Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Welcome back. We got Emily Upshur and Rebecca Hershberg here, and I have a listener question for you and you guys are going to really like this one. I mean, you’ll be sad and also love it. Ready?

Dr. Rebecca (00:54):

It’ll be better than Cats.

Dr. Sarah (00:56):

I know. Okay, so this mom wrote in, my daughter is in seventh grade and she’s having a lot of conflict in her group of friends. From what I’ve observed, it seems like she is the aggressor. I don’t know how to put an end to this mean girl behavior. I haven’t addressed it with her directly yet, and with love some advice for how to start this conversation and what I can do to put an end to her bullying behavior before it snowballs. I dunno about you, but so I feel sad for this mom and I feel sad for this girl. I have a very…

Dr. Emily (01:27):

I do, but I also feel like, I don’t know, I think if you really look at your kids’ behaviors, everybody’s a mean girl a little bit, and so it’s like how do we curtail it? And I do think that that’s, I mean, I don’t want to minimize this. I think there are kids that have hold a lot that a lot closer, but I think as a parent, there’s always opportunities to nip mean kid behavior in the bud and they all do it.

Dr. Sarah (01:50):

Yeah, and ironically, maybe counterintuitively, I think you do it with a lot of compassion, which is really tricky because everybody, especially, it’s so interesting as a mom, you also have your own story, internal stories that we hold from our childhood of either being or receiving mean girl stuff, and so we can be terrified of seeing our kid engage in mean girl behavior or bullying behavior like this could happen with boys too, but I don’t know. I guess I have, I think it could be so painful to watch your kid be bullied obviously, but it can be incredibly painful to watch your kid bully. I have a soft spot in my heart for kids that I look at bullying as a expression of pain.

Dr. Emily (02:48):

Pain. Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca (02:49):

Yeah. No, I think no question, and I think I’m a little curious just on a much more mundane note, what she means when she says from what she’s observed, I’m like at a sleepover party. You know what I mean? I do wonder what her source of observation is, but for me, this comes up a lot with clients, this really big emphasis right now on teaching our kids to be kind and that’s great. I’m obviously not saying that’s some weird esoteric thing. It’s a value that I am 100% behind. At the same time, I think hearing so many parents say to their kids, that’s not kind. That’s not kind. We are kind in this family. In this family, we’re kind. I think there can be a real negating of what you intimated Sarah, which is that we all have a part of us, or maybe it was you, Emily, that’s not always kind.

(03:47):

And we all have unkind thoughts sometimes and we all have a part of us that if we either get, as you said, really stressed or in pain or jealous or whatever it is, the unkindness comes out and I almost feel like when there’s this important piece of walking this line as parents between of course shutting down mean and bullying behavior, which we’ll talk about, but also acknowledging starting when kids are young, that of course we all strive to be kind. Of course we value kindness. Of course the world would be a better place if more people were more thoughtful about being kind and it’s okay to have thoughts that aren’t kind or to do something once in a while that’s not kind. Make a mistake, do a thing, and what does that look like? Attention as I think it should.

Dr. Emily (04:41):

I think what resonates me with me so much, what you said is not shutting. You do want to shut it down in terms of not promoting unkindness, but I also think you want to, my biggest thing I think I would say is entering with curiosity with those children instead of shutting it down and shaming and closing down that conversation saying what happened, what you were feeling, really trying to imagine what they’re thinking or feeling and putting it out there and not being so scared to hear. To your point, Rebecca, the pain, the anger, the jealousy, the kind of ick, the stuff that is uncomfortable because if we don’t allow them to explore that with them and help them figure it out, we’re just saying don’t do it. Put a zip on it, stuff it down and I don’t want to hear about it. Just do the nice thing. And that’s really not a teaching behavior. We don’t teach how to cope and validate and explore those feelings when we have that binary of shutting it down and doing the right thing.

