Teaching a “radical alternative” to our students

This year, we started a middle school program that we call "advisory groups." The program is still a work in progress, but the aim is to bring to the minds of middle schoolers, and yes, they have minds, the importance of living by Christian principles, especially the “Golden Rule”, while giving them the tools they need to create and maintain healthy, proper and loving relationships.

Part of the program is an adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s "Owning Up" program. Wiseman is the author of the books "Queen Bees and Wannabes" and "Mean Girls." While not a specifically Christian program, ”Owning Up” does a good job explaining teenage girl behavior and giving techniques for girls to deal with the viciousness, deviousness, and cruelty that quite often manifests itself during these years.

I was reading an article by Amy Wellborn, who writes columns for Beliefnet and Our Sunday Visitor. She quotes Wiseman as saying, "Girls know what's going on, but they don't understand it. They need to define and name what they're experiencing. When girls don't know how to name the behavior, they blame themselves." Wellborn goes on, “In other words, a girl being bullied by other girls often tends to think that she – not the perpetrators – is the problem, and if she can just change or comply with the bully’s demands, the aggression will stop.”

"For Christian parents, Wiseman’s book (Queen Bees and Wannabes) in particular may be helpful and realistic guide to what their daughter might be experiencing -- and believe us when we say that all girls who go to any kind of school are exposed to manipulative aggression by other girls to some degree.”

“But what's missing is the apparently radical alternative (italics mine) of teaching her daughter, from the day she is born, that she is not ever to allow her identity to be defined by others -- not by peers, not by social and cultural forces, and not even by her parents. Her fundamental identity is rooted in the amazing fact that God chose to create her, that he loves her, and that he is better on this earth for wonderful reason, and this earth is a much bigger place than eighth grade."

She could have said this just as well for boys.