My daughter wants to be friends with the mean girl

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It may be something going on with the child , sometimes children can sense when adults dislike them. She may be taking it out on your child because she can't get back at you. Maybe you should try a sleep over of some type.

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A mommy who lives with autism parenting a little boy with Down syndrome and autism that is her world. and expecting a new little angle.

Your daughter is probably persisting because she wants to be accepted. Anyway, it's likely this other child also has some sort of emotional problem, either organic, due to lack of discipline or something else.

There was a particularly bratty little girl who lived on our street once and about 10 years later, it came out that her father, who was the sheriff, had been molesting her. In the context of that, a lot of her behavior had started to make sense. There was also reason to believe he was violent towards his wife.

Anyway, speak to the parents of this girl, and also speak to the other parents in the group when their children participate in the bullying.

came acrosss discussion as i am in similiar situation. my daughter is now 9. when she first met with her mean friend she was 3. they were best friends for about 3 years. relationship i never approved as friend was always the one diciding what how how they will do and any proposition from my daughters side would be rejected. at some point i could no longer stand this and suggested my husband that we try to limit their interactions. the friend would nit play with any other girl but only my daughter (at that time).
from kindergarden they went to school - same class and i was so happy that we could agree with afterschool that they are in different groups to keep them appart. my friend got new friends and so does the friend. the friend is now best friends with another girl and they dont play with any other girl only if they dont have choice. my daughter would be asked for play dates by her parents if the other friend is not in town or cant (second choice). and story will be always the same. my daughet will come home heart broken. next day my daughter would run to her to continue where they were yesterday and girl would pretty much ignore her. while with other girl she would energetic and overly happy how good was playdate etc.
tried to avoid. tried other friends. my husband even attempted to speak to girls parents and even he no longer promotes playdates.
from the very beginning i believed that what i need to work on is on my own daughter. there are mean girls all over the place ehether kid is 3, 5, 9 years old or 18 or 36. no matter what she will meet various kind of people through her life and we cant fix them. whatI can do is to prepare my daughter making her stronger and showing her whats good and whats bad - strengtheing her self esteem and being the one who decided who is worth her friendship.
but guess i havent succeeded or dont know the right ways to do so. as said at age of 9 she is still having this link with the girl and still wants to play with her, despite how bad she feels after. yesterday i had a long chat with her after i found notes in her schoolbag that her ex friend need to be seperated from her current best friend. Its heartbreaking to say but on the note there were also word *death*. i am worried whats happening in my daughters head. it is also not unusual when we have fights she tells me she wished i am dead. i know she doesnt mean it. it just comes out and she cant control her emotions.
when i ask my daughter how can i help - she says the only way i can help is to arrange playdates.
what shall i do? be stubborn and say NO? support her and go against my believes?

I noticed that even for typical kids, SK and Grade 1 can be challenging as girls start to form cliques. There is always that "type" who will get all the girls to go against one girl and make her feel left out. It can take a real toll on self esteem, because no matter how you explain it, they are just too young to understand. They come home thinking that they are not good enough. My son who has ASD, is often alone and it if it weren't for relatives and being able to visit now and then...well you get the picture. For my daughter, we put her in a new school at Grade 1 and she just came home in tears almost every day. It seemed that a lot of the girls were mean. I tried talking to the teacher and it perplexed me for awhile but eventually I came to the conclusion that she really was interested in my daughter's well-being. So, I pulled her out of this particular school. Her first day at her new school was awesome and she was happy for once. She had made a couple of friends and the teacher was very open and concerned for her well being. What a difference. The reason I took such drastic measures was because I suffered through bullying and being left out when I was a kid. All I wished for at that time was to be able to change schools but it just wasn't possible.

That's so sad to read! I guess that "mean girl's" gotta get it from somewhere

I would think that there probably isn't much that you can do besides protect her by keeping her away from this girl.

