You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I am giving you another sneak peek inside my Peaceful Parenting Membership!

Listen in as I interview Rachel Simmons as part of our membership’s monthly theme of “Friendship Troubles”. Rachel is an expert on relational aggression, AKA mean girls. We discuss how to intervene in this behaviour when kids are young, how to prevent our child from doing this, and how we can support our children when they’re experiencing it.

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We talk about:

* 6:27 What is relational aggression?

* 8:50 Both boys and girls engage in this type of aggression

* 10:45 How do we intervene with young kids

* 14:00 How do we teach our kids to communicate more effectively

* 22:30 How to help our children who are dealing with relational aggression

* 33:50 Can you reach out to the aggressive child’s parents?

* 38:00 How to reach out to the school

* 47:30 How to help our kids make new friends after relational aggression

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Rachel’s website

xx Sarah and Corey

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Rachel interview transcript

Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is another sneak peek inside my membership, where I interviewed Rachel Simmons — an expert on relational aggression, AKA “mean girls.” She wrote a book called Odd Girl Out, which is all about the topic of relational aggression and how we can support our children when they’re experiencing it — and what to do if our child is actually doing that to other people.

If you don’t know what relational aggression is, don’t worry — listen up, because she goes into the definition of it. This was a great conversation. My members had questions, I had questions, and in the end, we all agreed it was a very helpful discussion. I think you’ll find it helpful as well — no matter how old your child is or whether or not they’ve experienced any relational aggression.

This is something we should all be aware of, and as parents, we actually have a lot of control over preventing our child from becoming someone who uses relational aggression.

As I said, this is a sneak peek inside my membership, where we have a theme every month. This month’s theme was “Friendship Troubles,” and it actually came as a request from one of our members. So we brought in Rachel to talk to us about relational aggression, which this member’s child had been struggling with.

Every month in the membership, we have a theme — I do some teaching about it, and we also bring in a guest expert for teaching and Q&A.

If you’d like to join us inside the membership, you can go to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership to learn more and join us.

Another thing we do inside the membership is office hours. You may have heard a recent podcast that gave a sneak peek into what those are like. We do office hours twice a week where you’re welcome to drop in, ask a question, get support, or share a win — from me, Corey, and other members. It’s just a wonderful place.

Our membership is my favorite corner of the internet, and we’ve been doing it for six years. It really is a special place. I’d love for you to join us! Please let me know if you have any questions, or just head over to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership to learn more.

And now — let’s hear from Rachel.

Hey Rachel, welcome to the podcast.

Rachel: Thank you.

Sarah: Can you just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Rachel: Sure. Well, I’m based in Western Massachusetts, and I’m a researcher and author. Over the last eight years, I’ve also become an executive coach. I’ve always been fascinated by — and inspired by — the psychology of girls and women.

Over what’s now become a long career, I’ve worked with women and girls across the lifespan — beginning, I’d say, in elementary school, and more recently working with adult women.

I’ve always been animated by questions about how women and girls experience certain phenomena and spaces differently, and how paying attention to those experiences can contribute to their overall wellness and potential.

Sarah: Nice. And I just finished reading your book Odd Girl Out, and I could see how much research went into it. I think you mentioned you interviewed people for a few years to write that book.

Rachel: It was a long time, yeah. I was just actually reflecting on that. I came across a shoebox filled with cassette tapes — little cassette tapes of the interviews I did when I wrote that book, which came out 20 years ago.

I worked all over the United States and tried to speak to as many girls as I could.

Sarah: It’s a great book — highly recommended. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Thank you for writing it.

So today we invited you here because we want to talk about relational aggression. Can you give us a definition of what relational aggression is?

Rachel: Yes. Relational aggression is a psychological form of aggression — a way that people express themselves when they’re trying to get a need met or are upset about something. It usually starts as early as two or three years old, when kids become verbal, and it’s the use of relationship as a weapon.

It can start off as something like the silent treatment — “I’m going to turn away from you because I’m upset with you” — cutting someone off as a way of communicating unhappiness. That silence becomes the message.

I remember once interviewing a seventh-grade girl who told me she gave people the silent treatment — that she’d stop talking to them as a way to get what she wanted. That was really unusual, because most girls won’t come up and be like, “Yeah, here are all the ways I’m mean.”

In fact, it’s often the secrecy that makes this stuff hard to talk about. So I was like, wow, here’s a unicorn telling me she’s doing it. And I asked, “Why do you do it?” And she said, “Because with my silence, I let my friends know what’s going to happen if they don’t do what I want.”

A very powerful description of relational aggression.

So that’s the silent treatment, but it can also take more verbal forms. Like, “If you don’t give me that toy, I won’t be your friend anymore.” Or, “If you don’t play with me at recess today, then our friendship is over.”

The threat is always that I’ll take away a relationship. And it’s so powerful because — what do we want more than connection? That’s a profound human need. So it’s a very, very po