Jocks, geeks and freaks

Understanding your child’s tribe

By Janis Hashe

“Humans are tribal animals, with a tendency to arrange themselves in small groups around dominant males and females—much like a group of monkeys in the trees. The fundamental element of human organization is a local and tribal group…”

—Peter Ravn Rasmussen,
from his essay “‘Nations’ or ‘States’: an attempt at definition”

Although technologically your middle school- or high school-age child’s world might be light years from what yours was, one thing remains constant: Call them “groups,” “tribes” or “cliques,” most kids are touched by them in some way, either by inclusion or exclusion. Their significance in the lives of kids is evidenced by the number of books, movies and TV shows that have dealt directly with the subject—from The Breakfast Club and Freaks and Geeks to the new fall show, Glee, in which one school’s jocks and cheerleaders are at odds with the “losers and weirdoes” who join the glee club.

Paula Parnagian is a diversity and conflict specialist who works with school systems and students all over the United States. “When I first talk to school administrators about this, they’ll say, ‘Yes, we have groups.’ ‘Cliques’ has a negative connotation for many people.”
And, she notes, cliques do have some positive aspects for kids during the ages when they are struggling with personal identity. “The idea is, ‘If I can find the kids most like me, they will most like me,’” she explains. “Your group can make you feel valued, understood and respected. All you need to do is walk into a cafeteria in most middle and high schools and look at the tables. There will be the skateboard kids, the Goths, the stoners, the band kids, preppies, math geeks and so on, down the list.”
Carlene Conway, a teacher at Red Bank Middle School, says many kids in middle school “try on different groups. They hang with the jocks, the geeks, the emo kids, until they settle into the group they feel comfortable with. Some kids straddle groups.” She agrees that a positive aspect of cliques is that “they give kids who, for whatever reason, do not feel valued at home a way to identify themselves, as in, ‘I’m a smart kid.’ There’s a sense of belonging.”
Yet not every school conforms to the paradigm. Ismahen Kadrie, a counselor at Howard Middle School for the past two years, says, “Although there were kids who identified themselves as gang ‘wannabees,’ the majority of the student body was very supportive of each other. The idea was that they had each other’s backs.” Even the HMS athletes, Kadrie says, hung out with each other, but also socialized with kids who weren’t on teams. In a sense, she says, the whole school was a clique.
And schools that focus on an area of study, or which have less-traditional environments, tend to have fewer cliques, Conway says.

Still mean?

One clique beloved by the media is the “mean girls,” popular kids who delight in tormenting the clique ‘wannabees.’ While this group dynamic presented as classically female, a recent study suggests that the truth might be somewhat different. According to the website ScienceDaily.com, “Society holds that when it comes to aggression, boys hit and punch, while girls spread rumors, gossip, and intentionally exclude others, a type of aggression that’s called indirect, relational, or social. Now a new analysis of almost 150 studies of aggression in children and adolescents has found that while it’s true that boys are more likely to engage in physical aggression, girls and boys alike take part in social aggression.
“The analysis of 148 studies, which comprised almost 74,000 children and adolescents and were carried out largely in schools, looked at both direct aggression, which is usually defined as physical, and indirect aggression, which includes covert behavior designed to damage another individual’s social standing in his or her peer group.
“The researchers suggest that the myth that girls are more likely to be indirectly or socially aggressive than boys has persisted among teachers, parents, and even other researchers because of social expectations that develop early in life and recent movies and books that portray girls as mean and socially aggressive toward one another.”
Yet some teachers’ experience supports the perception. “The issues we had tended to be with girls,” Kadrie says.
“Middle school girls thrive on drama,” Conway sighs. “They don’t get the idea that if you get upset about ‘what so-and-so is saying about me,’ it just perpetuates it.”

When—or if—to intervene

Though the experts we spoke with agreed that, for the most part, kids need to navigate their roles in the cliques on their own, and that parental involvement can do more harm than good, they also agreed that if a child is being bullied by a group, that’s where the line is drawn.
“In one school system that called me in as a consultant, there had been three suicides in a year and a half,” Paula Parnagian says. “Listen to the language of your child. How are they talking about their problems? Do you hear about cruelty being received or given? Is there targeting, scapegoating or victimization?” If so, she says, that’s the time to find out more.
“Hamilton County schools have some amazing guidance counselors,” says Conway. “They can help the kids figure out amongst themselves what is happening, without placing blame.”
“If there seems to be a lot of ‘group think’ or ‘pack mentality,’ you need to encourage your child to speak up and speak out, not just go along,” says Parnagian. “Most schools now have a respect or diversity policy in place, and many student alliances and clubs are addressing this as well.”

To clique or not to clique

Should parents try to help their child achieve membership in a certain clique they have their heart set on? For the most part, no.
“If your child really wants to be a cheerleader, put them in a gymnastics class,” says Conway. “But part of growing up is saying, ‘I can’t do that, but I can do something else.’”
“What is it about the group that’s important to the child?” asks Parnagian. “Every child has something spectacular about them. Help your child see what special gifts he or she has. Let them know it’s OK to be yourself as much as possible.”

A teens and cliques primer

Susan Kuczmarski, EdD, author of The Sacred Flight of the Teenager: A Parent’s Guide to Stepping Back and Letting Go, has also done extensive research on how teens learn social skills and become leaders. She suggests parents be aware of the following points:

First, let’s set things straight: Teens value friends before anything else, including parents! Peer relationships are everything. They replace the family, in some ways, as the place where daily relationships are played out, where meaningful interactions occur—the back-and-forth working through of ideas and events in the human drama.

Second, parents need to have greater sensitivity to how much work it is for teens to join groups. As a newcomer, a teen must establish him or herself to get accepted. This is not easy. Entrance can be negotiated through friends, relatives (e.g., brothers, sisters and even cousins), and someone you are dating, if they are accepted. After the dating period is over, however, the teen has to maintain the membership independently.

Third, if teens don’t know someone in the group, they can gain acceptance by hanging around for a period of time, getting to know some of the members, and becoming involved with, and accepted by, the other teens. Although accepted, this does not mean the other teens will quickly include them in what is happening socially at all times. Most likely, the doors will remain closed for a while, and they will have to find out about parties on their own. Regular members, however, are naturally “in on,” or told about, parties.

Fourth, when a new teen comes into a teen group, there are certain things that other teens will communicate to him about the group. Older members or leaders will make very clear to the newcomer just what is and is not appropriate behavior. These peer leaders will even reprimand other kids when they do something unacceptable. The leaders help maintain the group in this way.

Note that this final point is an area of special interest to parents. As mentioned above, if you do not approve of the “rules” of your child’s clique, that is the time to intervene.