I think because I'm around pre-teens all day, I have strong opinions on this. What was your experience like with popularity in schools (like who was popular, how did you navigate it, did it change over time in your school?) and what do you hope your child's experience will be?
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I was not at all popular. I was a band geek, and awkward. I had crazy curly hair and wasn't at all attractive. Girls were really mean to me and boys laughed at me.
I really hope that my two sons are inclusive. It's great to be popular and loved, but I also don't want their egos to be so inflated that they think they're too cool to hang out with someone who isn't cool. It's all I ever wanted as a "not cool" kid...was just to be included. There were a few popular guys who were so incredibly nice to me, and I know now why they were so popular. When you're inclusive and decent to others, you'll be liked by many.
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I had a really serious boyfriend most of high school who went to another school. I was also in an advanced invite only intensive 2 year art program that was very time consuming. I had lots of friends but did not attend all social and was busy with my boyfriend. I was not truly 'popular' until college when I joined a top sorority and had a lot of older girls fussing over me and had almost 100 new built in friends. DHs popularity also rubbed off on me.
DH and I have gone to the same schools since elementary and he was always in the very cool crowd (top athletes)- we are still friends with lots of the same people and plenty of our group married others from our school. He has lifelong bonds that I don't.
My hope is that DD will find some interests early on that will guide her school experience. I hope she will have lasting friendships. I hope that she will be humble and kind. I also think that she will have a lot of advantages even beyond what DH and I had and I believe we grew up very privileged. So I hope we will be able to involve her in volunteer work in the community and will have an understanding of the advantages we have and to be grateful. I expect her to have a job. I think there are challenges of being anywhere on the social hierarchy- I just want her to be happy and good to others.
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I was accepted by the popular kids, but I didn't "feel" popular and I definitely wasn't the it girl in HS. I was generally nice to everyone. When I was in college, I came into my own more both looks wise and more importantly, confidence wise. Then I didn't care who like me or not because I liked myself and had friends I loved and was secure with; at that point in my life and mostly thereafter, I was always well liked in whatever setting: school, work, etc. That taught me that being confident in who you, having fun, and enjoying life have a lot more to do with whether people like you or not than I realized back when I wanted so much to be popular.
I've thought a lot about this concept for my kids. I don't care if they are part of the "popular" crown in HS or not (in fact, I would be a-okay with them NOT being part of the super popular kids because I don't always love what I see out of those groups). What I really want is for them to be super confident that they're awesome, fun, and have interesting things to contribute and if someone doesn't like that, it's that person's loss. I want them to be includers, not excluders. If that means they're popular, fine. If not, march to the beat of your own fantastic drum, kiddo.
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I think I got lucky, and never had any issues or typical drama a lot of people experience.
I grew up in a small town, where the same kids went to school from k-12, so I think for other people it could have been harder because once you were "labeled", that's who you were the rest of forever. But I moved around friend groups a few times pretty fluidly and it was always my own choice so I didn't have some of that typical drama you see. I think it helped that I'm from a big family, so I have never had a burning need to feel accepted by other people because I always had my own brothers and sisters at home to hang out with.
But I started out as one of the popular girls in elementary school and we did some pretty awful exclusionary stuff that I cringe about now as an adult. In middle school, when we were able to choose electives and I started forming more of my own identity (I stopped doing cheerleading, and got more into music and theater), I switched friend groups but it was relatively drama free. I remember I just started sitting with my new group of friends in the cafeteria, and there was no big blow up with my old friends. However, my former friends continued to be the "popular kids" until we graduated HS, so we were still friendly in school even though we weren't especially close. Also, I was pretty religious and my former friends started engaging in pretty risky behaviors early on, which kind of made our split permanent.
I always had a big group of friends though, and was kind of the party planner of our group. My friends called me the "cruise director" because I always had a party or gathering or activity planned for us to all do. My friends were the nerdy smart kids for the rest of HS. We all had early curfews and parents that needed to know where we were, and it all worked out. I mean, our nerdy parties were like, masked balls at Halloween where we had music and dancing but no alcohol and parents would totally be supervising. But mixed gender.
