“Girls are just mean.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this phrase. As a teen girl life coach and the mom of three girls, this hurts my heart. By nature, girls are nurturing, kind, and loving. Let’s not forget that. Our society has influenced our girls, though, to display mean girl behaviors such as gossiping, excluding, and ignoring. The same girl that throws “shade” in the hallways is the same girl who will rescue a hurt bunny. The same girl who ignores her best friend is the same girl who serves food to the homeless. Where is the disconnect?!? One of the reasons that girls display mean girl behavior is that they are too nice! They don’t want to have direct conflict (#10) so they try to fix it in all of these unsuccessful ways (#4). Another big issue is that we are raising our girls to be the best at everything, to be perfect (#2, #3, #7, #8). So here is a list of why girls resort to mean behavior because if we can understand WHY perhaps we can fix it.
- Don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings (directly anyway)
- Insecure about themselves
- Jealous
- Still learning social skills
- Bored (their brains are wired for excitement)
- Isolated and lonely (mean behavior gets them back into the mix)
- Feeling unimportant (knowledge is power)
- Low self-esteem (knock you down to knock me up)
- Bad role models (TV girls are all about the drama)
- Don’t know how to resolve a conflict
Notice that all of these are about the girl who is displaying the mean girl behavior. NONE of them are about the recipient of the mean behavior. If your daughter is having girl relationship issues, reach out to me and let me know what is happening.
With Heart,
Coach Sheri, Teen Wise, Founder
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