Julie Pippert is featuring my essay: Empowering Girls: Hootchy Clothes and Mean Girls on Moms Speak Up, a blog collaborative. Take a trip over there and give it a Kirsty won't you?

Thanks Julie.

Vacation Rerun

by Tracee Sioux

The only resolution (that I've come up with) for girl-fighting is to teach them Ho'oponopono, the theory that anything can be resolved by practicing I'm sorry, I forgive you, I love you.

Girls are . . . .

Well, if you've got one - then you know how they are together. Complicated and hyper-sensitive.

I think someone hit the fast-forward button on their development and now the mean-girl behavior starts even earlier and escalates faster than before.

I hate to glamorize the '70s and '80s but running wild in the neighborhood totally rocked and was the epitome of childhood bliss.

Our previous neighborhood was quite simply depressing - the only reason I knew other children lived there was because the school bus stopped in front of other houses. Otherwise I didn't see a child in the 3 years we lived on that block.

When we moved to a new neighborhood I prayed we'd go to one where the children still play outside with each other and that Ainsley would have lots of friends her age to to play with.

Be careful what you wish for - she got 4 or 5 girls about her age and one has sisters a few years older. Which seemed fabulous until the girl-fighting began. This took about a week.

Mom, Olivia isn't allowed to play with Makinzie because she called her a fat B!

I'm thinking, What happened to dummy or big stupid head?

We've skipped right over normal name calling and moved to fat bitch awfully quickly.

It's simple to identify mean-girl behavior. It's quite another thing to resolve it and prevent it from happening again and again.

Without being critical of the other parents, after both mothers sought me out and I listened to their crazy stories in which the mothers and fathers resorted to mean-girl behavior themselves. Both took "your not allowed to play with her anymore" stances and at one point the fathers even nearly came to blows. Their crucial mistake was believing their own daughters were more innocent than the other girl.

Are you kidding me?

Girls are, like I said, complicated and hyper-sensitive. And the worst thing you can do, I've recently discovered, is try to figure out who is right and who is wrong in a girl-fight.

I've declared my own house neutral territory where all the girls can play. After listening to their stories for a few weeks and trying different methods I think I've hit on a pretty good reaction to girl-fighting in Ho'oponopono.

Assume everyone is wrong. Assume they all played a part in getting to the argument. This way, no one "gets away" with anything. Believe that the self-righteous smirk is as painful as the verbal slander. Believe your own daughter has a capacity for mean girl behavior. It's really not all the other girls.

Make them both/all repeat these words every time they argue or hurt each other's feelings:

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I forgive you. I forgive you.

I love you. I love you.

Now go play. And try to get along for 15 whole minutes this time.

What happens when parents and educators overlook this "girl culture" problem? It's escalating into real physical violence in junior high and high schools at a rate outnumbering boys' fist fights. Read more in Girl Fight.

by Tracee Sioux

I found some alarming statistics in my local paper about physically violent fighting in the local high schools.

There were five physically violent fights in one high school so far this year. Ten girls were involved. No boys.

At another high school there have been seven fights and five of them involved girls.

The trend seems to be escalating from last year's statistics where 81 fights in the 2006-2007 school year involved 32 girls at one high school. At another school last year 21 fights involved 28 girls. At still another local high school, one of the better ones in town, girls accounted for 7 of 7 fights.

Authorities at the school report that physical violence among girls is generally the result of gossip and even teacher intervention does little to deescalate the violence.

Principals and teachers discribe boys as posturing and easy to redirect and girls as more vicious and more likely to follow through with threats of violence.

While this trend is alarming, and I think further research will indicate a national trend, it isn't really all that surprising.

Mean girl behavior is getting out of control in preschool and going completely unchecked as I wrote in Girl Drama. Parents are sending four- and five-year-olds to school as if it's a Kindergarten Fashion Show and turning their tots into fashion divas as I wrote about in Second Generation Mean Girl.

Common responses in preschool and Kindergarten by teachers, in my experience, has been to minimize the behavior, yeah, girls do that.

What continues to surprise me, though it may only illustrate my naivete, is that girls' parents are defending mean girl behavior as opposed to punishing or stopping it.

Take the national news story (not an urban legend as I had hoped) about the two girls who took a photograph of their supposed friend in the shower at a slumber party and spread it all over their high school via cell phone.

This is disturbing in and of itself.

The girls were suspended and kicked off the cheer leading squad.

The mean girls' parents, however, hired a lawyer to ensure their daughters would suffer no consequences.