I *really* hope my kids have a similar experience. Not too popular, but happy with their own circle. I feel like being super popular can sometimes be a quick road to big parties where negative stuff can go down, and I want them to be protected from that as long as possible. So we will see....
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I went to several different schools and was not popular at any of them. I hated high school. I came into my own in college.
I hope my girls are accepted and don't have to go through what I did. But I also want them to be more accepting and not focus so much on popularity.
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I read this article in the NYT today, which made me think about it. In my educational career, I do find that in middle school the more "popular" kids tend to be the rule breakers, and then sometime around junior year of HS those kids lose their social cache and can start being considered as kind of losers as other kids become more focused on college and the future.
One interesting quote from the article, "Enviable as the cool kids may have seemed, Dr. Prinstein’s studies show negative consequences. Those who were highest in status in high school, as well as those least liked in elementary school, are “most likely to engage in dangerous and risky behavior,” like smoking cigarettes and using drugs.
In one study, Dr. Prinstein examined the two types of popularity in 235 adolescents, scoring the least liked, the most liked and the highest in status based on student surveys. “We found that the least well-liked teens had become more aggressive over time toward their classmates. But so had those who were high in status. It was a nice demonstration that while likability can lead to healthy adjustment, high status has just the opposite effect on us.”
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I had many friends in elementary school, and never really thought about popularity (in retrospect, I was one of the popular kids). In 6th grade, one of my best friends decided to spread some rumor about me and turn everyone against me for a petty reason. It stuck, and I lost all my friends. I was miserable and alone for 4 straight years. It was one of the worst parts of my life, and I became seriously depressed. By sophomore year of high school, I finally found a little group of friends again, and it was so amazing to just have people to talk to. I found out later from other kids that everyone in the other crowds (the "geeks", the "drama kids", etc) all assumed that I was still friends with the popular kids, and that they had been too intimidated to talk to me in middle school. Meanwhile, I had tried to reach out a bit, but had mostly been very shy. It really made me re-think the word popular. From high school on, I've had plenty of friends, but I will never forget how lonely it was when I was younger.
I really hope my LOs never experience anything like that. I don't care if they are "popular" or "nerdy" or whatever, I just hope they form friendships and always have people they can talk to.
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@avivoca: @catlady: In retrospect, do you feel like there's anything your parents or you could have done differently to make your experience better?
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@2PeasinaPod: Couldnt agree more. We were just talking about this the other night. More important than being smart, good at sports, popular, talented, etc., is being kind. That is what we hope for our son (16 months).
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@Anagram: Hard to say. Certainly, they could not have influenced how the other kids acted. The one thing I can think of is if they had encouraged me to try some new activities, where I might have met other kids. Instead they forced me to stay in the ones I already had, which were either solitary (music lessons) or had the same issues as school (the former friend who got everyone to "unfriend" me was on the same sports team as me, so I had no friends there either). I think they really just didn't understand that I literally had no friends anymore, all of a sudden, and that it would take so long to make new ones. Looking back, it's honestly hard for me to understand how it happened either, so I can see how they probably just left things alone and figured that it would sort itself out.
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I was popular in my public elementary school but not in my private middle school. In high school I don't know that there really was a true popular group. I didn't really care in any case, too busy with school, extracurriculars, and boyfriend to care. In college I worked anywhere from about half time to over full time and also took a full course load and finished early. I had popular friends but I never seemed to have the time so I wasn't myself popular. I wish I had made more time for people but overall I'm pretty happy with how things turned out and I didn't have any really bad experiences.
Worst experience was middle school overall. It was K-8 but I only switched in 7th grade. Parents in that small Catholic school were way overly involved and cliquey (sp?) and most of the school was a particular ethnicity and just being honest I can only think of one popular person that wasn't that ethnicity in the whole school when I was there. It was really strange. I was friends with everyone pretty much but not really one of the popular kids. Does that make sense? Add to that crazy strict rules from the school and it was just not an environment I would want for my kid. That whole social dynamic was strange and the popular kids whose parents seemed to have set up the group from first grade still hang out.
