Children can be mean. Girls can be down right cruel! I didn't want to believe it, that the snippiness, need to fit in and Queen Bees rising starts earlier and earlier, but I'm afraid I witnessed it first hand.

I love that my daughter is a little bit naive compared to some of her friends. She's only just 11 and I want to preserve her innocence for as long as I can. But last year it started. Her last year of elementary school. We are lucky enough to live in a community with neighborhood schools, so the kids all come from relatively equal backgrounds. There is diversity and it's embraced -- thankfully! All the girls looked the same to me on the first day of school. They were happy, giggling, playful little 9 and 10 year olds.

By December, I swear some had horns, others were carrying pitchforks, and a few had even learned how to spit fire. I lost count of the number of nights I sat with my daughter in my arms as she cried about kids making fun of her clothes (which came from chain retailers mind you), or because someone was vandalizing her desk. I negotiated many a conversations where my daughter and her closest friends tried to make sense of another child's uncannily cruel behavior at lunch, or when another pulled my daughters pants down on the playground. . . .

But the toughest part of all of this was keeping my judgments to myself. I try, truly try, not to form judgments at all, but when it's your own child who is being hurt, that is a much tougher battle. But I do believe that parents need to be authentic. Children know when you are telling a tale or when you are asking them to behave in a way that is contrary to how you feel or act as their parent and role model. So these talks often required that I "do my own work" first.

I would have to regain clarity about why people behave with such hatred and venom. I would have to put myself as close to "in the other person's shoes" as I could. And I had to practice forgiveness. Then and only then could I give my daughter and her friends sound advice.

We worked through seeing that those who lash out are acting through their pain. We strategized about how to send them light and love without subjecting ourselves to their negative whimsy. We figured out why we attract certain types of people into our lives. It was exhausting sometimes.

All in all, I know it's just the beginning. Middle school started for my daughter and her friends this year. I'm truly not sure how kids, particularly girls, survive these tenuous years where everyone is trying to find their "place" in the world. But I do know that I will continue to approach my daughter's issues with compassion and understanding -- hoping that someday, she will pass them along to her daughter in the same manner. Maybe someday the cycle of hatred and judgment can be broken and replaced with more and more people who are willing to take a step back and then move forward with compassion.

There is no right or wrong way to raise our children, but we must be authentic. We must practice what we preach and we must behave as we want our children to behave.