The Savage Truth About Popularity
Why do perfectly sweet girls degenerate into savage backstabbers and scapegoaters at 11? What drives good-natured boys of the same age to vilify and viciously victimize?
Experts in child development explain: The world revolves around family for elementary age children. As they approach double digits— 10, 11— the separation process kicks in. Heard “Leave me alone!”? If so, it’s begun. On this scary, heady road to independence, preteen boys and girls need company and so they enlist peers.
Friends take center stage on their radar. In our first book, The Roller-Coaster Years: Raising Your Child Through the Magical Yet Maddening Middle School Years, young adolescents admitted their number one priority was fitting in. Popularity ranks as the defining obsession. Some court friends the old-fashioned way— by being nice. Others try to win friends and influence people with Machiavellian power plays.
All juggle major insecurities. Their bodies change with puberty. Looking in the mirror brings instant anxiety. They grapple with two defining questions: Who am I? and Does anybody like me? Intense emotions run through their veins, emotions they can’t even name.
How come they have no sympathy for one another? Tweens dwell in a social world where there are camps: the Ins and Outs. Middle schoolers sift themselves into a hierarchy as rigid as any caste system in Bombay, India. Cliques surface. Popular, not so popular, skate boarders, jocks, nerds, renegades— most kids find and know their place. Part of membership is making others feel unwelcome. That’s where the scapegoating, teasing, gossiping and backstabbing comes in. Most tiptoe through these tween years paranoid, afraid of doing something foolish to invite banishment and watching their backs. Few will stand up to defend another, and risk alienation or worse. And so the climate of cruelty reigns supreme.

The Three Ring Circus of Cruelty
The mean machine has three parts— Bully, Victim, Bystander. The bully is not one person, but often times, a group of either gender. A pack of boys turn a shy 12-year-old’s life into a nightmare. Nothing rivals a cadre of 11-year-old girls in the nasty department. Either gender or a mixed bag on the PC translate into instant message machinations that Bill Gates never anticipated.
Navigating these mean streets is complicated by the fact that one day a girl or boy is dissing and dishing out, and the next becomes the object of ridicule. The emotional backslapping and backstabbing happens daily, weekly, hourly— too fast for a parent’s sage advice to be taken (that is if you can figure any out fast enough).
Children who aren’t teasing or being teased make up the largest part of this triangle, the bystander. Ah... there’s no such thing as an innocent bystander. A child who is afraid to stand up and fight teasing and bullying, conspires with his silence. Make no mistake, witnessing the social horror show hurts. Children who see cruelty feel cowardly, angry, frustrated and sad.

Setting a Kinder Course for Your Tween
What’s harder than being a tween trying to feel good about yourself while stuck in a cut-throat social maze? How can you steer your son or daughter through these diabolical years, support fragile egos and set standards of kindness?
The place to start is to notice your child’s mood. Watch for signs of stress. She may come home and wail, “I have no friends.” Or he may say nothing and lock himself in his room. Your son’s grades may drop or he may explode and yell at his younger siblings for no reason.
Ask, “Is mean stuff happening at school?” Pose the question at bedtime or when you are riding in the car together. These are the times when young adolescents open up. Parents report them as windows of opportunity for honest communication. Be sure to listen more than you talk, and empathize.
Pay closer attention to your own compassion compass. Are you comfortable and complimentary where other races, religions and those in any community are concerned? Do you repeatedly gossip about your in-laws or constantly diss others? Tolerance like charity begins at home.
Your child needs guidance, whether he is doing the bullying or being scapegoated. The most effective strategy, though, is to target his bystander role. Teach your tween these strategies to use when he sees teasing:
• Don’t watch. A queen of mean or a king of sting wants an audience. Walk away.
• Don’t react. If you are in class or on the bus, ignore what’s going on. Don’t laugh.
• Don’t feed the rumor mill, on or off-line.
• Combat gossip with the truth.
• Offer support in private if you are afraid to in public, “I heard what she said about you and want you to know I don’t believe it.”
• Offer friendship. Approaching and standing beside the child being targeted is enough to turn off the bullying.
• Recruit others. Any bully or clique leader will have a more difficult time if a group rushes to the defense of a child.
• Get an adult or a teacher involved.
Reassure your child that there is strength in numbers. Active bystanders change the mean spirited action.
Finally, get involved at your child’s middle school. Is a bully prevention program in place? Ask the PTA to develop initiatives to help children become more inclusive. Suggest they bring in speakers to cultivate a positive school climate, to educate students, parents and train teachers, too. Mean may rhyme with tween, but it’s our job to disrupt that rhythm.

Margaret Sagarese and Charlene C. Gianetti are the co-authors of Cliques: 8 Steps to Help Your Child Survive the Social Jungle (Broadway Books). Contact Margaret at msagarese@aol.com.