Global Politics and the Third Grade

My daughter has always been one of the tallest girls in her class, despite being one of the youngest.  Well, not just her class, but her grade.  Tall, blonde, blue-eyed and, of course, beautiful.  By mid-summer she looks more like Malibu Barbie than someone you’d believe I’d given birth to.  She’s always been confident, funny, and, being my child, naturally a bit over the top.  Through second grade, she was at the top of the invitation list for it seemed like every birthday party in her grade.  She knew everyone and everyone knew her.

So I was pretty incredulous when she came home complaining about being bullied by another member of her third grade class.  I’d met this child, and she was half my daughter’s height and seemed nice enough.  They shared a lot of the same interests and I thought would be fast friends.  Instead, what started out as a few insults slung in my daughter’s direction eventually grew to what seemed more like a full-scale, well-orchestrated campaign against her.  She came home crying of being relegated to lunch-time Syberia (I.e. sitting alone at the end of the cafeteria table) and heated sessions of tag that were more like a Jean Claude vanDamme movie than a typical recess game. The queen bee had declared her an enemy of the state and she was banned from all birthday parties and play dates.

We talked to a therapist.  We practiced all the recommended anti-bullying tactics at home.  She tried being nice to the bully, avoiding the bully, standing up to the bully and telling her teacher when the bully was cruel.  Nothing seemed to work and the battles seemed to escalate to an all out but very one-sided war.

Then one of the bully’s minions got caught in the act.  And it turned out the child didn’t like being part of the bullying process but didn’t know how to navigate the complex socio-politics of the third grade.  Her mother explained to her that any kind of bullying, even if it meant just excluding another child because a bully told her to, was not acceptable.  Then she talked to another of the minion’s moms.  I talked to my daughter and got a handle on the depth of the problem, then let her teacher know.

Today, my daughter made friends with the bully, who also received a lecture on the right way to treat her friends.  The two girls buried the axe and executed the equivalent of a peacetime treaty (they sat together at lunch and played together without incident).  And all it took was some of the troops standing up to the bully and saying, “no more.”

In the span of seven hours these two little girls accomplished what so many global leaders have failed to do in centuries – they worked out their problems and declared peace.  All it really took was one being brave enough to ask her enemy to be her friend, then both taking the time to get to know each other. Today, two young mortal enemies realized they’re more alike than different, and that they really do like each other after all.

Ah, what we grown-ups could learn from our grade-school aged kids!  Maybe world peace could be possible after all.  My daughter didn’t have to wield her superior strength and power to solve her problems.  She allied herself with the friends of her enemies, and together they were brave enough to initiate change by extending the olive branch and offering friendship and compromise.  No shots fired.  No casualties. Just peace.