Dealing with bullying can be painful and excruciating for both the child and parents. For parents who still remember bullies from their own childhood, dealing with their own child’s problems might be even more painful. I wanted to discuss how to deal with a special friendship type of bully – a queen bee.
The epitome of queen bees have been shown in the Mean Girls movie. These are girls that at first might appear friendly and nice. They have a following of minions or lambs who are loyal to the queen bee. The queen bee manipulates friendships within the group of friends and any new girl is at first loved and welcomed. Then manipulations start kicking in.
How to deal with queen bees:
- Get involved – talk and listen to you child
- Don’t initiate with the Queen Bee’s parents: I made the mistake of contacting the mother of a mean girl — she hung up on me. I realized that ‘Queen Bee’ girls are usually the daughters of ‘Queen Bee’ mothers. These mothers can actually turn on your daughter faster than you can get any help.
- Encourage your child to make new friends, and separate herself from the bullying clique as much as possible.
- Contact the school – start with the school counselor. Do not take the bullying lightly. Ask your school counselors exactly how they plan to deal with these types of bullying incidents.
- Don’t reinvent the wheel
Queen bees and bullying are a generation old problem. Get some books on pareting and psychology in your books store or Amazon.
I recommend the book, Queen Bees and Wannabees, by Rosalind Wiseman.
For my daughter, it was very helpful to understand the hierarchies within a clique and the roles the members play. Seeing the situation with that objectivity made the ‘meanness’ seem less personal to her. She recognized how the mean girls at her school were using power plays and emotional games that she didn’t want to feed into.