Does a pecking order mentality enter into things?
CP: That often happens in cliques — you don’t tease the people above you because it will jeopardize your position, you tease the people below you in order to maintain your position. And most schools abandon kids to their own youth groups without providing some kind of salient presence or advice on how to communicate with and treat each other. ML: What are some clues parents can look for to detect whether their kid is the picker or pickee? CP: If parents wait for their kids to tell them if they’ve either been a participant of or a victim of social cruelty, they will never be told, because the code of the school yard is you don’t tell anybody. Kids assume that adults don’t know, don’t care, and can’t do anything about it. And if you ask a kid what their parent thinks, they often say their parent hasn’t a clue. Around the age of 9 or 10, parents should declare something like: “We know that you are entering into a period over the next few years where people are sometimes going to be mean