I so wish that my mother had protected me from bullies at that age. I can remember a specific incident at age 5 where a girl kept walking by and pinching me. I didn't know what to do, so I told my mother. My mothers response was that this girl was trying to be my friend and that I should be nice to her (talk about dysfunctional!). So I did. I ignored her pinching and went out of my way to try to be her friend. She ended up being in and out of my life all through elementary school. She was the first person I knew that got left back and her siblings were the first people I knew that were doing and talking about drugs to me. Thanks mom!

I was never diagnosed when I was young but perhaps this perspective will help others?

I found, then and now, that as a girl who enjoys video games and doesn't like to be touched or hugged, having girl friends when I was little didn't really appeal to me. I liked to play at swords and run around, chase animals and catch frogs, read and play board or video games, and ride my bike. I wasn't as good at the imaginary games girls played and the subtle levels of social interaction necessary for many girl games were beyond me. On the rare occasion I did get asked to play by another little girl, I was often cast in the role of the evil stepmother or villain in their game. I didn't see anything wrong with that at the time, since I didn't want to be a princess or whatever anyway.

Most of my friends were boys growing up. This was helpful to me in many ways. We played active games that didn't involve any light touch or talking (tag, street hockey, video games, water balloon fights, general cavorting and getting lost outside lol), but I also got sort of protected by them from the mean girls and some of the mean boys. The girls wouldn't dare approach me when the boys were there, and the worst I ever had to deal with from them was being called a tomboy at a young age.
Some of the boys tried to tease me or pick fights with me when I was very young and they weren't afraid to hit girls yet, but I hit back, honestly; so that didn't last long. Boys don't hold grudges like girls do, I think.

It doesn't sound pretty, but bullying is something all kids have to deal with unless they are that perfect, popular kid. Even then, I suspect they catch something of it. My advice? Don't teach your child it is wrong to defend herself. She will grow up confused about what relationships and respect should be. She may even get herself into a bad relationship with a man because she learned that "ignoring bullies makes them stop." It doesn't. Not being easy prey makes a bully stop. If your child learns how to defend themselves respectfully at an early age, they will be more confident and have healthier relationships their whole life.

Storytime (for the masochistic or obsessive 3am readers! lol)
I was different, so the bullying never really stopped. With each new group of kids I encountered in school life there was a new bully; or two or three. I learned young that if you don't rise to their taunts but give them a warning or get them out of their comfort zone early they will leave you be. When I was little this sometimes meant just saying to them, "You seem to not like me. Why is that? Did I hurt your feelings?" They didn't know what to do about that. Asking a bully questions puts them on the defensive instead of the offensive. They don't know how to react to honest and open questions. If it got physical as a result of that, I always hit back, and always in front of other kids so they all saw I didn't hit first. Little kids don't hit hard or well so I never got hurt and by the time I was old enough for a fight to be a serious issue, I already had a reputation for being an honest kid who would fight back and hard if anyone picked on me, so mostly no one did.

It's when the bullies start picking on your few friends that things get sort of tough. OR, when the smarter bullies start using the outcasts of their own group as fodder to try and hurt you. That happened to one girl I didn't even know when her bully friend started some hurtful rumors about a lesbian relationship between she and I in order to hurt her friend and me at the same time. On that occasion, I called out the girl bully in front of about 30 students (I was a freshmen in high school at this point) and asked the mean girl why she would hurt her friend in such a way since it so obviously bothered her to be thought of as having a "lezzy crush on the weird girl?" The bully acted like she was going to start a fight but backed down when I didn't show any signs of fear. The bully's friend was terrified of the bully and crying, though. I bet the friend was one of the little girls who got teased and didn't defend herself when she was little. She didn't know what to do to protect herself except attach herself to the strongest thing around, the bully.

Wow. I had not intended to say all that! Um,... imaginary internet forum cupcakes with sprinkles on top for anyone who has made it this far!! LOL

Oh, and eventually the boys taught me how to play imaginary games, too; so I never missed out on the socializing really. I met my husband playing Dungeons & Dragons at his mum's house when I was 15 years old! He's still my best friend. <3
And I ran into that girl bully later in life and she told me that she had changed and that she was sorry she was so mean in school. She's actually a really sweet lady and has kids of her own now.