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I was not popular; I immigrated here in 7th grade so yeah, there's that! I def did not "blossom" till college (and honestly probably after college).
All I hope for my girls is that they will want to talk to me and DH about anything and everything. I kept everything from my parents b/c I knew they had enough to worry about; I didn't want them to worry about me too. Thinking back, I would hate for my girls to go through hard things in school and I can't at least listen.
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@Anagram: Not really. I mean, sure, they could have not moved us 500 miles away my freshman year and then to another county my sophomore year (second was a farm town, everyone grew up together). In middle school I had a group of friends. At my first high school I had a group of friends, and at my second high school all my friends were younger than me because the kids my age were already in cliques. I don't think there is anything I or my parents could have done to make other people not be jerks.
I'm pretty shy and I tend to stick with my core group of friends, but nothing would have helped I think except for other people to not be jerks and not treat people like they are dirt because they are new or different or have bad glasses or whatever.
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@avivoca: That sound awful. Do you think teachers at your schools were aware? Is there anything they could have done to mitigate the issues?
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@Anagram: I went to church with one teacher and she did say, "Why didn't you say anything?" and really it's because I didn't want to invite MORE harassment. But that was years later when she mentioned some guy by name and I said, "Oh, I hate him, he made your class hell for me."
I don't know if they were aware. I don't hold it against any of them and I've certainly moved past it for the most part (honestly I can't remember the names of any of the people who were horrible to me). But it was horrible and I hope my girls don't have to go through that.
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I was always firmly in the "B" group, never popular, but with a circle of friends. I think this served me well, because the popular kids were the ones that pushed the envelope with their behavior, especially in high school. Now, they're nothing special, and it kind of makes me chuckle at their rush to be the first to experience adult things.
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I was definitely not popular and had a small group of girlfriends. I was not very attractive in school. Lol. High school was rough for me because I transferred to a new school just before my freshmen year. This was to a school where everyone had friends since preschool. It was not fun for me. There were all types but I didn't belong in any of them. My hope is that he has any type of group that are real friends. And hopefully those friends do not involve drugs or sex.
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In middle school, i was not popular but I didn't really mind. I had a great group of neighborhood girlfriends who all lived within a block or two of each other. Some of us were in band/ choir, some were "popular" cheerleaders or athletes, but we tended to all hang on the weekends or after school, attend each other's birthdays, and be kind to one another in class even if we had other preferred friends at school. It was lovely.
We moved right before high school and I had an extremely tough time adjusting. I once again was not popular but without a tight group, I felt very very lost. I ended up attaching to a boyfriend who was a senior, and then had to readjust to having no friends for my sophomore when he graduated. Luckily I randomly sat with a girl at lunch who ended up being one of my best friends, and made some other friends who I still have to this day but those were some sucky years for me. I graduated a year early to escape the loneliness and the teasing.
Ironically, my husband attended the same high school, was super popular, and loved his experience there. We didn't meet until we were 20- and we realized that my best friend (from the lunch table) had dated his best friend!
Eta (hit send before I was done)- I hope that my kiddos just have good friends and feel supported by us. I don't think having a huge clique is important, but being totally alone or having just one friend is (to me) unhealthy and traumatizing. I also resented my parents for years a after graduation for making me move and not being understanding of how tough it was for me to transition. They were absolutely not supportive of my decision to graduate a year early, even though I got an advanced diploma by taking extra classes over the summer, had a high GPA, stayed with honors/ AP coursework, and got into a good college.
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I was bullied a ton in elementary and middle school. My teachers either had no idea or just ignored it. Not a lot of physical violence but plenty of rumors spread, kids who would throw or spit stuff on me, mock the way I'd dress or walk, etc. Most of the physical violence was hair pulling, pinching or poking. Nothing like fights, etc.. My parents are still in denial about the bullying - I think because I always had a couple friends and good grades no one saw it as a problem really. And I'd do my best to brush it off but it definitely gave me a rage issue (which eventually became self-injury and depression, but a lot of that was due to growing up with an unstable addict mother).
By high school I moved from a small private to a large high school and it was amazing. No one even knew who I was. I always say I was a ghost! I loved it!
