The Mean Girl

So Girl world is so much more complex than boy world, even for a six year old. In boy world, if there is a problem, it's usually settled right then and there with a kick or a tackle, like today Lukas had a little spiff today with one of his friends, they hit and tackled, and were done. Now I am NOT advocating violence, just making an observation about boys and girls.

Now Nikki has been having problems with a girl in the neighborhood who likes to exclude her from EVERYTHING. It's not that they're just not friends but she will make a concerted effort to invite everyone to play, and make sure Nikki knows she is not invited. Nikki was playing with a friend and this girl came up and invited her friend to come and eat popsicles, then turned to Nikki and said "You can't come, we only have three popsicles."

It's not too big of a problem, because first off this girl is ten years old, and Nikki is only six so she won't be a problem normally, just every once in a while when she wants to be a pest. Then Nikki decided to take matters into her own hands. Here is the issue we discovered tonight.

Nikki had decided to hold a summer camp (without telling us). She had created invitations, set up times and dates, and delivered the invitations to two of her friends. Like I said we had no idea that this had happened until one of her friends showed up at the door asking for some clarification on where it was supposed to be held. Now I am not angry about this (well maybe a little but the next bit makes this first bit easier to swallow). What made me angry was the fact that the invitation told the invitees who not to invite, or even tell. Basically Nikki wrote on the invitation "Don't tell (Name of Mean girl) and (name of other girl)."

We sat her down and had a good talk with her, and will have another good talk with her tomorrow. We essentially told her that she just became the mean girl. What came as a relief is she instantly realized what she had done. The thing about Nikki is she (normally) is very sensitive to other people's feelings and is very inclusive. Here usual mantra is The More Friends, the Better!

You know that show from the 90's, Rugrats? There is a character called Angelica, and she is pretty much the mean, selfish, older sister and makes everyone's life miserable. Nikki knows how bad this little girl is, so whenever she is misbehaving, we say "Nikki you're acting just like Angelica" and she stops immediately what she is doing.

What I am trying to say (and probably doing a real bad job of it) is that Nikki made a bad choice, and she really wishes she could take it back. Kara and I just spent the last 20 minutes visiting the parents of the kids who received the invitations and trying to do some type of damage control.  On the plus side, Kara met a new friend!