The Drama Llama and 3rd Grade

The Drama Llama came to my granddaughter’s 3^rd grade playground last week. Her tight group of friends suddenly told her she couldn’t play with them anymore.

This is the little girl whose motto has been “Always believe they want to play with you!” She’s the girl who can make friends after five minutes in the hotel pool on vacation.  She skips off to school every day, expecting nothing but good things.

These are the friends she had giggled and laughed with. At recess they slid down snowy playground hills in their snow pants.  They skated at the roller rink, laughing uproariously.

When the leader of her group told her, “We don’t want to play with that girl,” my granddaughter asked, “But what if she’s fun to play with?”

She went on playing with these girls.  They  sang pop songs together on Karaoke and planned on being stars. They started a classroom craze of making little creatures—called Bobs-- from pompoms. The question on everyone’s lips was, “How many Bobs do you have?”

   

Then, suddenly the Drama Llama arrived; my granddaughter was informed she could no longer play with the group. They even sent her a nasty note, saying she was a bad singer—which is not only untrue, but probably the cruelest thing they could say.

As a grandma, I wanted to hurt those mean girls. I had sleepless nights. I tried to think how to shield my sweet little granddaughter from such cruelty.

I’ve seen the Drama Llama before. I’ve seen my teenage daughters hurt by friends they had once trusted and whom they had believed would be friends forever. As a child, I had my own encounters with the Drama Llama. I remember crying silently in the dark backseat of some mother’s car, being driven home after ice skating lessons, where my friends had made fun of my skating and refused to skate with me. I remember wanting to stay inside at recess because I didn’t think anyone would want to play with me. I remember sitting on the curb playing jacks by myself and being lonely.

But the Drama Llama also visits older women. I know a woman in her 70s who doesn’t like to go to church dinners because she doesn’t think anyone would want to sit with her. As a middle aged woman, I was crushed when my best friend remarried and told me she didn’t have time to spend with me.

I have heard of a girls’ camp with an extra tent: anyone who had trouble getting along with the other girls could go to the tent. They called it the Drama Tent.

So, is the drama inevitable? How do we banish the Drama Llama?

The 2002 publication of Rosalind Wiseman’s book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your DaughterSurvive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence sparked widespread conversation about Mean Girls Syndrome. The hilarious and disturbing movie Mean Girls, written by Tina Fey, furthered the awareness and discussion.

But this mean girl behavior describes adolescents and older, right? A 2010 New York Times article reveals otherwise: “While the calculated round of cliquishness and exclusion used to set in over fifth-grade sleepover parties, warfare increasingly permeates the early elementary years” ("The Playground Gets Even Tougher," Pamela Paul, October 8, 2010, New York Times). Paul’s article suggests that society is to blame, that in the media and perhaps in their homes, kids see that appearance is all that matters, and it is funny to make fun of others.

What can be done? Maybe this is just life, and we need to teach our daughters and granddaughters to simply toughen up. Maybe my sweet granddaughter just needs to learn to give as good as she gets and be mean back. Maybe she should be a Drama Llama too.

But I like this research. In a 2012 longitudinal study, 9-11-year olds were asked to perform three acts of kindness per week. (A control group was instructed to visit three places per week.) The results showed the group practicing kindness were not only happier than the control group, but they were also more popular with their peers. They were more well-liked, they were less vulnerable to bullies like the Queen Bees (“KindnessCounts: Prompting Prosocial Behavior in Preadolescents Boosts Peer Acceptanceand Well-Being,”) Perhaps the best way to banish the Drama Llama is through kindness.

But this does not mean that our daughters need to appease the Queen Bees who are ostracizing them. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, and I’m sure he loved the Pharisees and the Sadducees who tried to thwart his teaching and eventually killed him. But, in his love, he clearly pointed out their faults: he told them they were whited sepulchers, he cleared the money changers. We need to teach our daughters to be kind, not to give in to unkindness. And we ourselves need to think more about how to help others than about how others treat us. Then our daughters and their mothers and grandmothers will find other kind people to support them.

This is in fact how my good daughter counseled her little girl. She sent her to school with a treat to share and said, “Go find someone who looks lonely. Share the treat and play with her.”

And our girl is now bouncing off to school again.

But she still misses those giggly friends, I’m sure. I noticed when she came to Sunday dinner, she brought along three little pompoms with googly eyes, three Bobs.

What do you think? Please comment below with your ideas for banishing the Drama Llama.

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. (1 John 4: 7)