School Psych Corner: Girls and Their Frenemies
Editor’s Note: Thanks to our friends at School Psyched of Facebook for featuring this article.
[Source SMC Education Blog]
In schools we talk constantly about protecting girls from harm. We teach them about paedophiles, on-line grooming, sexting, and the harm caused by drug and alcohol use. In reality, the more likely destructive influence on an adolescent girl’s day to day life is the damage they do to one another in their friendship groups…Relational aggression.
Relational aggression is the psychologist’s name for what the rest of us call ‘mean girls’ behaviour, or straight up ‘bitchiness’. It is a pattern of behaviour typically played out by school age girls, but it is not exclusive to them. In fact, where do they learn it if not from their adult role models? Adults are just more subtle about it.
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