Dr. Rebecca (05:46):

It’s the same thing we talk about when we talk about little kids a lot in terms of feelings versus behaviors. All of your feelings are welcome, let’s say here in our home and all of your behaviors are not necessarily right. So you can feel however you want and let’s talk about your actions as something different. But I wonder, I keep hearing you say the word explore, Emily, and I think that’s where I would go with this listener is sort of how can you approach your daughter, as you said Sarah, with compassion, but also before the compassion or perhaps alongside it with curiosity. So again, depending on what she observed, just name the observation. Hey, I noticed when, so-and-so and so-and-so were over for a play date the other day. I noticed that at one point when, so-and-so said she was interested in your skincare. You said she had terrible skin, whatever. I don’t know what the thing is, but I noticed you said that pause, right?

Dr. Sarah (06:47):

I mean I think, I don’t know what this person’s, obviously this mom didn’t share what she observed, but just to try to generalize this so we can ask real examples. I work with a lot of kids in this age range in my practice and girls that are bringing in stuff to our sessions where they’re like, it’s upsetting to hear the degree to which some of these bullying behaviors are occurring. I have kids who will say things like, they invited everyone to a party and then told me it was a different day or they won’t, everyone’s dressing up for Halloween in a particular costume and they will not let me be part of that costume thing. So the kids that are…

Dr. Rebecca (07:41):

It’s just saying if you find out about that as a parent, as it sounds like the parent half again, it’s just insert the thing, right? It’s like, Hey, I overheard you talking to your friends about how you’re going to let everyone dress as X, y, z except for so-and-so can we talk about that for a sec instead of saying, and that is not okay and you will hurt her feelings and can you even think of what, and I didn’t raise you to be this way.

Dr. Sarah (08:05):

Exactly.

Dr. Emily (08:05):

And you have to invite her anyway. Go. Do it now.

Dr. Rebecca (08:08):

Right, exactly. Then you’re not accomplishing again any, you might accomplish that they invite her, but they invite her begrudgingly and you can’t stop them from rolling their eyes at her. And so just to say, can we talk about it and say what’s that about? And to humanize it and to say, I remember when I was a kid on Halloween thinking about doing stuff like that even whatever, somehow, and then to get into a conversation about how did that idea come up? What’s that point? What’s the goal? Is there something you have against this particular kid? Does it feel good in some way? Does it feel powerful in some way to do something like that? Because again, as a mom, you get it. You get that sometimes if you’re feeling kind of not powerful in a friend group, excluding someone else, be away. Again, I just think you start with the normalizing and the validating while of course having an agenda that’s like, we want to nip this in the bud. This isn’t okay, we’re not going to get anywhere.

Dr. Emily (09:08):

I think what you’re pointing out something really important and something I hear a lot in my practice, which is you’re saying, what I hear you saying Rebecca, and which I would echo is approach it. Don’t avoid. Oh, they’ll figure it out. I think even at a seventh grade level, you as a parent should explore and approach this with your child instead of being like it’ll all shake out and everything will be a no. At least she’s not on the outs. I think that if we get involved in that curious, more engaged way, I think that’s probably our best first step to eradicating some of why this happens impulsively.

Dr. Sarah (09:55):

And this is why I wanted to throw out some specific examples. I’m just fantasizing about what the kid might say and what that might elicit in the parent. As soon as we enter into a conversation with our kid about a tricky issue, it is now a two person bringing, both of us are bringing stuff to this conversation. We’re not just this neutral parent that’s exploring with our kid what they were thinking when they did it. We’re also having our own internal response and fear about what, or we’re projecting our story onto what this means. I might be a parent being like, oh my God, my kid is being a bully or the mean girl and that scares me and is stressing me out and I am coming into this conversation a little activated a little bit in threat mode. And so my kid who probably is also in threat mode is going to get, that’s contagious.

