Sidebar: Tips for teens

Young teenage girls giggled, whispered, and nodded in recognition as Rachel Simmons hissed, rolled her eyes, and imitated the mantras of their young lives: “I didn’t do anything!” “Why are you mad at me?” “Just kidding.”

Simmons’ goal is serious, however: The author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls wants to reveal how girls bully each other and, more important, offer tips to teens and their parents on how to avoid bullying and the drama that accompanies it.

Her talk on Feb. 28 at Temple B’nai Abraham, underwritten by Marcia Wilf, marked Simmons’ second appearance in Livingston. She first came to the area in 2004, when she spoke at the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and at Livingston public schools.

The 175 girls in attendance at B’nai Abraham listened attentively, reflecting their keen interest in the material presented, and asked pointed questions about resolving their own insider, outsider, and clique issues.

Also in the audience were plenty of mothers who had no qualms about raising questions, including one that nearly threw Simmons regarding the behavior of parents who bully or who make pointed comments about which kids are “stars.”

After suggesting that those parents ought to be required to attend her talks, Simmons said that what’s most important is that parents need to be “careful about modeling. Kids get subtle or not so subtle encouragement about having play dates with this kid but not that kid.”

A bully, according to Simmons, is not just the big, underachieving boy who is “always kicking your butt and taking your lunch money.”

“The truth is,” she said, “a bully could for sure be a girl, and it could definitely be someone who is emotionally or psychologically mean to you. And it could be a best friend or a really good friend who makes you feel small inside. That is not a friend.”

She laid out three kinds of bullying — using friendship as a weapon (“Do this or I won’t be your friend”), damaging girls’ social status or reputation through gossip and rumors, and pretending the intent is not hurtful through the use of phrases like “just kidding” and nonverbal gestures like the silent treatment, mean looks, or eye-rolling.

Simmons’ talk, though focused on bullying, could have been subtitled “How To Behave on the Internet.” She calls the Internet “the new bathroom wall,” pointing out, however, that it is now in everyone’s house.

“The Internet is a place where a lot of drama happens,” she said. “The number one mistake is that girls type things they would never say out loud, and it ends up blowing up in their faces. The rule is, if you wouldn’t say it, don’t send it.”

She suggested that teens read everything out loud after typing a message but before sending it. And, she said, a teen who is in a “crazy freak-out mode” should take a five- minute break from the computer before sending something she might regret.

“You’re on the expressway to drama if you’re in crazy, freak-out, spaz mode and you’re on the computer,” Simmons told the girls in attendance.

Illustrating her second Internet rule, “Do not fight with someone while you are on-line,” Simmons urged girls not to type these five words: “Are you mad at me?”

As she offered these words, a ripple of giggles and recognition burst through the audience. In a gesture that would have bewildered parents of teens from the 1980s, she begged the mothers in the audience to reintroduce their daughters to the telephone.

She campaigned for parents to prohibit girls younger than sixth grade from going on-line behind closed doors. “It’s too much responsibility too early,” she said. At the very least, she suggested they regulate the amount of time girls are permitted to spend on-line each day.

On-line or off, “Just kidding” is one of Simmons’ pet peeves. “This is really a problem with girls and it happens all the time. They hurt someone and then try to make it seem like they are not bullying,” providing a dubious “out” for the bully: “‘If I didn’t mean to hurt you, it didn’t happen.’”

Disarming because she nailed behavior quirks specific to teenage girls and assumed everyone in the room was a potential bullier, Simmons offered some important tips.

First, no healthy relationships are conflict-free. She offered a two-step response to bullying in all forms, all based on crafting good communications skills to manage conflict in relationships.

The first step is using what she called an “I message,” as in “‘I felt A when you did B.’ And be specific.”

Second, said Simmons, “Tell [the bully] what she needs to change.”

And throughout the process, teens should “talk to your parents to let them help you.”

Tips for parents include: Support daughters in their feelings. Let kids work out bullying themselves — phone calls to other parents “rarely go well.” Teach your children to value other children for who they are and not for their “decorations” (which include material goods, grades, and looks). And, if the parent observes mean-spirited gossip, say something about it later, not in front of the teen’s friends.

And finally, Simmons acknowledged, not all relationships involving bullying are worth saving. “Sometimes you have two choices: Use the ‘I’ statement and then tell the other girls what they need to do or accept that you are the odd girl out and pull away from this friendship. Lots of relationships are not worth salvaging.”

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