So how do you handle it? What does a bully hope to get by bullying? Power. How do you keep the power away from a bully? You don’t give her what she wants, which is usually crying, feeling bad about yourself and sucking up to the bully. You have control over how you respond. You don’t have to feel bad about yourself just because someone wants you to. And you know what’s really cool? If the bully doesn’t get any power from you, she will leave you alone.
Boy . . . Friends?
Now through this whole thing, we have mostly talked about your girlfriends as being your best friends, but we need to back it up a minute. What about friends who are boys?
Before we go any further, let’s set the record straight so we don’t get confused. When we talk about your friends who are boys, we mean boys that you don’t have a crush on and don’t have romantic interests in . . . we’ll call them guy friends. When we talk about the boy you hang out with and have romantic feelings for, a special boy you like and who likes you back . . . we’ll call them boyfriends.
And then there are guys you have a crush on, but they don’t necessarily like you back in that same way. Your crush could be a famous singer who’s never met you or a guy in your math class who doesn’t even know you. Maybe it’s the boy next door who thinks of you as a little kid or the lifeguard you met this summer at the pool. Anyway, it’s a person who gives you “happy” butterflies in your stomach and someone you like to think about being romantic with, someone you want to know more about and someone you might think about a lot. We’ll call them crushes.
It can get pretty confusing because your crush can become your boyfriend and a boyfriend should definitely be a crush. A guy friend can become a boyfriend or a crush and vice versa. So you see, all these friendships can overlap and get all tangled up to the point that you’re not really sure how to define the relationship. That’s okay, too. Nobody is going to give you a test on it. It’s just the lingo we’ll use in this book to try to keep us talking the same language.
Lots of girls have great guy friends. Sometimes it’s easier to talk with a guy friend than it is to talk with your girlfriends. Guys and girls have different points of view on the same question. Guys and girls think differently, too. Something a girl thinks is a huge deal may be hardly worth talking about for a guy, and vice versa. Your guy friends can help you understand the ways boys think (“Boys think?” you say? Contrary to popular belief, they do!) and help put some things in perspective for you. Both girlfriends and guy friends are valuable friends.
Nothing More Than Feelings
There’s a fairly goofy old-school song that goes, “Feelings . . . nothing more than feelings. . . .” Nothing more than feelings? Ha! It’s more like nothing more important than feelings!
Feelings will affect your friendships, your relationship with your parents, your interactions with teachers and your response to your siblings all day every day—especially while your brain is sending you those “Who am I?” messages. The tough thing about feelings is that they can grab hold of you with lightning speed even when it’s not a reasonable feeling based on truth. Based on truth? Here’s what that looks like:
Feelings aren’t bad, but the way we express feelings can be bad. Check your feelings against the truth of what’s happening. That first feeling that sweeps over you may change!
Agree to Disagree
Tolerance. It’s a word that gets tossed around a lot these days. Everyone has a right to her opinion, her own likes and dislikes, and her own ideas. Being tolerant of other people’s opinions doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with them. Tolerance means you put up with things (opinions, beliefs, actions, appearances) that you may not agree with. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have opinions of your own or that you can’t argue your own opinion. It simply means you have to listen to the other side, be open to new ideas and agree to disagree if you don’t find common ground. Learning to agree to disagree is part of learning tolerance and respect.
Tolerance also means that people can behave, dress, speak and look different from you, but you learn to accept them for who they are, even if you don’t like what you see or hear (as long as they are not physically or emotionally hurting you).
All of our differences make up the diversity in the world. Tolerance is accepting the diversity and learning to appreciate it for making the world an interesting place. You’ve probably heard it before, but it’s worth saying again . . . if everyone in the world were the same, the world would be a very boring place! We are good at enjoying the things we have in common with our friends, but we have to learn to respect and appreciate our differences as well as our similarities.
You can respect someone’s opinion without agreeing with it. Learning respect and tolerance can be tough, but it’s important. It helps you keep the peace with people who are different from you. That’s how we can each contribute to peace on a larger scale—in our schools, in our cities, in our countries, even in the world. Not to be corny, but there’s a great song about it: “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. . . .” It’s about tolerance and respect. These are good things to remember when you are building your Girl Power.
What Do You Do with Feelings?
Feelings are a big-time part of friendships. Friends can make us feel happy, comfortable, content and safe. But some friends can give us bad feelings by making us feel jealous, embarrassed, threatened or angry.
What do you do when you have these bad feelings? Do you explode in a fit of angry words? Do you punch something? Or somebody? Do you hold it all inside and erupt like a volcano later on? Do you cry? Put yourself down? Hang your head in shame?
No doubt about it, feelings have to be expressed. Having feelings is not one of those things you have a choice about; how you respond is a powerful thing you can choose.
Okay, let’s start with the punching response. Smacking someone across the face will always make the situation worse. Once the punching starts, everyone totally forgets what they are arguing over. Lots of black eyes, bloody noses and scratch marks. No solutions.
Instead, try sentences like these: