I never planned to use this place as a therapy session, but I'm hoping if I put my current frustrations down in print, some day I'll be at a place where I can look back and realize that things did get better. At the moment, I feel like I'm standing at the entrance of a very long, very dark tunnel with not even a pinpoint of light at the far end.
My daughter is experiencing a very painful "mean girls" time in her life. As much as you are apart from your child, it's amazing how much their pain becomes your own. My blood is boiling and I really do want to beat some particular people into a mushy pulp. Add in my adult perspective and I feel a level of impotence that is pretty hard to handle. I can't help her. I can't do anything to make things better. I can only offer her my support and the knowledge that she's a great kid who is the better person, and that this, too, shall pass. But it isn't enough. When your baby is hurting, you would move mountains to stop the pain. Except that I can't do that in this particular case. She just has to get through the hurt on her own.
What's doubly frustrating is that I understand the dynamics at work. I stand outside of the situation and see exactly what is going on. I see why she chooses to handle things the way she does, why she believes she has to put up with the crap she's being dealt even though what she should do is tell her supposed friends to go take a flying f@$!. I also know that telling her that things will get better doesn't help her deal with right.this.very.minute. Who cares what things will be like in a couple of years, or in a month or even next week? Right now sucks and that's all there is.
And as angry as I am right now, I can only imagine the bile I'm going to have to swallow when this episode is over and things go back to being the way they were and I have to interact with these girls without indicating in any way that I'd be quite fine if they all got eaten by alligators, slowly and painfully. My adult way of handling people who don't deserve respect or decent treatment doesn't work in this scenario, so I have to keep my mouth shut, smile and try not to scream while I haul their asses around in the minivan. Moms deserve combat pay.
No one tells you when you have kids that you will have to relive all of the crap you thought you put behind you once you grew up and left high school. They should write a book for that. "What to Expect When Your Kid's Life Sucks."
4 comments:
I'm sorry you and your daughter are going through this. I know people say "kids will be kids". But there is something seriously wrong with kids that are mean to the point of cruelty to others. I think these are the ones who will end up as screwups as adults. Only a child that's not taught any values and moral can be like that, so in the end it's the parents fault for not teaching their kids to respect others.
I can only say, hang in there. Time is the best tool for these problems and tell your daughter that years from now she'll be having the last laugh because karma does exist.
I know it doesn't seem like much, but the fact that you're openly supporting her, that she knows you don't think she's lying, that you're not treating the bullying as "one of those things", will help her get over it later, even if it doesn't help now. Best of luck to both of you.
Thanks for the support. Things have gotten better - they usually do and I know it's a matter of just pushing through. And in the grand scheme of things, I know my daughter's problems are very small compared with what some other kids are put through. Silver lining in all of this - I use it as a way to teach her how NOT to treat other people and remind her how it feels to be on the wrong end of things and how she needs to try to make sure that she is never the cause of someone else's pain.
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