Quote:
Originally Posted by education357
I have an 11-year old girl in a summer program who told me she has a "do not talk to" list full of people she hates and when someone annoys her, she adds their name.
She announces to our group: "You have been added to the list. Goodbye!"
When said people try to talk to her and explain what they meant, she just curtly says: "I don't talk to people on "the list." Get away from me."
I was just wondering if said behavior is normal for her age or is it rude even for an 11-year old?
Am I expected to do anything about her list?
I feel like she could easily forward it to everyone at any time, but she probably has another copy of the list somewhere, so forcing her to delete it probably wouldn't do much.
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This is very unusually immature. My daughter saw another child doing this at the age of four (the teacher told me about the originator of the behavior when I was talking to her about a plan to stop it), and she copied it, to my horror. I have seen four and five-year-olds doing it but never an 11-year-old.
In my opinion, there are a couple of things that a counselor could do about this:
1.
Communicate: Bring it out in the open. Speak to the entire group. "I've heard that some campers have lists of friends/not friends, people they talk to.
Lists are immature: if you have opinions, at your age, you should be able to keep them in your head. If you can't remember why you don't want to talk to someone, it probably wasn't a big deal.
Lists are ineffective: if you want to scare people into doing what you want by threatening them with this list, you're going to find that eventually you just won't have friends. If you want to avoid them, just avoid them. No need to walk around announcing it like a three-year-old.
Lists are a little bit creepy, quite frankly: Having a list of people you don't like is a little like a hit list. What is this, practicing for the mafia?
I can't stop you from having a list or acting like a four-year-old, but I CAN tell everyone not to be intimidated by this behavior. Believe me the last person you want to impress is someone who tries to intimidate you by writing your name on a list. In fact, I'd consider it an honor to be on that list. It means I'm not afraid of speaking my mind and other people can't make me do what they want."
2.
Remove the negative: If you see the girl flaunting around the list, go up to her: "Ooooh, can I be on the list??? What do we get? Cake? Oh, just no talking to you? Okay, put me on it. Please! Please! I want to be on the list! It's such an important list to you!" Whine. Beg. Take the wind out of her sails. Encourage everyone to get on her list. It takes away her power. She's eleven and using a list to intimidate people: taking away her power by re-purposing her list is probably the best thing you can do for her.
3.
Insert the positive: Encourage kids to do something positive, like give out "you made me feel good about myself" or "you made my day" stickers on a poster. Every kid can give these out, including List Girl, but nobody can give them to themselves. Bring out
praise for the positive as the way that people interact and use social norms. Every kid gets a poster and other kids can write positive things (no "I" statements, no "but" statements, no "even though" statements) on. This replaces the list as the powerful social document.
Yes the last is a wee bit immature for this age group but it needs to be as unsophisticated and visible as The List.
Good luck. Kids like that are scary. You have to wonder what they will do if they ever get into power somehow.
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