On Teaching Your 6 Year Old Not To Be A Thug

These are some of the things that the little red headed girl did to my daughter when they were 6  under the stipulation that if orders weren't followed she would no longer be her friend:

• Made daughter take another girl's name off a list of friends that the daughter had made. By Tuesday. Or else.
• Told daughter that she was having a birthday party and she was going to invite everyone else but daughter. 
• Told daughter that if she didn't do as she was told, she would go to her house and hurt daughter's parents. 
• Made daughter eat a leaf.

These all took place during an after school program under the guise of two sweet young innocents playing together peacefully. I am sure there were many other incidents. Most, including the leaf eating and family threat, just came to light last week  now with the daughter almost 14 years old.

I knew about the birthday party and the friendship list, complaining to some people at the school that my daughter was being bullied. The memory is a little cloudy but I think they sort of shrugged it off. After all, my daughter tended to be weepy and the little red headed girl looked so damned sweet.

 I wish I had known about those last two incidents. Leaf eating and megalomania are show stoppers. We didn't contact the little red headed girl's parents because our daughter begged us not to do it. But this would have torn it. 

The little red headed girl is now a tall willowy young lady traveling in a small pack of  popular girls through the hallways of middle school. I hear that she has developed a subtle Southern California accent as a suburban Massachusetts teen is wont to do.  The daughter says she isn't very nice but doesn't really bother the daughter any more, going with the safer pretending she doesn't exist route instead. 

I always wondered what the hell her parents were teaching this kid. You hear about bad seeds that spring from their own psychotic foundation but I ain't buying it this time. This is a kid who got away with shit by using her appearance. A child that wanted power. A person who did not care if she hurt someone else and did it intentionally and often. I can honestly say that there is no way in hell my daughter would be this person.  

My daughter is an emotional creature. Her feelings are hurt easily. She gets angry silently. She has trust issues. Some of this is due to circumstances in her past that have been less then perfect. Some of it is because she is wired to be emotional. And some of it is because some asshole made her eat a leaf. 

But my daughter is a good person who cares about other people. She is grateful when she has a friend and would never abuse them. She is beautiful and willowy too. My daughter  knows that no matter how bad she feels about herself, her friends don't come with stipulations. She is good enough for them the way she is. She wasn't taught that you had to win them at all costs and to not wonder if they really liked her for her. No bribes. No bullying. Just her. And I wonder if the little red headed girl will ever know that too.