(10:53):

That’s kind of going to pour gasoline on the fire a little bit. And they’re probably sensitive to feeling judged also in this situation. And so my thought is as the parent, this is where I think zooming out and having a bigger goal in mind, okay, I’m going to give my child a generous assumption right here. I’m going to be curious. I’m going to approach this with a nonjudgmental stance and ultimately my goal is to help build their capacity to perspective take, put themselves in the shoe of the kid that’s receiving this behavior, help them feel like they can try to identify their actual feelings that are driving this behavior. Is it jealousy? Is it actually they’re wanting to feel that sense of powerful because of things that are unrelated to this person? Sometimes it’s retaliatory like, oh, this person did something that annoys me all the time and I don’t want them around anymore and it’s bugging me so I’m in my seventh grade skillset of trying to problem solve that in an icky way or there’s something else I’m actually trying to get and it’s just this kid’s collateral damage. But I think if we ultimately want to approach this conversation of help me understand what is it about this person that led you to do this particular thing, I really want to get to what their intention is. What are they trying? I assume all kids, even kids who are doing mean girl behavior or bullying behavior are trying to solve a particular problem or get some sort of intention achieved and they just are doing it in a really yuck way and I got to figure out what that intention is first.

Dr. Rebecca (12:54):

Right, and that’s the same. What are they feeling? What is the intention? What is the feeling? What would happen if I looked at this behavior as triggered as I am as a parent? What if I looked at this behavior with a lens of my kid is doing the best they can with the skills that they have? All of these, I think just set the tone of the conversation that you want to have with your kid because I think the two most typical ones that I’ve heard, and I 100% get as a parent are one, the one that Emily just mentioned, which is I’m just going to avoid it and they’ll figure it out. We all did. Or I’m going to jump in and fix it and tell my kid that this is absolutely unacceptable and no kid from our family act this way and this is not our values.

(13:39):

And I don’t think either of those, as you put so well, are going to get you as far in the long game as helping by your trying to understand what your child is trying to do. You’re going to help them try to understand and then help them try to use other skills perhaps to get that need met or build their empathy toward this other person and then you go from there. But I think that’s the foundation. There’s a million different ways that conversation can go and we could draw a whole flow chart, but I think if the question is what do I do, you start there. You start by connecting with your kid, by approaching them generously and compassionately and curiously.

Dr. Sarah (14:25):

Right, cause I think that if we show them in the way that we respond to this observation that we’ve made that we think they are, and we can say this explicitly and also in our implicit communication, you are a good kid. You don’t want to hurt people. So I really want to understand there’s something here that’s important to get because I get that this is my bar for you. My bar is very, very, very generous and high versus if we come in and say, even if it’s not what we’re explicitly saying, but we’re implicitly sort of communicating this maybe through our panic or our own threat response, this is bad. You’re doing something that is bad. My expectation of you is very low right now. Our kid is whether we mean to or not, if they perceive that we think they’re doing something mean, even if objectively the behavior is hurtful.

(15:29):

There’s a difference though between hurting someone and being mean. One implies an intentionality and yes, even kids who know that they are going to do something that hurts another kid consciously and volitionally may sometimes be doing it out of a different place. It’s not like I’m enjoying causing suffering, but I’m really trying to get, there’s a different, more urgent need that I’m addressing and it’s taking over my consideration for someone’s feelings and that it’s a subtle difference. But if we make our child feel that we believe that they are mean, there’s not a lot, there’s nowhere to go from, it kind of shuts down the conversation. They might keep talking to us, but they don’t trust that.

Dr. Rebecca (16:18):

Especially if you’ve been the whole time, as I said in the beginning, talking about how important it’s to be kind and then they’ve kind of failed your whole image of them, your whole family value system, the thing you’ve been talking about since they were two years old on the playground as opposed to like, yeah, it goes without saying, you’re a kind kid, you do nine things. This doesn’t necessarily seem to fit with that. Let’s talk about it. And again, let’s humanize it. Let me tell you about the time I was in fourth grade when I did something mean. I would be shocked if anyone could not think of a single time that they did something that was hurtful.