I definitely still got harassed occasionally in high school but it was easy to ignore because it was mostly kids in gangs trying to decide my race (gangs in that high school were all segregated by race). By the end of high school I had a couple friends (literally two) and I started dating my future husband.
I mostly just hope my kid is able to talk to me about it and I'm able to help them deal in a way that doesn't make them a bigger target.
My husband teaches high school and deals with a lot of cyber bullying. Dealing with this aspect (parents, kids, bullies) is actually making him quit teaching after next year. From his experience most of the parents of bullies are in denial that what their kid did was bullying (often if no physical assault occurs they can't see it as a problem), and the parents of the victims see it as the school's responsibility to protect their child from their peers. It's a lose-lose for the school because they can't control high schoolers, and all they can really do is deal with issues as they occur.
This is really interesting to me because so much of who I am is a direct result of being bullied.
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It's interesting to read about everyone's experiences. I was kind of a social chameleon. I had a couple of different circles that didn't overlap very much, the G&T crowd, the athlete crowd, the "artsy/fashion" crowd (term that I use veeery loosely, fashion definitely wouldn't be applicable today! Ha!). I was never part of the popular crowd, but I had a positive HS experience and was pretty self confident. Two of the people from my artsy crowd are still among my closest friends. I hope my kids have experiences that build them up and make friends that help cultivate positive self esteem.
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@newlypregnantlady: what kind of response would have helped you, from your parents and from your teachers?
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We moved a ton, every two to three years (military). I moved after 8th grade and also between 10th and 11th. They were hard moves but the thing that got me "in" to a circle of friends was athletics and some clubs like newspaper and drama. But 11th grade was hard. We moved back to the states from Europe and I didn't have a fall sport to join so alas, no friends I ate lunch alone in the bathroom stall for 6 months.
I was fairly popular because I was very atheletic (and successfully athletic). But it was full of ups and downs. -
I have a hard time placing who the "popular" kids are in the school where I work. Yes, there are some that stand out because they are the rule breakers - but I do think today's standard of popularity is definitely varied from when I was in school. Today, at least in my diverse school, popularity seems less to do with looks/promiscuity than it did back in my day. I can identify the kids who are trying to be popular much better than I can identify the kids that are actually popular.
I was NOT a popular kid, but I was always liked. I was never bullied, always had a good group of friends, but never had a really strong sense of self. I was a follower. And to this day, I regret that I didn't get the opportunity to discover more of myself in high school (and even into my college years) because I was just tagging along with what my friends wanted to do. My husband was a big geek (still is) but had a solid group of band friends and didn't care where he fit in the social scale of things. He's always had a good path for where he wanted to go, and has continually followed it.
Above anything, popular or not (and I think my kids will be probably be more popular than either my husband and I ever were) - I just want my kids to be true to who they are, and not worry so much about fitting in. I know that's like an impossible task for a kid at middle school age - but when I work with some students, I think YES, this is how I want my kids to be when they are growing up. I don't know if it has something to do with self-confidence or something their parents were able to instill on them, but I when I see it's a possibility - it does give me hope! -
@Anagram: I think some acknowledgement would be great, first of all. I would have hated individual mediation because I definitely had a lot of rage and shame associated with the incidences in elementary school and middle school. I think maybe a unit on what kinds of things constitute bullying would be helpful. I had no vocabulary to understand what was happening (and thus no way of expressing it to my parents or teachers). Based on my experience with kids today I think a lot of it is just impulsiveness on their part, and they literally just don't know what they're doing is hurtful because they just see it as a joke.
Honestly getting my parents involved would be the worst because my mom was a total unstable, overprotective, helicopter parent. A total nightmare for teachers, I'm sure! She did know of a couple incidences and her instinct was to separate me from the other kids during things which caused me anxiety (like class trips, etc.) but that just made me more of a target because I needed special treatment for some indiscernible reason. One random thing was that I got picked on a lot in sports and my parents refused to let me quit, even though I asked every year. But I didn't really know I was being bullied, I just knew I hated sports. It wasn't really until I was in high school that I realized I hated everyone because they picked on me!
