K started another week of dance camp today. She had a great time when she did it a few weeks ago, even though there were only four kids in the class. Today when I picked her up she looked like she was going to cry. When I asked her what was wrong she told me one of the girls was really nasty to her. She pointed out the girl to me, I wasn't sure what to do.I know K wasn't lying, I could tell by her face she was truly upset. What I wanted to do was punch the little monster in the face. What I did was ask her name, she looked a little nervous and told me. I took K by the hand and walked out the door. In the car I told her that sometimes girls are mean, she should know that it doesn't matter though. K is an amazing kid who is good at everything and there will always be someone who has a problem with it. I told K she should either ignore girls like that and focus on the ones who are her friends or she can call the bullies on their BS. Either way I would be proud of her.
It's funny that she would pick the actions of one girl to focus on, there were 11 other girls in the class who were nice to her. I don't want her to grow up like I did, feeling inferior to anyone and letting some stupid girl make her feel bad. It's flooring to me that it can even happen to someone like her. Aside from being beautiful, she's smart and has many, many talents. She's athletic too, all the things that I was not. She has no problem talking to people she doesn't know yet she still can let someone insignificant in her life get her down. I've tried to stop this kind of thing but I guess it's something that has to be learned. I took her to get ice cream and we came home and talked it out. Then we went to karate. Seriously if she knows that she's strong enough to kick some serious butt maybe these dumb girls won't get to her as much. I also wanted her to take out her anger in a productive way. She was great in class, so I guess today's incident was good for something.
I had it quite differently. When the other girls were mean to me or made fun of me, I had no support. I would go home to an empty house and have to sit with it. I didn't have any talents to balance out my insecurities. I didn't have a portfolio of gorgeous pictures to look through when I needed it. I was left pretty much alone with hours to think about the events of the day. Hours to let all the words sink in. Words like "ugly" stayed with me for years. So when I hear K let anything like that stay with her for even a second I freak out, forgetting that she isn't me. She has the tools and the support to deal with it. She'll never feel like I did, not because she's gorgeous or musically gifted but because she will never be left alone with only her negative thoughts for company.
As for camp, I was shipped off at a young age to sleep-away camp for the whole summer, not because it was something I wanted or my mother thought I would enjoy, it was to avoid having to find something for me to do during the early hours of the day. K knows that she's in her dance camp because she loves to dance. She knows that I will be there early to pick her up. She knows that if I come and get her tomorrow and hear about any more bad things from that girl things will be taken care of. She knows that she will never be left alone with bad feelings.
Not even if that's what she wants.
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