Dr. Sarah (16:53):

And I guarantee you that when we look back at our own memories of doing something that was objectively hurtful, we can probably identify why we did it. I have a very distinct memory in second grade. I mean, I got along pretty well with the kids in second grade, but I wasn’t necessarily always the first pick to play with things. I remember kind of being a little bit clunky with my social skills in second grade, but there was another girl in second grade who was way clunkier than me socially, and I remember being really mean to her and I’m not proud of it, but I also know that that second grade me had zero interest in hurting her at all. I was problem solving very, very poorly with the feelings I had when people weren’t including me and I was trying to put them somewhere and that was where I put them. And genuinely to this day, I feel terrible about it, but I also was not a bully and I bullied that kid. And so I think we all have to remember, if we look back to the times when we’ve done behaviors that were objectively unkind outside of our value systems, not things that we are proud of, chances are we did them in some type of, we are trying to protect something about our sense of self or our sense of standing or our sense of belonging.

Dr. Rebecca (18:32):

I was about to say belonging community. I think all of that, which is why I think it’s so important to model that for our kids to say at some point in the conversation, I mean that memory is going to be such a helpful one for your kids to hear. I’m your mom. I talk about kindness all the time. You are so sick of me talking about kindness. Let me tell you about a time I really wasn’t kind.

Dr. Sarah (19:00):

And also why I think that’s the key thing is the meaning that we help our children make of their behaviors is the thing that determines the trajectory that comes next.

Dr. Rebecca (19:11):

Yeah, no, of course. The why, of course. Course all everything you just said. Exactly. I had some tough feeling and I can just think about, it’s one thing if you have a really verbal seventh grade girl who’s going to kind of crumble in your arms and tell you all of her feelings, and those are not my kids, and so it may be, and we talk about this a lot on this podcast, that you’re just planting a seed that when you open some of these questions and you tell some of these stories about yourself, you’re just, again, you’re playing a long game so that they start to recognize their own motivations and feelings behind things. I do want to shift to this mom’s question, which I think is a really good one of like, okay, but I still need it to end. It’s still not okay, and I still am thinking about the kid who’s being bullied, and so what do we do about that? And I don’t have any magical answer. I think what we’ve talked about so far is the more important piece.

(20:12):

I do think at some point, no matter how that conversation goes, it’s okay. Hopefully it’ll be a natural pivot and you’ll do it in this gloriously beautiful way and fireworks will go off and you’ll win the year award, but it is okay to say, I don’t love this something. We need to figure this out though, because I did notice that as much as I really believe and want to talk to you and hope you open up about whatever’s going on for you, I also noticed that this other kid in the meantime is really not being treated fairly, and I want to look at that piece too. I mean, I’m thinking out loud as I’m talking. I don’t know that I’ve hit it exactly right, but I think you’re playing a long game with your kid, but you’re not playing a long game where if you’ve noticed that your kid is bullying another kid, you’re like, oh, I’m going to wait a few months and let her open up and we can have this conversation.

Dr. Sarah (21:14):

No, yes. Both have to happen.

Dr. Rebecca (21:16):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (21:17):

And you said something, there was a word you used in that intervention that you were kind of creating on the fly that I think is incredibly important, which is we, we need to do something about this. I’m on your team. When a kid is doing mean girl stuff or bullying behavior, there is a part of them that is terrified that somebody is going to say, you are too bad for me to love you. And it can really perpetuate those behaviors because then they feel like, I have to double down on this. I’ve got nothing else to lose. Kids need to know that you are on their side. You can absolutely put sort of a definitive statement about a behavior that they’re engaging in and say, this isn’t a behavior I can be okay with you doing, and we are going to do something about it together. I’m here to help you figure out what we can do about that.

Dr. Rebecca (22:21):

Right.

Dr. Sarah (22:21):

Like you got to stay on their team.

Dr. Rebecca (22:22):

You have a costume plan with your friends. I get it. Let’s think about how we might be able to navigate this.

