Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
New profile posts
Latest activity
Internet Search
Members
Current visitors
New profile posts
Search profile posts
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
Parent Support Forums
General Parenting
Help for my 12year old daughter
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 366766" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Your daughter sounds to me like a typical teen (a easy child, not necessarily a difficult child) who has potential to turn into a difficult child with all she's trying to deal with. Poor kid. And poor you - tis isn't fair. And even if she is simply a hassled easy child, you are all still welcome here, don't feel your problems are too small. No problems are too small. And frankly, this sounds nasty for you both. So - welcome.</p><p></p><p>Now to the problem - I agree about cancelling the FB account. I would recommend another alternative, at least for now - Gaia. On Gaia you use an avatar and a pseudonym. It's got a lot of rules about appropriateness but there is still plenty of scope for fun. My younger daughter still posts on Gaia at age 23. She and her husband used to 'talk' on Gaia when she was breaking up with her previous boyfriend. So although it superficially looks like kid stuff, it's not necessarily. But fromwhat we've seen, it's a lot 'safer'.</p><p></p><p>Two reasons to cancel FB:</p><p></p><p>1) It's hurting her badly, and she's also learning to use it as a weapon. Very bad habit.</p><p></p><p>2) While it is known she has a FB account, she will continue to be deliberately targetted. But once her page is gone, it takes the wind out of the sails of the bullies. I speak from experience - I used to post on a pay-per-view writing website, under my real name (one of the rules of the site). I was a total innocent about the internet. I am a good writer, I quickly rose to a high level of accreditation on the site. Writers were ranked on each article, by readers. I ranked well. I also wrote a lot and was making a fair bit of money (hundreds, not thousands, but still useful). Then I began to find some flame comments on some of my previously well-liked articles. I watched ranking drop at the same time as the flames appeared, then as others read my articles the ratings would go back up again. What was happening was - I was being attacked by a person who used a range of different identities and disposable email addresses who was writing some really nasty stuff and at the same time clicking the bottom rank in the rating scale with each new identity. It was plain nastiness for its own sake. That website was also at the point of failing, as it turned out, so the moderators had stopped caring and where previously they would remove inflammatory material, this time they did nothing.</p><p>At first I tried to defend myself. My now son-in-law also posted a response in my defence and interestingly, the flamer replied with an accusation that the defensive response was really me, using a pseudonym. This tipped me off to what the flamer was doing (people accuse other people of their own crimes). The more this person wrote, the more information I got as to the person's true identity. At about the same time, my best friend began to get nasty emails in her workplace, from disposable anonymous email addresses. Her boss was sent a nasty email telling him to be suspicious of my friend who was (according to the email) a liar and a cheat. Again - more clues. My best friend had recently had a falling-out with a female friend and we compared notes. Familiar phrases became obvious. A pattern became obvious also - whenever anybody (myself, SIL1 or my friend) posted a defensive comment on my writing, it was immediately attached and a fresh flame war would begin. So I shut down all activity of my own on this site and pretended I was not even looking at it any more. I stopped posting new articles, I topped responding to any goading. And the goading increased for a while - there were gloating posts, there were posts such as "Where are you hiding? Have you become a coward as well as all the other character flaws you have?" and "Your silent sulking only proves me right." But I gritted my teeth and maintained inactivity. I noted her attempts to keep downrating me, but ironically all her activity was keeping my posts high on the hit list, which was bringing me in more income! Plus I had already had hundreds of positive ratings given, so the law of statistics meant that an article that had, say, 700 high ratings would not be adversely affected by 5 or 10 zero ratings. </p><p></p><p>She did eventually stop. I never let on to her that I knew it was her, or what she was doing. In fact, we crossed paths socially and I played along, not even talking about the website or my problems. It was an interesting evening - she had no idea I knew, but I could tell she was enjoying what she thought was my blind ignorance.</p><p></p><p>At the same time, other nasty stuff was happening to me - good friends were accusing me of some nasty underhand stuff, which I knew was coming from this person. All I could tell my friends was, "You should know me. If you could believe me capable of this and if you are not prepared to take my word that I am not responsible, then you don't know me as well as I thought you did. It is your choice to believe bad things when I tell you I am not responsible. So it is my choice to keep my own counsel and refuse to discuss this any further."