A Way Through Blog

When Girls Eat Lunch in the Bathroom

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 05:08 PM PDT

 
One of the most heart-breaking stories I hear when I work with girls struggling with friendship problems is when I learn about a girl who eats her lunch in the bathroom at school. 

Hiding

A girl who eats alone in the bathroom is hiding.  She’s hiding from being called names.  She’s hiding from ugly rumors. She’s hiding from being humiliated.

Invisible

Girls who hide are girls who often slip between the cracks.  These girls become very good at being invisible.  Their coping mechanism is to disappear.  They shrink into themselves and try not to get noticed.

Helping a Hider

Girls who don’t feel safe from emotional bullying at school are girls we have let down.  And it doesn’t have to be this way.

The best gift you can give a “hider” is a two-fold message:

 1. You are not alone.

A girl feels alone in her exclusion.  She comes to believe that she is the only one with these friendship problems.  She thinks there must be something wrong with her. What seems obvious to us as adults is painfully missing in a girl’s perspective:  that all girls feel insecure in their friendships at some time.

The journal of School Psychology indicates that over 150,000 children stay home from school each year due to relational aggression.  Most of these are girls.  By letting a girl know that many others have struggled with (and solved) painful friendship problems, you offer a new perspective of possibility.

2.  You have choices.

It’s so important for a girl to be heard and to be understood.  That’s where our deep sympathy of her problem needs to end.  At this point, we have more to offer a girl when we no longer see her problem as a problem.  A girl who is being mentored by an adult coming from a place of strong connection to his/her source with a laser focus on finding what feels good is a girl who will learn to solve her problem quicker.

Showing a girl that she has choices is showing her how to move from being stuck to becoming an independent problem solver.  As adults, we cannot help her see choices when we are stuck in her problem with her.  We must stay out of the drama and pain and offer an objective view of problem solving.

I’ve found that exploring choices together (in response to emotional bullying) and letting the girl choose one that feels comfortable to her works well.  For example, some girls will choose to ignore the bullying, some will choose to speak up, some will choose to keep it light.  All of these can be great options.  And a girl will only become aware of them if she is able to see that she has choices.

Coming Out of the Bathroom

When a girl learns to assert herself as the one in charge of her feelings and her friendships, she emerges from the bathroom.

© 2010 A Way Through, LLC

Female friendship experts Jane Balvanz and Blair Wagner publish A Way Through, LLC’s Guiding Girls ezine. If you’re ready to guide girls in grades K – 8 through painful friendships, get your FREE mini audio workshop and ongoing tips now at www.AWayThrough.com