Dr. Sarah (22:33):

It’s coming from a place of we’re on the same team and this is solvable. Nothing is broken, which is another thing is also how do we help model this repair model, not only the skills to repair, but a belief that they can repair. Like, oh yeah, you’re not stuck. You’ve done this thing. You’re not stuck in it. You couldn’t change it. This is fixable, this is repairable. Which again, it’s seventh grade. That kid might not actually get that, right? Oh, well, I already did this and so I have to stay in this place now.

Dr. Rebecca (23:17):

And that’s a place where it’s also, I talk about this with clients all the time. It’s also so important not to get into preaching mode there, right? Because I think kids will say things like, but I can’t be the one that changes the plan because then all my friends will think I’m such a loser or they’ll hate me or I’ll become the one that’s, and I think as a parent, we go to the place, the sitcom mom place of like, well, then they’re not very good friends, are they? Or well then leads. And I think that’s where, again, all the things we always talk about on this podcast, the continuing to connect to empathize. It’s like, I get it. So then let’s think. So okay, let’s work this through.

(23:58):

And what would you think if someone did this and do you think, I just think kids’ motivations and values in seventh grade are different, and that’s okay. Again, it’s a long game and if your kid is being honest with you, if they’re not afraid that you might shame them and they’re being honest with you and saying, I’m worried about my social standing. I’m worried that if I now am nice to this loser, I’ll be a loser too. And you’re sitting there as a parent being like, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m hearing these words coming out of my kid’s mouth. I’m so activated. So, but you can lose your kid at any moment if you jump in with the judgment or the not understand. It’s like, thanks for telling me that I’m not in your seventh grade class, so I don’t actually know the dynamics. So thank you for sharing that with me. I imagine that wasn’t easy to say. Let’s keep thinking about it right now because again, this behavior isn’t going to fly, and now I understand why it feels so tricky for you. So again, you’re not stuck. We’re still talking about it.

Dr. Sarah (25:05):

Right? You’re staying with them. I think if there’s any takeaways that I really think are critical from this conversation, it’s see your kid with generosity and compassion and understand there’s something driving the behavior, and we really have to be in order to really figure it out and solve for it, we have to help them feel safe and seen and understood a bit, and that does not mean that the conversation ends there and we don’t have to then help them really kind of put problem solve, but this is about problem solving skills. I honestly think a lot of the time this is about helping increase flexibility, increase perspective taking, increased problem solve, creative problem solving, and in order to get to a place where you can do those higher level cognitive functionings, you have to be out of threat mode. You have to be kind of held, and a lot of these kids, they know when they’re doing something that is out of alignment and that alone can put them into threat mode. So we have to be orienting them back to safety. I think before we can do this hard work of getting them to let go of that rigidity a bit.

Dr. Rebecca (26:22):

Absolutely. I agree with that.

Dr. Sarah (26:23):

I feel like we should do an episode on this same situation, but for little kids, I really think it’s a totally different thing with these adolescents.

Dr. Rebecca (26:34):

Absolutely. No, I think so too. I can totally speak to that personally as well as professionally when a kid happens to be the aggressive one or the impulsive or the quote, bad one, how to handle that. I think there’s some important similarities and a couple of differences.

Dr. Sarah (26:54):

Yeah, because developmentally, we have to remember at seventh grade, they’re really oriented to their peer group. They’re really oriented to social currency that is going to be kind of unique to their cohort, whatever it is. They still though at seventh grade, they’re still interested in our compassion and empathy and are sort of seeing them as a good kid. So we can leverage that a lot for these kinds of conversations.

Dr. Rebecca (27:25):

We have more prefrontal cortex skills, although they’re still not there yet.

Dr. Sarah (27:31):

Yeah. I hope this helps and send in your questions. We love it when you do that, and we’ll talk to you all soon.

Dr. Emily (27:42):

Bye, everybody.

Dr. Rebecca (27:42):

Thank you. Bye everybody.

Dr. Sarah (27:45):

Bye.

(27:48):Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.