Berkeley Parents Network: Teens: Cliques & Ostracism

Berkeley Parents Network

Teens: Cliques & Ostracism

Advice, discussions, and reviews from the Parents of Teens weekly email newsletter.

Berkeley Parents Network > Advice > Teenagers > Cliques & Ostracism

Advice:

How to help daughter deal with middle school cliques?
Daughter dropped by friends; wants to change schools
Advice about Bullying & Teasing
See also: School-aged Kids: Cliques & Ostracism
Other Resources: "Girls Just Want to be Mean" New York Times article February 24, 2002

How to help daughter deal with middle school cliques?

Dec 2001

Anybody got any good reading suggestions for how to deal with middle school girls and their proclivity to selectively exclude people from their in-group from week to week? I am about at my wit's end as to how to advise my daughter in dealing with these sorts of "friends".... N

Problems with cliques are so common in middle school and even early on in high school. This happens especially among girls. We have found with our own girls, that the best way to deal with this sort of exclusionary behavior is to help them understand that the kids who do this do so out of either low self-esteem or the need to feel like "part of the crowd" or sometimes aren't even aware of the impact their behavior is having on other people because they are so self-absorbed. Good luck!

Daughter dropped by friends; wants to change schools

Nov 1999

We moved to the East Bay 3 years ago, at the time our daughter was entering middle school. During her years in middle school she made a small circle of friends, most of them other girls who, like her, were good athletes who played team sports. Last spring, during her last semester of middle school, she decided to leave the local recreational sports program so she could play fastpitch softball with a highly competitive travelling team. Immediately she was dropped by nearly all her school friends, who saw her as "betraying" the local program. She finished middle school with almost no local friends. Over the summer she made new friends through her softball team, but none of the girls are local, so socializing is difficult. When she started high school this fall, we were hopeful that the passage of time and the transition to high school would allow her to re-establish her old local friendships. But if anything, the ostracism was worse this year, and is being deliberately orchestrated by one or two girls who enjoy the status of opinion leaders in the freshman class. Our daughter says that even girls who are not part of the athletes' group now walk the other way when they see her coming. Our daughter is miserable and keeps pressing us to move so she can go to another school.

Has anyone faced this sort of situation? If so, are there any answers to the problem? Moving is not an option, but we're not ready for our daughter to spend the next 4 years like this either.

One thing you can say about Berkeley High is that there are a lot of kids at the school. It seems almost unfathomable that there are one or two social leaders in the freshman class who are making your daughter's social life miserable. I think there must upwards of 500 other girls she can connect with. For both my 2 boys 9th grade didn't provide any instant social group. There were plenty of lonely times. By 10th grade things came together. Boys started to be friends with girls in a more meaningful way- not just as girlfriends but part of the larger socal network they called "their friends". I have a hunch your daughter is trying to make her way into a "clique" that isn't very open. THere are so many kids and so much to do I'd encourage her to branch out- check out one of the hundreds of clubs and sports. But it might be slow going. I'd caution you against assuming it's all "out there" and start exploring what she needs to do to get engaged. Ninth grade is a tough transition, especially if she didn't enter with a tight knit social group already. Maybe some of her transition problems are all being clustered into this friends issue. One last thought- many kids who come in with a "cohesive" group end up branching out (hopefully!) and including all kinds of new people as time goes on. Many kids find their old friends to be more a part of who they were and they make new ones based more around who they are now. Expect slow going and encourage her that even though it feels awful now it's only 2 months in. Things take time. Perhaps this struggle will also give her some vital experience around resiliency: in other words how to deal with meanness, where to go that feels good and what to move away from. Good luck

Re Ostracism - Have you tried conflict resolution through the Health Center?

Every year, the school recommends that the kids join something, lots of things. Clubs, sports, something. This is the way the kids make connections. I also think this is a good idea, particularly if making friends is a problem. BHS has lots of choices.

I think for girls there is a very fine line between self-confidence and bragging. Your daughters friends may perceive that she thinks that she is better than they are and that's why they don't want to associate with her anymore. Perhaps she could get involved with a sport at Berkeley High to meet other BHS girls but it might also be helpful to her to get a little honest feedback on how she's coming across.

To the anonymous parent concerned about her daughter's ostracism at school, if she goes to BHS then I feel I can answer your concern a bit by assuring you that any child who likes athletics and is relatively good at it will make friends with other athletes in high school. What your daughter has to do is drop her notion that she needs to re-establish friendships with girls who dropped her for wanting to be on a competitive, traveling fastpitch softball team. Team sports have done for girls what they have always done for boys--given them more self-assurance, made them tougher, but you have to have a passion for the sport you're playing, keep playing and then you will grow as an athlete and a person. Your daughter will learn about teamwork but must also learn to appreciate herself as an individual. If you've only moved to the East Bay three years ago it takes time to establish friendships. Three years is not enough if your daughter spends a lot of time practicing with a traveling team (the best girls' fastpitch softball teams seem to come out of Concord, Livermore--that area--not Berkeley or Albany) whose team members are not local. The issue here is perhaps something that happens to teens whether they're into sports or not, and that is doing something different, not fitting in with the crowd. Being an individual is tough for a teenager, and to stand alone playing a sport apart, or being involved in something totally different from others in your age group may make you feel like an outcast. Your daughter has to give herself more time to develop in her sport and in her academics. If she's serious about softball she can try out for varsity softball at BHS in the spring, keep playing on a competitive traveling team, and keep up her academics. It would be a good idea for you to give her the long view of sports in high school and beyond coupled with the need always to keep up her grades (I often see articles about athletes in high school and their success playing in college; I cut these articles out of the paper and post them on the refrigerator to inspire my daughter and/or to keep her interested and focused on what she could be doing in her future). Your daughter will adjust if she can remain focused and not be bothered by the pettiness of her former middle school classmates. After all, they have to grow up too, and maybe your daughter will grow a bit wiser knowing she doesn't have to be like every other freshman girl in her class.

On the newsletter discussion about social ostracism, the other day I discussed briefly with my son the comments in this newsletter about kids being ostracized and called gay, or afraid to reveal that their parents are lesbian. My son said, oh yeah, mom, kids at middle school are just mean and it is so different and friendly in comparison at high school now. (Although ninth grade was tough!) Why?--just developmental stages, says he. And I should add, he was pretty insufferable and difficult throughout middle school---so there is hope---they are really becoming the solid people we hope for in high school.

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