When I was in college, I was in a sorority. It was my first experience in a women's group and I didn't know what to expect. In my sorority there were about 120 young women (I think these days, my sorority has closer to 200 women because the number of sororities has dwindled). It's supposed to be a sisterhood but quite often, there were quite a few arguments and some ladies that just didn't get along. Perhaps it's as simple as there being too many "queen bees" in a nest. There were power struggles, disputes about guys, stealing, people eating other people's food, revenge, the whole gamut of crazy stuff and not to mention the gossip.
I almost feel like this is the norm when you get a large group of women together. I've seen the same kind of things going on in the mom groups that I belong to. Women get catty and often they get mean. Now, granted it's a little bit more subtle, as we get older. It's more of the passive aggressive kind of stuff. After having kids, you'd think that we'd be better people but many of us are not. I think I'm a better person after having children and I try to teach my children not to be mean, but sometimes I wonder if it will work. After all these years and all the different parenting books/techniques that have been introduced, it almost seems like we as a society are no better than we were 30 years ago. In fact it almost seems worse with the introduction of the internet into the picture. People still get terrorized.
I mean really people let's get a life and act a little bit more mature. In my mom's group alone, a couple really surprising incidents happened. One mom-- a great mom that is completely involved and absolutely nice person was treated rudely despite all the work she put into the club. Another mom-- a smart, amazing, fantastic mom that fosters so much imagination in her children, received horribly mean anonymous letters. It's all so petty and annoying.
So STOP!! Make a decision to make it stop with you and remember that the bystander is almost as guilty as the bully.
