Community Corner

Through 'Mean Girls' in Elkridge, Students Learn How to Handle a Bully

A social worker from the Howard County school system got moms and daughters to talk about the hidden "girl world."

No sooner had the moms and daughters gotten settled in their seats at the Elkridge for a workshop called “Mean Girls” than they were asked to leave.

Moderators shooed them out of the meeting room and into the library’s entryway, then invited each female back in one by one.

“I wanted you to feel isolated, I wanted you to feel excluded, [and] I wanted you to try to figure out ‘why is she choosing her and not me?’” said Deborah West, clinical social worker for Howard County Public Schools.

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“That’s how young people feel when they’re in their world—‘girl world’—where [girls] make up the rules and they decide based on whatever reason at the time who is cool and who isn’t, who gets to be part of the group and who doesn’t,” said West.

In part, the workshop was designed to get mothers to recall what it was like growing up, said West, and the introductory exercise did just that.

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Mothers and daughters alike admitted they were perplexed about how the workshop facilitators selected people to invite into the meeting room. “I was trying to figure out what the criteria were,” said one mom. The girls, too, said they were “looking for a pattern” but couldn’t find one.

“As you can see, it’s so random that girls can’t keep up with it,” explained West.

With the exclusion fresh in their minds, mothers and daughters broke into two separate groups to discuss strategies for coping with “mean girls”  who create environments that are uncomfortable and unsafe for others.

“If we say, ‘It’s not a problem; it will be OK,’ we aren’t acknowledging it,” said West, an Elkridge resident and mother of three. “You better come up with words and you better come up with words real quick. One of the things we hope to do this evening is to give [each girl] words, to give her the opportunity to stand up for herself and stand up for others.”

Because of the work she does to combat the culture of bullying, West has been invited to hold workshops in other Howard County schools and in other states.

Through role-playing, the girls who attended the March 29 workshop in Elkridge discovered that their best ally in a hostile situation was honesty. “I heard what you said about me, and I’d like you to stop,” one girl said in a skit in which she was being whispered about because of her outfit.

Across the library in another room, mothers were schooled in Text Messaging 101. West explained that girls use various codes to exclude others, and text messaging is just one language of many that parents should know. “You forgot MOS—‘mom over shoulder,’” one parent joked, referring to a texting acronym handout.

“We engage the parents because when [bullying] happens, a lot of times it’s too late. Parents need to learn what they can do, because [prevention] is on both ends,” said West. To that end, moms had their own exercise about how to handle rumors.

By the end of the workshop, mothers and daughters came together to sign an agreement stating their commitment to “practicing the principles of compassion, kindness, forgiveness, integrity responsibility and honesty” and “asking for help.”

Before signing the contract, Malerie, a freshman in a Howard County high school, shared another secret strategy for sidestepping the havoc created by mean girls. She said: “Most of my friends are guys.” The others, she added, were Girl Scouts.

"Mean Girls" was sponsored by the Women's Giving Circle of Howard County and the Horizon Councils. The Howard County Public School System is hosting a seminar for parents about emotional well-being, including how to handle bullying, on Monday, April 11, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Ellicott Mills Middle School. Get details .


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