ETA: I just wanted to add that I'm not sure how much having an unstable mother played into this. Honestly, once she was out of my house (she moved out when I was 16), my entire mental health did a 180. I often wonder who I would have been as a kid had my parents separated when I was young.
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I was never popular. I was bullied pretty badly in 4th and 5th grade because I had a sudden growth spurt at 9 years old that made me 5'8" (and I never grew again). I also had to change elementary schools 3 times (the last time JUST for 6th grade) and it was really hard because everyone else had grown up together.
I went to a small magnet high school from 7-12th grades and I was unpopular, but had a stable group of friends. I was dealing with the blowback of my 6th grade awkwardness for most of middle school and went into high school with low self-esteem. On top of that, most of my peers at the magnet school were extremely, extremely wealthy and their lifestyles just didn't match my very poor background. It was really hard.
I also struggled with eating disorders because I was perceived as being fat (I wasn't but the popular girls were stiiiiick skinny). As a result, I never dated in high school, which was a big part of most people's experience and left me out of a lot of things. Then again, I was poor so I was always working part-time jobs anyway. More low self-esteem.
My parents were always working so they weren't really involved other than being overprotective and making sure our grades were up to snuff. They considered all the teenage drama and bullying to be transitory and not worth giving a lot of time and attention to.
I wasn't really happy until my senior year when everyone just sorta became friendly with each other. It was a small school, everyone had been together since 7th grade, we were all going off to college and growing into ourselves, so there wasn't any competition anymore. Everyone was just really chill and we had a lot of fun doing senior activities.
My husband on the other hand was pretty middle of the road. He was born and raised in one home and attended the same elementary, middle, and high schools as his friends all the way through, and everyone's parents knew each other and watched out for each other's kids. DH lettered in 4 varsity sports and did a zillion extracurriculars too, so he basically always felt comfortable around his peers. He had a pretty serious girlfriend, too, so he kinda never had any issues. His family is polite to a fault - they personify avoiding the elephant in the room at all times and are the most non-confrontational people ever. So DH has always been unbelievably polite. He would never bully someone and he would never speak unkindly to someone, and no one said anything to him.
So between our experiences, we are very, very, very serious about bullying and being inclusive and kind. We're also trying to give our boys the most stable school experience possible. Both our boys are attending a small daycare that goes from infant through pre-K, and we are looking at sending them to a private school that goes from K-12. Another reason we like this school is because they have a very well known and well established anti-bullying policy. Plus, the kids are in uniforms, the families that attend are a mix of socioeconomic backgrounds, and its decently diverse enough for our not very diverse town. The parents are really involved in the school and the classes are small so the teachers can keep an eye on the kids better.
One major thing for me - and I harp about this on the boards all the time - is this push towards extroversion in schools. Looking back, I can see that so much of my awkwardness and unpopularity as a kid was because I am naturally introverted, but was constantly in situations where being extroverted was rewarded. The extroverts were popular and extroverted activities were always encouraged. As a result, I tried to do things that weren't natural to me and consequently, surprise, I came off as really awkward and weird. And it probably contributed to my popularity issues and certainly my self-confidence.
DS1 is introverted so DH and I really try to let our teachers and caretakers know that. We remind them that he really needs to warm up to situations before he is comfortable and if people get up in his craw or force him to do some group thing he doesn't want to do, he will lash out. DS1 will always have parents who will speak positively about his introversion and advocate for him at school, so I hope that will really help his experience growing up and allow him to be confident and blossom into himself.
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I had an interesting experience with popularity growning up. I am.from a really small town where the school is k-12. I went to preschool and then into k with some close friends. By third grade we were the popular kids. Not really sure why or how that happened. However in 5th grade I befriended a not so popular girl bc I sat by her and she needed my help academically...we inevitably became friends..then in 6th grade the recess lady happened to be my grandma, she didn't let the popular kids get away with thimgs so they "disowned me". My closest friend even accused me of cheating. It was absolutely terrible and it was very hard. In 7th grade I befriended a new girl...she eventually dumped me to hang w the popular kids. I basically went from one small group to another... I was in sports and band and chorus so I had a LOT of acquaintances. I ended up knowing and experiencing a lot of stuff that I would have missed if I'd just been popular.
