How do I deal with my 10yo being a "Mean Girl" to a classmate?
My 10yo daughter admitted to trying to exclude a classmate using sign language — and now I'm struggling with how to handle it.
My daughter came home complaining that a classmate was "annoying." When I asked her to elaborate, she said: "My friends and I have been using sign language at recess so she can't understand what we're saying — but now she got a sign language dictionary so she can try to figure it out." (Big preteen eye roll and sigh here.)
So to be clear about what I'm hearing: this girl is being actively excluded, realizes it, and is trying to learn sign language to be included. And my daughter is annoyed that it's not working.
I pressed further and got: "She was mean to my best friend last year."
Here's where I'm stuck. I don't want to dismiss whatever happened last year — I'm sure I'm only getting a sliver of the full picture. But my daughter's own telling of this is pretty damning, and I don't want to let it slide into full-on mean girl territory. To make it more complicated, this girl is also a neighbor — they play together outside of school. So this isn't even consistent exclusion; it's situational cruelty.
I'm trying not to invalidate my daughter's feelings, but I also don't know how to explain to her that what she's describing is unkind without her shutting down entirely.
Has anyone navigated something like this? How do you address exclusionary behavior at this age without your kid feeling ambushed or judged — and without letting it go unchallenged?