Mean Girls and then some

I have wanted to write about this for some time, but was reminded of it recently, so here goes.

In early June I got a call from a friend of mine out West who was so upset she could barely get the words out. She and her husband had applied to become members of the community beach club (nothing fancy, but still, you have to apply), the place down the street where all their friends take their kids to play in the sand, swim, canoe, and windsurf, and she had just found out they’d been blackballed. A bunch of people had come out against them, and here’s the worst part. They were told the reason – they didn’t like the way my friends were parenting their kids.

Now, I might live three thousand miles away, but, I know these people, we go way back to college days, and I know some people in their community, and I can tell you that there are no allegations of abuse or neglect or other weirdness going on.

My friends have three middle-school aged boys who have lots of energy. They are the typical skateboarder, extreme sports type guys. I’ve known the boys forever and my kids think they’re great. We’ve had lots of fun together over the years, and yes they’re wild, but they’re also good kids.

But, clearly, somewhere along the line, someone decided that all that rough-housing and testosterone were just bad bad bad. Or they just didn’t like the family for some reason. And the word spread. So there’s a cohort of parents who’ve decided that they’re right and this family is wrong and they’ve done the Mean Girls thing and dissed them in a hugely public and humiliating way.

And as a result, my friend is questioning everything about her life in her community. Where before she thought she had friends, now she is embarrassed to walk through the supermarket, not knowing which people are being honest to her face and which are sabotaging her life behind her back.

She was totally shocked that people felt this way about her, and now she’s mortified.

And to think that “adults” like to believe this kind of behavior stops with high school.

I have several reactions. Fury that my friends had to go through this. Disbelief that people can be so disingenuous. More anger that groups can be so nasty. And then an instinct to hide in a closet for fear that I could find myself the brunt of a similar smear campaign.

But on top of that, here’s a question. What's going on with all the judging? The media would have us believe that we’re all Type-A overachievers who’ve taken our competitive instincts and applied them to the new spectator sport of parenting.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I know something. None of us with kids in the roost know how they’re going to turn out. We can think and hope we’re doing a good job, but who the heck knows? Last time I checked, there was no magic formula for raising well adjusted adults. Shoot, aren’t all our kids going to find one reason or another to think we ruined their lives through inept parenting?

Besides, looking back on my life, growing up with four brothers, we had a wild household. Chaos was the norm. And we turned out fine. More than fine, if you ask me, and we’re really close. My family represents my favorite people on the planet (if you include my husband and kids in that count).

So, I’d like to see us all back off and give each other some breathing room. When the instinct kicks in to criticize the family down the street who’s raising their kids differently than you or I are, put a lid on it. Frankly, it’s none of your or my business, and we should just let everyone be. It’s not as if the families around us don’t love their kids and aren’t doing the best job they know how (for the most part anyway). They think their way is correct and we think our way is correct, and on top of that, we're all trying to find the answers on the days when nothing seems to be going right. Can’t we just let that stand? Certainly, we don’t have to duke it out using all the mean-spirited and subtle ways that communities ostracize and hurt for no real reason.

Do we?

Comments

[Andy]

Sigh ... we live in a segregated world. It's a sad commentary on the world we live in that exclusion versus inclusion still rules.

What if people instead took the opposite approach and reached out to include the kids they thought werent't getting adequate parenting? I know it takes time, thought and effort, but didn't the blackballing take all that too?

Throw in a little guts and kindness and it might have been a whole different story.