</p><p>It was an education - I learned who my true friends were and who were "fair weather" friends, the shallow ones who cared more about appearances and about covering rear ends. I learned to keep my mouth shut and my ears open.</p><p></p><p>My flamer (who livd nearby and was actually a nasty piece of work to a lot of people, while generally pretending to be nice) eventually left town. After she left, some people discovered how they had been duped. Others never learned it. But a lot of damage was done by this person.</p><p></p><p>it was a valuable lesson in human nature, on many levels.</p><p></p><p>So "mean girls" can be any age. This woman was fifty. Old enough to know better. As for my revenge - well, all I can say is, never offend a writer! She is now a villain in one of my stories and it was very therapeutic writing. Of course,she would never recognise herself! Change hair colour, change age, change gender, change anything...</p><p></p><p>So pull the FB. It stops your daughter responding inappropriately. And it stops the bullies getting a payoff for knowing they have succeeded again in hurting her.</p><p></p><p>We went trough this with easy child. Also a friend of mine is going through this with her daughter. Some girls are not as emotionally strong as others, and these are the ones who either become bullies, or become complicit in the bullying and either allow themselves to be bullied or through them allow the bully to work. This emotional strength does not come naturally. How you handle this can determine how she develops from here.</p><p></p><p>What we did when easy child went through this - we talked about human nature, we talked about how the other girls were probably feeling and why they were doing what they were doing. The bullies are often insecure and need to control others in order to feel better about themselves. Other girls go along with it for fear of themselves being the target.</p><p></p><p>A typical girl bullying scenario - "If you play with her, you won't be my friend." That is emotional blackmail and bullying. The problem is - if the person told this chooses to go along with it, they have become complicit in the bullying of someone else. But if they choose to stand their ground, they risk being the one ostracised with all their friends being told, "If you talk to her, you're not my friend." And underneath it all, how confident are we,especially when we're kids, of the depth of friendship we have? How far can we trust our friends to stick up for us, even in the face of possible rejection themselves?</p><p></p><p>In easy child's case, the bully who said this was one rather small girl who was very controlling. Some girls (most of them, in fact) didn't like it, but chose to follow through. Often it was easy child who was excluded. At first on the days when she was chosen to be a friend, the sun shone for her. Then when the next day she was out of favour, the day was just wrong in every way.</p><p>easy child had another good friend, K. K tended to give in to the bully, but when the opportunity arose she would approach easy child and say, "I really do like you, but I don't want bully to know you and I are still friends."</p><p>K was trying to have it both ways. Or K might say to easy child, "I don't particularly like bully, but J and R are friends with her and I want t be friends with them. If I play with you, none of the others will ever play with me again."</p><p></p><p>It has been interesting to see how these girls grew up. K, J & R all have grown up worrying more about what other people think, than about what they themselves want in life. Over time they drifted apart, especially from bully. When the dust cleared, they all realised that they never liked bully and had been wasting their time trying to placate her. But along the way they lost their own sense of strength and till need other people's approval to actually do anything.</p><p></p><p>easy child, on the other hand, has grown up to be her own person. She can work with a team very well, can manage staff well, but also doesn't need to win approval if it's not appropriate to do so.</p><p></p><p>And bully? Grew up sexually promiscuous, involved to a small extent in drug use and heavy partying, lived with a string of different (and sometimes abusive) boyfriends and has never stuck at any one career path. </p><p></p><p>This is the time to help your daughter learn to value herself and her own high standards of behaviour. The way these girls are behaving is inappropriate and socially damaging. In the long run, they will be the losers.</p><p></p><p>How you teach her now, is how she will learn to be a strong, self-reliant and productive woman in the future. In en years time, those other girls will be nowhere. Now will they matter to her. Of course, that won't comfort her now. But she needs to learn to trust herself, to value herself and be able to manage with her own company in the lean times. As a general rule, the girls who are popular with everyone now, more than the others, are generally the ones who are compromising their values fr more. I'm not necessarily talking about sexual promiscuity,although at this age it can be connected. A person prepared to compromise here, will be more inclined to compromise in other things too.