If you say the words “girl drama” or “girl problems” right now, I will run away and hide. Forever.
You probably know exactly how I feel. Especially if you’re a School Counselor who is sent the teary-eyed little girls who can’t seem to break the mean streak.
I’m deep in the trenches of 3rd grade girls who request to see me and want to tell me everything that they’re so-called friend(s) did and said. The faces. The eyes. The talking behind the back. The taking friends away. The running away. The “spying.” The mean and the not-so-mean words.
Well, I had heard enough. I decided to host an intervention.
I invited (actually, I made them come, but whatever) all girls involved in the ongoing problems in any sort of way. I set up in a classroom and they brought their lunches.
This is what I brought with me:
Then, I gave them each a “Think before you speak” card to help remind them of the words they use.
I was really prepared and I was really hopeful. The thing about interventions is that they don’t always work. Sometimes the people you’re doing the intervention for don’t want to change or don’t see the problem.
Well, my intervention was a big, fat failure.
The nine little girls sitting before me during my intervention stared complacently and contributed nothing. They gave me looks that said, “I know this lady ain’t talkin’ to me!”
And, I really knew the intervention had failed when the very next day, three girls filled out separate slips to see the counselor, and when I pulled them all together to talk, they told me the problem was they thought one of the girls had called another one of the girls a “turd” at recess.
No, I’m not even kidding. I had pulled them from class so they could tell me someone might have said the word “turd.” I almost told them to get out of my room.
Instead, I created this. From now on, when they feel the need to run to me and complain about things they aren’t willing to change, they will fill out a Problem Solving Report on their own time – recess. No more class time. When they fill one out, they will turn it into me and when I have time to read them over, I will decide if it needs to be processed further or not.
The report takes pieces from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) to help them develop the skills they need to handle their own problems AND see their own part in it.
So far, no reports have been filled out. I guess the girls have decided that none of the problems are “big” enough to report anymore!
Oh, peaceful waters, please wash over me! :)