Everyone is just people. I think Aspie kids know that deep down and that's why we get so confused when folks behave evilly towards others without provocation. The hardest part is learning that it's not you they don't like, so nothing you can do will change it. You didn't do it wrong, and you can't correct who another human being is. They have to decide to correct that themselves, and how. It's not like math or spelling.

... but that could be really hard to teach a child who is undergoing behavior mod for the things normal people aren't comfortable with. "If you make this face at this time, then people will like you!" I, personally, don't agree with the theories of most behavioral treatment for kids with Autism or AS these days. But I'm part of that old school where "Autism" didn't exist when we were young and kids were either normal or ret*ds. If you looked normal and could talk then you just weren't applying yourself in school when you got bad grades or didn't make friends; especially if you happened to be a near genius in some school topic or other.

MagsMorrigan, I'm bobbing my head up and down like some kind of demented dashboard dolly.

The only thing I'll say to disagree with you is: DON'T teach your kid to hit. It worked back in tour day-- as a freshman, I put a stop to repeated rape threats by looking the young man in question dead in the nose and saying, deadpan, "Try it, Motherf***er, and I'll kill you."

In 1993, it brought the problem (also hallway shoving, locker slamming, and et cetera) to a screeching halt. It probably helped that I read books about war, ran around in camo and combat boots, and carried a 40-pound backpack that could have had ANYTHING in it (and that my uncle was the local fight-picking parking-lot baddie, and thus the whole family had a rep, though I didn't actually have anything of his temperament).

In 2003 (or 2013), it would have gotten me thrown out of school (and possibly into prison). With all the awareness about bullying (and all the zero tolerance policies, at least here in the States), hitting back will turn the system into a definite enemy rather than a neutral entity or potential help.

If it looks like it's pushing your daughter back into her shell, you can try removing her from this little brat's environment-- but there will be other little brats. She's a deified little product of her piece of s**t environment-- her mother was probably the same kind of cruddy human being, or else a victim who's just SOOOO GLAD not to see that happen that she doesn't have the spine or the knowledge to stand up to her little twerp's behavior.

The kid will pay for it later in life. Those kinds of people often get far-- and then they fall really, really hard, and oftentimes don't get up. Shame. There are a lot of them.

Hard as it sounds, she's going to have to learn to deal with it sometime. It might as well be now, because it will be more vicious, more insidious, and more dangerous when she gets older. I don't know what to tell you to do-- I was that victim kid and I had my best luck with ignoring the bullies and playing alone where they couldn't find me as most other kids were in their camp and anything I did or said to turn the tables on them was turned back against me.

Trying the suggestion of making a friend of the child might work. I doubt it, given what you've said about the mother's attitude. I know my grandma tried it for my sake and it absolutely and completely backfired-- but the difference there was that I didn't want to be friends with those girls in the first place. I wanted what they had-- acceptance and all-- but I wanted it on my terms and thought the things they did were stupid and dull.

I ended up being pretty happy with my imaginary friends and my little handful of bedwetters, fundamental Christians, developmentally delayed welfare kids, and other outcasts. I actually got a call from one of the fundie girls I ran with in grade school the other day-- though we've spoken only twice in 10 years (the last time we saw each other we were each others' bridesmaids), we just found we still have a lot in common and are rekindling a 25-year-old friendship.

Bottom line: Don't teach her that she has to take it, or let her learn that it's all her fault (unless of course your goal is to have a kid that does everything in her power to "look NT" and becomes very good at it no matter how miserable it makes her; if that's your goal then the "your fault" approach works like a dream-- AS chicks are notorious for being mimetic wonders).

Not saying you would, just-- It's one approach though one I despise.

Anyway-- bottom line, don't let her learn that that's what life is if you're different. That was the lesson that put me on the suicide ward. Other than that, it will hurt and you will both hate that, but she will find her own niche and be OK in the end.