</p><p></p><p>And for the record - the last person who ever said to me, "If you play with her, you're not my friend," said it to me only two months ago. And she is aged 75 years old!</p><p></p><p>Some people never learn! (and I don't consider I have lost a friend - because a true friend would never say such a thing).</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 366766, member: 1991"] Your daughter sounds to me like a typical teen (a easy child, not necessarily a difficult child) who has potential to turn into a difficult child with all she's trying to deal with. Poor kid. And poor you - tis isn't fair. And even if she is simply a hassled easy child, you are all still welcome here, don't feel your problems are too small. No problems are too small. And frankly, this sounds nasty for you both. So - welcome. Now to the problem - I agree about cancelling the FB account. I would recommend another alternative, at least for now - Gaia. On Gaia you use an avatar and a pseudonym. It's got a lot of rules about appropriateness but there is still plenty of scope for fun. My younger daughter still posts on Gaia at age 23. She and her husband used to 'talk' on Gaia when she was breaking up with her previous boyfriend. So although it superficially looks like kid stuff, it's not necessarily. But fromwhat we've seen, it's a lot 'safer'. Two reasons to cancel FB: 1) It's hurting her badly, and she's also learning to use it as a weapon. Very bad habit. 2) While it is known she has a FB account, she will continue to be deliberately targetted. But once her page is gone, it takes the wind out of the sails of the bullies. I speak from experience - I used to post on a pay-per-view writing website, under my real name (one of the rules of the site). I was a total innocent about the internet. I am a good writer, I quickly rose to a high level of accreditation on the site. Writers were ranked on each article, by readers. I ranked well. I also wrote a lot and was making a fair bit of money (hundreds, not thousands, but still useful). Then I began to find some flame comments on some of my previously well-liked articles. I watched ranking drop at the same time as the flames appeared, then as others read my articles the ratings would go back up again. What was happening was - I was being attacked by a person who used a range of different identities and disposable email addresses who was writing some really nasty stuff and at the same time clicking the bottom rank in the rating scale with each new identity. It was plain nastiness for its own sake. That website was also at the point of failing, as it turned out, so the moderators had stopped caring and where previously they would remove inflammatory material, this time they did nothing. At first I tried to defend myself. My now son-in-law also posted a response in my defence and interestingly, the flamer replied with an accusation that the defensive response was really me, using a pseudonym. This tipped me off to what the flamer was doing (people accuse other people of their own crimes). The more this person wrote, the more information I got as to the person's true identity. At about the same time, my best friend began to get nasty emails in her workplace, from disposable anonymous email addresses. Her boss was sent a nasty email telling him to be suspicious of my friend who was (according to the email) a liar and a cheat. Again - more clues. My best friend had recently had a falling-out with a female friend and we compared notes. Familiar phrases became obvious. A pattern became obvious also - whenever anybody (myself, SIL1 or my friend) posted a defensive comment on my writing, it was immediately attached and a fresh flame war would begin. So I shut down all activity of my own on this site and pretended I was not even looking at it any more. I stopped posting new articles, I topped responding to any goading. And the goading increased for a while - there were gloating posts, there were posts such as "Where are you hiding? Have you become a coward as well as all the other character flaws you have?" and "Your silent sulking only proves me right." But I gritted my teeth and maintained inactivity. I noted her attempts to keep downrating me, but ironically all her activity was keeping my posts high on the hit list, which was bringing me in more income! Plus I had already had hundreds of positive ratings given, so the law of statistics meant that an article that had, say, 700 high ratings would not be adversely affected by 5 or 10 zero ratings. She did eventually stop. I never let on to her that I knew it was her, or what she was doing. In fact, we crossed paths socially and I played along, not even talking about the website or my problems. It was an interesting evening - she had no idea I knew, but I could tell she was enjoying what she thought was my blind ignorance. At the same time, other nasty stuff was happening to me - good friends were accusing me of some nasty underhand stuff, which I knew was coming from this person. All I could tell my friends was, "You should know me. If you could believe me capable of this and if you are not prepared to take my word that I am not responsible, then you don't know me as well as I thought you did. It is your choice to believe bad things when I tell you I am not responsible. So it is my choice to keep my own counsel and refuse to discuss this any further." It was an education - I learned who my true friends were and who were "fair weather" friends, the