mean girls

2 things I'm obviously admitting:
1) There are 2 sides to every story.
2) My daughter can have a strong personality and I have seen her direct others during their play ie: you be the doctor, You be the teacher, you say this... etc etc

But:

on the way to school today, my daughter, who typically LOVES school started saying, "I don't want to go, I just want to stay home with you.  My first thought...Oh no, just when we are moving her up to 4 days a week because of my new work schedule.

"Why" I ask.

"Because", she says, "Nasty girl said HAHAHA to me and told me that I couldn't play with her."  (note: she actually said the name of Nasty girl but I don't feel like it's appropriate to share)

Now, because of the above reasons, I thought it was necessary to see if there was a precursor to the statement.

answer:  "She said my new hair cut was ugly and no one could be my friend anymore."   (sidenote, A. did have her bangs cut a few days ago, none of her other hair because she wants to grow it out to look like her best friend R."

I fought every urge in my body to tell her to go and cut that girl's hair into a truly ugly haircut and tell her no one wanted to play with her.  Instead, I went with, "some girls say mean things and the best thing to do is prove that they aren't going to hurt your feelings.  You are a smart and beautiful girl that has plenty of friends to play with and people that love you."

"But, then Nasty girl told follower girl not to come over and play at my house and not to play mermaids with me anymore."  (We had recently talked to follower girl's mom about scheduling a play date)

And, my heart broke a little more.  Looks like we are going to need 2 pairs of scissors for ugly hair.

Again, I didn't say that, I went with the more correct thing.  "What did you do?"  I walked away but then no one came up to play with me.  But, I wasn't a tattletale." (aahhhh... another conversation that we've had in the past few weeks is coming back to confuse and haunt us.)

So, here is the question... Bullying is such a hot topic right now.  There has always been bullying but now there are even more ways to bully, texting, facebook, the list goes on and on.  I think its even more important to start educating and teaching coping skills now.  But, what is the dividing line between tattletale and actually telling an adult when you feel sad and hurt.  Shouldn't I encourage her to talk to an adult to help her with her feelings?

Together, A. and I decided that she would ask her teacher to help her find someone else to play with when her feelings were hurt.  Then she wasn't tattling but she wasn't walking away by herself feeling sad either.  That was the plan at least.  I don't know what will actually happen except, someone may have to restrain me from cutting mean girls hair!