Untying the Gordian Knot
I’ve written before about the insidious nature of bullying, Heathers style. Bullying is bad enough when you’re dealing with an obvious aggressor, and this type of bullying is anything but obvious. The Heathers are masters of plausible deniability. They rely not on direct confrontation and physical intimidation, but on six degrees of separation and emotional manipulation.
While I’m sure that the Heathers have their own emotional damage and insecurities that lead them into this behaviour, these girls are not the angry, disenfranchised children on the playground. They are not acting out because they are lonely and unliked and retaliating against a social structure that excludes them. These are the popular, well liked girls–the ones who decide who gets invited, who gets to play, who matters. Unlike Butch, whose power stems from a reputation built on fear, Heathers build fear through a reputation based on power.
Obviously, the key to ending the cycle is to take that power away. But the subtle nature of the of the offenses, the difficulty in pinpointing the vicitmization–even in the face of a clear victim–and the generally positive perceptions of the bully, it can be an almost impossible situation to sort out. With teachers stretched so thin by weapons in the classrooms, violence in the schoolyard, and sex in the bathroom, it’s hardly any wonder that seeming non-emergent issues like “Heather won’t play with me” fall through the cracks. And on the parental end of things, well, who likes to hear that their child is not the little angel she’s perceived to be?
I’ll admit, I’ve been loathe to contact our Heather’s mother to hash this out. For one thing, I don’t really know her; she’s not one of the Playground Mommies. She doesn’t do drop off and pick up, so I don’t have the same casual, chat a bit in the grocery store familiarity with her that I have with other mothers in Diva Girl’s class. I do, however, know many of the other mothers, a fact that allowed me to stumble on the secret to untying this web of pwer and manipulation:
I talked to them.
In the course of just regular playground conversation, the saga of the Heather came out to a couple of sympathetic mothers. Mothers who then had conversations with their daughters about power and control and the politics of popularity. Mothers who made it clear that excluding Sabrina–or anyone else–just because Heather said so, was not ok. Mothers whose daughters left for lunch as part of Heather’s gang, and returned to school as individuals. Individuals who refused to be mean just because one girl said so.
In pulling these individual strings, I think I may have untied the stranglehold Heather had on the third grade. Since those conversations, Sabrina has had playmates. Playdates. Even a birthday party invitation. And now that the dynamic has changed from “If you want to play, you can’t play with Sabrina” to “If you want to play, you can’t exclude Sabrina,” my Diva Girl sparkles again.
Not that Heather took the loss of her power easily or graciously. There were a couple of days where she did, in fact, choose to be the odd girl out rather than suffer the indignity of playing with the Crybaby. But the other girls, with their mothers’ words fresh in their ears, simply left her to stew and joined in a game of King’s Court with Sabrina. By Friday, Heather had had enough of her own self-inflicted medicine: She apologized to Diva Girl and asked if she could play too.
Sabrina said yes. Because she understands that everyone should be allowed to join in.