shallow ones who cared more about appearances and about covering rear ends. I learned to keep my mouth shut and my ears open. My flamer (who livd nearby and was actually a nasty piece of work to a lot of people, while generally pretending to be nice) eventually left town. After she left, some people discovered how they had been duped. Others never learned it. But a lot of damage was done by this person. it was a valuable lesson in human nature, on many levels. So "mean girls" can be any age. This woman was fifty. Old enough to know better. As for my revenge - well, all I can say is, never offend a writer! She is now a villain in one of my stories and it was very therapeutic writing. Of course,she would never recognise herself! Change hair colour, change age, change gender, change anything... So pull the FB. It stops your daughter responding inappropriately. And it stops the bullies getting a payoff for knowing they have succeeded again in hurting her. We went trough this with easy child. Also a friend of mine is going through this with her daughter. Some girls are not as emotionally strong as others, and these are the ones who either become bullies, or become complicit in the bullying and either allow themselves to be bullied or through them allow the bully to work. This emotional strength does not come naturally. How you handle this can determine how she develops from here. What we did when easy child went through this - we talked about human nature, we talked about how the other girls were probably feeling and why they were doing what they were doing. The bullies are often insecure and need to control others in order to feel better about themselves. Other girls go along with it for fear of themselves being the target. A typical girl bullying scenario - "If you play with her, you won't be my friend." That is emotional blackmail and bullying. The problem is - if the person told this chooses to go along with it, they have become complicit in the bullying of someone else. But if they choose to stand their ground, they risk being the one ostracised with all their friends being told, "If you talk to her, you're not my friend." And underneath it all, how confident are we,especially when we're kids, of the depth of friendship we have? How far can we trust our friends to stick up for us, even in the face of possible rejection themselves? In easy child's case, the bully who said this was one rather small girl who was very controlling. Some girls (most of them, in fact) didn't like it, but chose to follow through. Often it was easy child who was excluded. At first on the days when she was chosen to be a friend, the sun shone for her. Then when the next day she was out of favour, the day was just wrong in every way. easy child had another good friend, K. K tended to give in to the bully, but when the opportunity arose she would approach easy child and say, "I really do like you, but I don't want bully to know you and I are still friends." K was trying to have it both ways. Or K might say to easy child, "I don't particularly like bully, but J and R are friends with her and I want t be friends with them. If I play with you, none of the others will ever play with me again." It has been interesting to see how these girls grew up. K, J & R all have grown up worrying more about what other people think, than about what they themselves want in life. Over time they drifted apart, especially from bully. When the dust cleared, they all realised that they never liked bully and had been wasting their time trying to placate her. But along the way they lost their own sense of strength and till need other people's approval to actually do anything. easy child, on the other hand, has grown up to be her own person. She can work with a team very well, can manage staff well, but also doesn't need to win approval if it's not appropriate to do so. And bully? Grew up sexually promiscuous, involved to a small extent in drug use and heavy partying, lived with a string of different (and sometimes abusive) boyfriends and has never stuck at any one career path. This is the time to help your daughter learn to value herself and her own high standards of behaviour. The way these girls are behaving is inappropriate and socially damaging. In the long run, they will be the losers. How you teach her now, is how she will learn to be a strong, self-reliant and productive woman in the future. In en years time, those other girls will be nowhere. Now will they matter to her. Of course, that won't comfort her now. But she needs to learn to trust herself, to value herself and be able to manage with her own company in the lean times. As a general rule, the girls who are popular with everyone now, more than the others, are generally the ones who are compromising their values fr more. I'm not necessarily talking about sexual promiscuity,although at this age it can be connected. A person prepared to compromise here, will be more inclined to compromise in other things too. And for the record - the last person who ever said to me, "If you play with her, you're not my friend," said it to me only two months ago. And she is aged 75 years old! Some people never learn! (and I don't consider I have lost a friend - because a true friend would never say such a thing). Marg [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Parent Support Forums
General Parenting
Help for my 12year old daughter
Top