Why I will Never tell my daughter they’re just jealous of her….

At some point every girl who’s ever been pushed around or bullied by other kids has been told, “They’re just jealous of you.” It’s a very quick and satisfying response to justify something that might go much deeper or might just be kids being kids or people being people. But is it really the answer to the centuries old practice of people singling out others to be an asshole to them on purpose? Do you really want your child most generally your daughter thinking that people are jealous of her or want to be her? I was bullied early on in Jr High and High School. It was most definitely not because all the girls were jealous of me. It was because I was different from them in every way. I was a tom boy, I hung out with my horses, in class I constantly drew horses, talked about horses, and low and behold today guess what I do for a living, I ride and sketch and paint horses. Somewhere along the way I got it in my head that I was better than they all were and I didn’t need to try to get along because they were just jealous of me. It was in college I found out how wrong I was. I was tapped on the shoulder at a party by a girl I’d never seen before and was accused by her friend, looking for a fight of saying that I had said something I didn’t recall saying since I’d just been informally introduced to this shrieking chick who’s name I didn’t find out till the next day, I turned my head and the next thing I knew I was tangled up with a girl who was notorious for these things. Turns out my attitude around campus had put me straight in the sights of someone who decided I needed taken down a notch or 2. After that night she never bothered me again but it sure re arranged my line of thinking it also made me mad and carry around a whole lot of hatred for a long time because I didn’t do or say whatever the heck I was being accused of. I never quit standing up for myself the rest of that year and never had another problem that amounted to anything.

Moral to the story is I learned real fast that most people who don’t like you or pick on you are not jealous of you. They may be fighting some sort of battle and decided to take it out on you, you may have unknowingly done something to provoke it or it could be some people are just mean. I never want my daughter to think it’s because someone is jealous of her. Even if that’s the case this can only lead to places I don’t want to have to fix.

I’ve known grown women who think people are jealous of them. To date they’re the kind of people who make friends with people who feed their ego and then pit those people against each other and feed off of that. They remind me of those evil little fairies on a My Little Pony Episode I was watching with my daughter the other day that made people fight and then grew bolder off the negative energy. It was an excellent lesson hidden in that 30 minute cartoon and I appreciate it being available for my girl to watch instead of Sponge Bob because I can’t handle Sponge Bob.

So someday in the future think about what kind of ego trip we are setting our daughters up for by telling them someone is jealous of them just because they’re having trouble with them. It’s up to us help them to feel like it’s ok to have self-confidence and to be proud of their accomplishments without putting themselves on a pedestal or in the cross hairs of a mean ass blond headed chick who likes to fight and is willing to help her find out just exactly how tough mentally and physically she is.