Opinion on popular kids; queen bees

[bandmom]

I'm not quite sure if this the board for my question, or even if I'll be able to articulate my question properly, but I'll try:

I was wondering if the parents of the popular kids and queen bees (I teach 6th) know that their kids are the popular ones. I have a group of girls this year that are a powerhouse of power in the grade. During conferences, each mom of these girls asked me to do something about it; each mom fingered the other girls as the ones to stay away from, and were hurting their daughter, and that their daughter was the one excluded and the least popular in the grade. By the end of conferences my head was spinning!

So far I haven't seen evidence of bullying and no one has come crying to me - YET. But I'm waiting. I lead discussions about everyone being included and everyone having talents and many friends and 6th graders DO NOT date (yeah, I have that war, too).

Does a teacher tell the parent the amount of social power their child has? The other parents know who runs the show - do the parents of the show-runners know? Am I making sense?
Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[abc123gal]

i think parents know if they're child is popular, but maybe not if they are the "queen bee" and if they stir up trouble among everyone else. It's hard to tell with girls.
my daughter was always popular, but there were some other girls in her group that i always thought were the queen bees, but if my daughter ever caused trouble or drama, i didn't know it. I don't think she did, but i'm not saying that it wasn't possible that she could have...

 

[Kiki]

hmmm

What an interesting question! I teach fifth and it seems to me that the ones who are the most popular also seem to be the ones who are the most insecure. It's like they MUST be the center of it all to feel any type of validation at all.

Do their mamas know it? I think so, but I would also bet that many of their moms are the same type of people. Besides, "our princess is perfect but that girl who may be giving her competition is evil!"

 

[ecsmom]

I had a similar issue with my cheerleaders last year. I didn't have any of these kids in class because they were 6-8th graders and I taught 4th. They behaved fine for me during practice and as far as I could tell during the games. However, I had a couple of parents complaining that they girls didn't get along. One father threatened to go to the principal over it.
I finally figured out that these kids have cell phones, email and MySpace accounts so who knows what they were communicating to each other. While I talked to the girls about treating each other with respect all the time I also told the parents that I had no control over what they said or did when I wasn't around. I also explained to the parents that part of this behavior came with the age so that had better get used to their daughters coming home to vent.

 

[SC]

In my experience, the parents of the girls who stir up drama often don't realize what their "angels" are doing. They think it's everyone else who's the problem. Several times I wanted to say, "If your kid has a problem with everyone, then she's the problem." I was never comfortable telling parents that their kids were running the show, but a fellow teacher who was also friends with one of these parents did. She was diplomatic about it in a way that I could never be, and it helped so much.