to get them up, and she says she wants to get a 4.0 in high school because she wants a scholarship so she can move to a bigger city.
I hate that she has to compromise for these morons, and I know she is hurting terribly. How do you deal with your kid being ostracized? I don’t care if she’s popular, but this is just crazy. And I think it makes her act even more extreme. So far we aren’t dealing with curfew issues, driving, and some things that will inevitably come, but everyday is an emotional roller coaster.