Good girls, not mean teens [“...girls use cell phones to deliver hateful text messages”]

HOW TO MAKE a mean girl: Begin with an adolescent girl, preferably young. Add one or more movie clips on ferocious female behavior (excerpts from "Mean Girls" or "Thirteen" work well). Blend until girl is saturated, then place in social setting with other girls and let sit. Bullying behaviors should appear quickly.

“Female physical violence is often, if not always, preceded by verbal bullying.”

Who'da thunk it!? What a pile of cow-flop!

The 'physically-aggressive' years for kids, male and female, are from the 5th to 9th grades. It's one of the ways that the pecking order is formed along with intellect and social status. It is the only time young males can witness young women grappling like banshees in public.(Later in adulthood, many males will pay to view this behavior even if staged.) By the time they reach high school, the process is nearly completed and the 'physical' aspects of aggression are left for the social misfits. Most end up in the criminal justice system... or the NBA. The verbal aspects of 'aggression' are carried with us to the grave. It's an artform when combined with speed and intelligence.

On Friday, we had a female student jump over the stair railing to attach another female student. The kids called her "superman." [I generally use the term "young lady" inreference to our students. The term doesn't apply here.]

Also, most of our "young ladies" (6th- through 8th-graders) are non-violent. However, many (by no means all) of them are verbally spitefully mean to their classmates. It's typical of the age, but it can be breath-taking in its viciousness.

It's a right of passage.

Best kid fight I saw was in 6th grade. It went on for a good half hour. Multiple forehead knots, bloody lips and bloody noses. Two guys toe to toe till it ended in a standing draw.

Best girlfight was in the 7tth grade. Started in the girlsroom and spilled out into the hall. Black eye suffered by one of the combatants. Both were attractive, popular girls fighting over a boy. Lucky guy.

My only kid fight was in the 7th grade. Took one punch to the mouth and returned favor to the guys nose. Ended up in head-locks on the pavement.

Confine adolescents in a public center of learning with a natural instinct to compete and this is just a necessary bi-product of the maturing process.

I know that this period of time was the most miserable during my daughter's entire life. She was tall for her age and developed early - she bore the brunt of many unkind words for nothing more than how she looked - how God made her. For a while she came home almost every day and begged me to put her in private school. I almost did, but I asked her to stick it out through the first part of the year and see if she couldn't find a friend or two. I supported her here at home and was involved in her activities at school and alerted the school as to what was going on. She didn't eat in the school cafeteria from 5th - 8th grade because they would throw food at her. One of her teachers allowed her and some friends to eat in her classroom - which usually was not allowed. She focused on her academics and found for friends other girls who did the same.

Today she is prettier than most models, gets told all the time that she looks like Grace Kelly. It was very hard for her then, but she found some friends and they are, to this day, still the closest of friends. She has developed a strong sense of right and wrong and empathy for others who find themselves in the same sitation she had to overcome. I hated to see her so hurt, but sometimes when we don't allow our kids to overcome adversity, we rob them of an opportunity to grow.

Most of the girls (there were some boys) who were so mean to her did not go to college or dropped out if they did. A couple of the girls got pregnant and dropped out of high school. One of the girls came to her after they were in high school and apologized for her behavior. They are friends today.

Amanda's in the top 3% of university students and about to graduate with honors from Texas A&M. She will be headed to one of the best graduate degree program in the fall. She has blossomed into an accomplished and beautiful young woman. I am blessed beyond measure.

I read this on the Globe's editoral page this morning. I would like to cancel that rag, but it is the best way I can think of to take the pulse of the raging Lefist mindset here in the "enlightened" Northeast.

My sisters and I were put through a convent high school by our parents. There was no discussion. No fighting, no swearing, no lashing out. Heaven help the teenaged girl who thought she needed to express angst. This was during the Vietnam years. The nuns didn't care about the student's views, only about academics and achievement. In a school of nearly six hundred girls, there was ONE girl rumoured to be "fast". I was reminded of this just the other day at the local McDonald's. The afterschool crowd came in and a little girl (4-5 yrs. old) was with her mother. This tiny little girl was wearing a black fishnet top and low rider pants. The nuns who taught me would have beat the stuffing out of the mother of that child. The convent school I attended no longer exists. I was protected during my most vunerable years, what's to become of the little girl in the fishnet?

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