The girls were put back on the cheerleading team. The father of one of the mean girls was on Dr. Phil saying the victimized girl and her parents were making too big a deal over a little prank. The other parent of the mean girl has a website defending his "brave" daughter's behavior.

Neither parents disciplined their mean girl daughters. Neither felt it was even an assault worthy of a good old fashioned grounding.

Have girls become so sexualized in our culture that to be angry that the whole school has a nude photo of you is being a poor sport? That to take the nude photo is a simple childish prank?

What message are we giving to our girls?

To me, this action is the equivalent to pornography of a child and should be punished accordingly.

This case is important for all parents of girls. If our daughters are not the mean girls, they may become victims of mean girls.

This is not an isolated incident, it's just one that has gotten national attention.

One teenage girl I know shared that a boy had shown her a cell phone recording of another girl having intercourse with his friend. She didn't understand my shock and outrage. It didn't occur to any of the girls involved to go to the police or other authority figure. It didn't even occur to the girls that they had a right not to be sexually victimized in this way.

This kind of thing is likely to become more and more prevalent as no one, not the police or the school or the parents, seem to dare to take action to nip it in the bud punitively.

Isn't it our responsibility to teach our girls the difference between right and wrong? Isn't it our responsibility, as parents and educators, to enforce consequences for mean girl behavior?

If we fail to take action and provide consequences to mean girl behavior aren't we teaching them that it's an acceptable and excusable way to behave?

Is it any wonder that gossip wars have begun to escalate into physical violence?

Is it too complex for parents to understand that insulating our children from consequences is not what's best for them?

While listening to the radio the other day I heard a female DJ pick apart Lourdes, the daughter of Madonna.

Oh My God, that Lourdes needs to be introduced to the tweezers. She not only had a massive uni-brow, but she's got a full on mustache too, said mommy DJ.

The DJ happens to be the mother of a baby girl.

Hello! Lourdes is a little girl. At what age are we mothers expected to sit our daughters down and tweeze, pluck, wax and shave them?

Is 6 too young? Maybe girls should start shaving their legs at 8? The Burning Times has a report on Nair Pretty, a chemical acid hair removal cream, being marketed directly to 10-year-old girls for their clean bikini line. It's profoundly disturbing that I'm no longer shocked.

Maybe it's not even about when the girls might be ready for such milestones into womanhood, maybe it's all about prevention of mean girl attention. Perhaps a mother's best bet is to attempt to prevent scathing criticism of a girl's appearance by prematurely eradicating any hair that might attempt to grow anywhere on her body.

You should be ashamed of yourself Sister DJ. You've just opened the door for bad daughter Karma.

You will find, as your daughter matures, that it is extraordinarily difficult to teach a young girl that appearance isn't everything when all evidence is to the contrary.

by Tracee Sioux

Am I the only mother who actually cried when I realized my daughter would have to experience the trauma of junior high school?

I now realize that was silly of me - girl drama starts much earlier now.

In preschool I got my first taste of it when her BFF Maddy didn't want to play with Caitlin with a C and Kaytlin with a K on the playground. I never could understand why, but I think it came down to Maddy wanting to play with only Ainsley all the time.

Finally, one day Ainsley told Maddy, I've played with you all the time for the whole year. I've had enough. I'm playing with them now.

Which, of course, devastated poor Maddy.

In Kindergarten there are more girls involved.

The reports I get from her teacher are glowing, Ainsley's popular and has a close group of friends. She gets along well with the other children. She's is not bullied and does not bully others. She's a perfect student. Very helpful.

Which is inconsistent with what Ainsley tells me about her day.

It seems every single day she fights with Taylor or Aaron about who is going to play "The Mom" or swing on the swings. And everyday it ends with these words,

Fine. I'm not your friend anymore. I'm never playing with you again.

Every time she seems to resolve her issues with her classmates Taylor and Aaron, BFF Maddy's class comes out for recess. They get upset when Ainsley abandons them to play with her BFF. Maddy apparently has no interest, once again, in being friends with Taylor and Aaron and Taylor and Aaron don't really like Maddy, says Ainsley.

Pre-Kindergarten it was my easily-held belief that ALL bullying and mean girl behavior should be punished harshly in the early years to prevent such nastiness from culminating in junior high.

Obviously, there is some mean girl behavior going on on the playground. But, the stories are so involved that I'm not sure exactly who should be punished or even if punishment would accomplish anything.

I'm thrilled that Ainsley is coming to me for advice, but frankly I haven't much.

I never really did learn to win with girls in school.