The Mean Girl vs The Doormat

When Molly was a toddler she was what many parents call 'spirited'.  She knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to ask for it, and if that failed demand it.  She lead like a pint sized Queen with her favourite ECE workers doting on her like loyal subjects.  I remember her entering junior kindergarten surprised, and almost offended that her teacher refused to put a 'fancy' braid in her hair the way her favourite pre-school teacher did, daily.  Another time, at around age three or four, a child at a swimming lesson jumped in the pool to retrieve a pool noodle (no he couldn't swim) because Molly had told him too.

Image via Giphy

For a while we were worried we had a blossoming Mean Girl, Regina George type on our hands.  We focused our lessons on politeness, manners, and kindness based leadership skills.  Important school programs like Roots of Empathy and Friendship Circle have helped develop a fierce sense of kindness in Molly.  She is the first person to want to help someone who is hurt, lonely, or just needs a friend.  She makes me so proud with the amazingly sweet person she is.

In Senior Kindergarten we noticed the impact of some cliquey girl stuff going on, and how Molly as a people pleaser was miserable.  There were a few lessons learned on standing up for herself, and speaking out for herself and others.  With all of the anti-bullying teaching going on, I thought my kids got it and that we were over this hurdle.

 Kids are pretty black and white when it comes to rules, whether they're in a game or social.  The other day Molly mentioned that in order for something to be bullying it had to happen every day.  Bullying is also pestering, exclusion, teasing, threatening, and so much more cloak and dagger than we can cover in a simple junior school curriculum - no matter how many pink shirts you wear for anti-bullying.  It can happen once in a blue moon, making it unpredictable, confusing, and an early marker for toxic relationships.

via The Knot

Last night Molly was in tears for an hour before bed because another kid was 'annoying her' and wouldn't leave her alone despite numerous calm and polite requests for this kid to back off.  Her solution was to offer them money to leave her alone. After I forbade her to buy her way out of a problem in a weird self-created extortion scenario she began to panic about conflict, people not liking her, and shared a jumble of other anxiety riddled fears.

I want to teach my kids to be resilient and problem solvers, but I don't want them to feel unheard.  As a former sufferer of extreme middle school bullying it's tempting to go Mama Bear and bulldoze.  Here's hoping we can constructively work to guide our kids to figure out ways to tell people to leave them alone that aren't rude or bullying themselves and that don't involve emptying piggy banks or faking sick from school.

At the End of the Day

On New Years Day 2013, I came across a great blog entry by the Bloggess where she tracked the strangest search results that led people to her blog.  After this I started keeping a closer eye on the random things that bring people to Multiple Momstrosity.  In 2013 I saw nearly 50,000 visitors and I'm so happy for the support and connection with many families proving the Mommy Wars (or parent wars) is just a bunch of bogus media hoopla.  I hope that many of you are regular visitors and enjoy my take on life with two plucky toddlers, although I still assume that many people stumble across this blog by accident in the search of other things (like porn) because Google can't predict everything we are searching for*.

Below in bold are the strangest search terms that have led people to my blog in the past six months.


Flute poems for mom - In  grade four and five students in my school were all made to learn the recorder.  The thing about the recorder is that even if you can play it well, it still sounds like it's being played by tone deaf gnomes who are hell bent on giving you a migraine.  I never learned to play the recorder beyond the most basic notes. I just mimed it in class, because even at age 10 I knew it was the worst.  The recitals we produced as a result of these is what my imagination comes up with when I think of flute poems for mom. Searchers were sent to my post on Terrible Mother's Day Cards I had sent to my mom as a child.

How to Emasculate a Man -  When I saw this search item the first time (it's shown up a few times), I thought about both the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and images an evil revenge plot to give someone their "comeuppance".   This led vigilantes to my post about the TV Show Modern Dads and people who don't respecting men taking paternity time.

Young Woman Sufficiently fat - Maybe someone was doing a paper on Rubenesque women, or perhaps they were trying to pull a Mean Girls on their own personal Regina George.  It took seekers to my post on BMI assessment report cards in schools.

My toddler popped a stress ball in his mouth - I can confidently say that anyone who typed this into their search engine got exactly what they were looking for on a gold platter.  Here I talk about what happens when Molly attempts to eat a stress ball (in the shape of a globe) while strapped into her car seat.


In addition, for my year end round up, below are three of my most popular posts:

A shopping list for life during your first week as a new parent.

Vampire Jack the biting king.

Exploring the Twin Connection.

I was nominated for VoiceBoks Top 50 Hilariously Funny Parent Bloggers - If you can please take the time to vote for my blog http://voiceboks.com/top-50-hilariously-funny-nominated-parent-bloggers-2014/- Just click and vote for me (Multiple Momstrosity)

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*An acquaintance of mine posts entertaining updates on Facebook and Twitter about Google Autocomplete and other targeted algorithm advertising failures and how these follies prove to him that robots are still a long way off from uprising and taking over the world.  For example: The tips I got on how to roll a joint from Google when I was looking to get a recipe on roasting pumpkin seeds further proves that Google doesn't know me.