How to Help Our Daughters Deal with Indirect Aggression
Introduction
As our daughters leave elementary school, they begin to have private thoughts that we are generally not privy to. Remember the days when they would tell us moms everything? Well, it is normal for them to begin having their internal world, where they keep more thoughts private and move from a family-centered world to a peer-centered one. Peers become the most important influence as kids develop towards adolescence, which can be good…and bad.
One of the most challenging parts of raising a daughter is helping her deal with the complex peer relationships surrounding her in late elementar through high school. While girls can develop very strong friendships, they can also face relational aggression.
Relational Aggression
What is relational aggression? You probably know what it is from experience. Were you left out of a party or event? Did someone you thought was a friend talk about you behind your back? Did you receive “direction” from a peer to ignore another girl? All of these examples are examples of relational aggression.
Relational aggression is a type of bullying where people use more indirect forms of manipulation and hurtful actions with the intent to cause harm to someone else’s self-esteem and status. Gossip, excluding others, the silent treatment, and hurting another’s reputation are examples of relational aggression.
Teachers rarely see this subtle form of aggression, especially in academically strong students. We know that many kids who are the victims of relational aggression also use relational aggression with others. And we know that relational aggression is believed to be used more by girls. Cyberbullying, or bullying online, is very potent and so toxic. Girls can not completely insulate themselves from bullying; it is hard to trace on media platforms and can feel so big and permanent for our daughters.
We know that peers see relationally aggressive behavior way before adults do. Often our daughters are being bullied and don’t share with their parents. When you do get involved, it is frequently hard to intervene. When confronted about relational bullying, both the victim and the perpetrator deny that any serious harm was done. You’ll hear, “She was just joking,” or “There must be something wrong with me that everyone thinks that.” Witnesses may say that they “did not see anything” that resembled bullying. So, what can we do?
Recognize Relational Aggression
The first step is to recognize relational aggression and give your daughter examples as part of ongoing conversations with her about friendships. This, of course, also means that our behaviors towards our own friends need to be examined. Our daughters watch us (and sometimes give us a hard time) about our tendencies to talk around others rather than speak directly about our feelings to other women. They notice everything. When I reflect on my female relationships, I can see some big mistakes that I have made. Rather than talk directly about my feelings, I stonewall others or just avoid them. I am using a type of relational aggression!
When we talk with our daughters, it is helpful to use some examples. You could talk through examples from movies, TV, or a made-up example. It is best not to use your daughter’s real friends when discussing friendship issues and discuss ideas with a degree of separation from her experiences.
Here are situations you can talk through with your daughter to gauge how she thinks about friends. I suggest not offering answers; instead, ask open-ended questions about what she thinks. As she gets older, add, “Do you want to hear what I think?” I also find getting friendship advice from our daughters is helpful to learn how they are thinking, with editing of course so as to not burden them with our adult problems. Consider these examples:
One of your close friends tells you not to talk to a girl in the class who has been a part of the friend group for a while.
One of your extremely popular friends tells you not to sit with her at lunch, but then tells others that you chose to sit elsewhere.
You were not invited to a party, and you can see that others were.
When a friend comes up to your friend group, everyone smiles and says, “Hi!”, but everyone trashes her as soon as she leaves.
A rumor was spread about you, and everyone texts you to “admit it is true.”
As with all forms of bullying, standing up for yourself is one of the best ways to counteract the toxic relationship. But this is hard for adults, so imagine how hard it is for our daughters. Try some of these in your own words:
“Wow, you must be pretty angry with me to leave me out. Not sure what I did to deserve this treatment.”
“Could you repeat that? What did you want me to feel like when you said that?”
“I have heard that you have done this before. I wonder why you are trying to hurt others.”
OR simply, “Ouch”
Ways to Support Your Daughter
Do more:
Talk about healthy friendships and how to “disagree fairly.”
Acknowledge that being a victim of relational agression sucks and that you understand that your daughter feels hurt and confused.
Model healthy ways to express anger and do not minimize feelings, such as using I-statements. “I feel angry being left out of the event,” or “I am furious that they said that about me.”
Expose your daughter to many different types of friends so that she is not reliant on only one group.
Teach about the power of the bystander. If our daughters can stick up for someone, it will lessen the power that an aggressor has.
Seek a therapist for your daughter to help her have a place to process her friendships with a trusted adult.
Do less:
Call your friends and gossip about one of your daughter’s friends.
Ignore your daughter’s feelings and assume, “Girls will be girls.”
Join in the disagreement between girls.
For more perspectives on relational aggression, listen to Episode 011: Bullying: Naming it is the first step. In this episode, Vince, Lisa, and Margaux discuss more examples of relational aggression and offer advice for mothers on helping their children through this subtle form of bullying.
