(yes, another “Mean Girls” reference!)
Remember the Regina George at my daughter’s school I was telling you about? The girl that insists on making my daughter’s life a living hell?
It’s still going on, and it is getting harder and harder to try tell my daughter to “just let it go” insisting it “will all blow over.”
Bottom line, it’s not blowing over. The die has been cast. The first girl of the divided group has had a birthday party, and the list of invitees did not include many of the girls, including my daughter. She was upset about it, but not as much as I thought she would. Apparently, my discussions about “knowing who your real friends are” and “being your own person” has caused her to realize that she has good friends, and they treat her well.
Most of all, she has learned that this is probably the best thing to ever happen to her. When this is all happened, and she lost five of her friends, she realized that it opened her eyes to how other girls at school were viewing all of this. Since this happened, my daughter and her small group of friends (the ones that also been banished from the Regina George clique) have made new friends. Girls from their grade that had always been intimidated by the ‘mean girls’ have decided that my daughter and her friends are actually pretty darn nice. Her group of friends, which used to total twelve, was split into 5 (mean girls) and 7 others. Now those 7 others (my daughter included) has managed to turn their group of friends into something completely different. They include everyone. There’s no group, theres no boundaries. They are friends with every single person that comes their way.
While this is still all blowing over, I don’t see that things will ever go back to the way they once were. There’s still the snarky comments, the anonymous calls and text messages, the separate lunch tables. But the light has been shone on this group of girls, and the dust is settling.
It’s turning into the best thing that ever could have happened.
I remember back when she was a baby, and then a toddler. When there were bad moments, pottytraining, puking, poopy diapers, I would sit there and wish she was older. I would imagine what she would be like as a teenager, and couldn’t wait for her to grow up.
Now I realize that mothering a teenager just brings on a whole new level of tolerance for shit.
