Strong-Willed Child: Bullying Slumber Parties

By Victoria

Originally posted on Healing Victoria Strong

The Strong-Willed Child, chapter 1, p. 16

Remember how Dobson condoned bullying behavior from children yesterday? Well, now we shall see that Dobson raises his children to at least tolerate and possibly even perpetrate such awful behavior. It begins when his (at the time) fifth grade daughter has fourteen girls (classmates) over for a slumber party.

“I met most of them (the daughter’s friends) for the first time that weekend, yet during those seventeen hours together I was able to identify every child’s position in the hierarchy of respect and strength. There was one queen bee who was the boss of the crowd.”

Hierarchy of respect and strength??? Really?? Oh geez… There may be a hierarchy, but labeling it as such is incredibly disingenuous. Okay look, queen bee is just a euphemism for mean girl. This girl is a bully and there’s no excuse for it.

“At the bottom of the list was a harassed little girl who was alienated and rejected by the entire herd. Her jokes were as clever (I thought) as those of the leader, yet no one laughed when she clowned. Her suggestions of a game or event were immediately condemned as stupid and foolish.”

It’s obvious this “harassed little girl” is not his daughter. He doesn’t specify if his daughter is the queen bee or not, but what is abundantly clear is that his daughter is either bullying this girl or standing by and tolerating it while one of her friends bullies this girl. And Dobson has no problem with that.

“Unfortunately, there is a similar outcast or loser in every group of three or more kids (or either sex). Such is the nature of childhood.”

There you go. My daughter is completely absolved of responsibility because “such is the nature of childhood.” And I as her parent am completely absolved of any responsibility here because “such is the nature of childhood.” Wow.

Just to recap, Dobson, what you describe at your daughter’s slumber party is one or two mean girls calling the shots and no one having the nerve to stand up to them. This culminates in one girl in particular experiencing the brunt of the mean girl antics. If you are such a great parent, why is your daughter even friends with such mean girls in the first place? Why isn’t she standing up for this harassed girl? I think you have some real problems on your hand. But you don’t seem to think so. You just use your daughter’s horrible behavior as an excuse to teach parents to basically be bullies in the name of respect, strength and toughness. I’ve got some news for you: no one respects bullies, and that doesn’t change whether the bully is some random kid in elementary school or your own father.