In the end I'm glad I experienced that. It made me resilient and taught me to not care what others thought. I took that attitude to college and into adulthood. The cliche is that in high school when everyone voted for prom queen and home coming queen I won!! Not bc I was popular in the normal sense it was bc I had such a wide array of friends...
The thing I don't like about my experience and hinders me to this day is That I apparently suck at holding female friendships. I'm always the disposable one and the one that ends up left out or ditched.
For dd I hope she is secure in herself and doesn't get wrapped up in popularity stuff but I also hope that she is better at keeping girlfriends bc it hurts to be disposable in that way.
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I just hope to raise her to be secure so I'm not really worried about it.
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I was part of the popular crowd, small school so you grew up with the same people you graduated with and my circle didn't change much. With his though, just because I was popular didn't mean I didn't get made fun of (a couple guys got suspended for hanging mean signs up about me in high school.) I think the difference was that when you are in a class of 50, most of which you've known since kindergarten, mean kids can play on your emotions since they "know" you well.
It took me until my junior year to really become my own, I stopped caring about what other people thought and made come close friends with the people a class ahead, and just did my own thing. I still was "popular" but in a more "she don't give a fuck" kind of way which made the "mean guys" in my class back off and respect me more. Small towns can be tough but I look back and I had a great time, I was a cheerleader, highly involved in other clubs, 3 of my best friends are my best friends since elementary school and we have a group text with about 8 of us from high school and all our husbands/wives/kids know each other. it's fun.
I would love for my girls to be "popular" in the since I never want them to feel on the outside. I don't care if that is in the poplar sports kids or the theater crew/band crew/etc. I just want them to have a group where they have a good set of friends like I did. I love that my best friends seriously know EVERY guy I dated, they know everything about and me about them.
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hoping my kids have some balance. I already seen DD leaning towards being popular and just hope she maintains a level head and avoids the mean girl syndrome. Hoping the same balance for DS
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I was homeschooled so there wasn't really anything to deal with in school. But I did have a lot of friends in my neighborhood until around 13 years old, and there were definitely popular people we hung out with. I was bullied, and at times was involved in some light bullying (teasing) via peer pressure. I can only hope my kids can stand up for themselves and others, unlike myself, and have the courage to tell me any tough stuff going on with them or their peers.
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I was not popular, but had a core group of great friends and a boyfriend, and generally liked school. I never had to deal with any sort of bullying.
Like others have said, I hope my kids are kind, compassionate people who have a core group of good friends to depend on. I don't take much stock in popularity. I really like all my students, but definitely notice that the most popular ones are often the meanest to their peers. I never want that to be my kids!
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We moved a lot growing up and the last one my junior year of high school was the only one that was super tough. There were tons of (false) rumors about me, bullying, etc. It got so bad that I asked my parents to switch schools. In the end I was ok -- I suppose I ended up being popular, or rather notorious? But I'm sure that period has affected me for the rest of my life (triggered severe anxiety and depression which I was already prone to).
If the same were to happen to my kids, I would take it much more seriously and be more proactive about other options such as homeschooling. My parents just didn't know much about bullying or mental health.
Whether my kids are popular or not, what matters most to me is that they're kind like others have mentioned.
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I was a follower and always well-liked in schools I went to. (I moved around a lot.) I wasn't the most popular but in with crowds that liked to have fun. (Read:victim to peer pressure). I don't have any goals for LO for popularity. I could only hope to guide her as she develops close, supportive, stable friendships, model strength to stand up for herself and for what is right in terms of treatment of others, empathy, be true and confident to who she is- strengths and weaknesses, build up leadership qualities, and find her own healthy passions to pursue. The optimist in me hopes that those kinds of good values (and others) will become what is popular by the time LO hits high school.
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I wasn't popular in school but I had a group of close friends. I never dealt with bullying and was generally happy through school.
I hope the same for DD. I don't necessarily care whether she's popular but I want her to be happy/have friends and avoid being a 'mean girl' (like a lot of popular kids are).
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