What is it about junior high that takes once sweet kids and turns them into snarling monsters bent on picking each other apart? My eighth grade daughter is in the throes of this swirling insanity and comes home almost every day with complaints of things other girls don’t like about her.

“They don’t like my deodorant. They say it smells like baby power.”

Okay…when did baby powder become a bad smell? I, for one, like baby powder, it’s better than how our bodies smell with no deodorant at all. The girls keep making fun of my daughter, gagging while she’s getting dressed after P.E. class. I’m tired of hearing about it so I get her a different deodorant.

Now these same girls—bless their wretched souls—have decided the swimsuit lines on my daughter’s back are worthy of their ire. Ew…heaven forbid!

Uh…right about here I’m rubbing my temples because of the sheer stupidity of this complaint when my daughter says something I consider even worse.

She says, “Nothing I do makes these girls like me.”

“Whoa. Stop right there. First of all, you shouldn’t be living to please these girls. Why do you care what they think? Trust me, they’re just as lost and hormone-y as you are.  And Secondly, I’ve told you a thousand times, you can’t make anybody do anything. They have to choose to like you. Even if they never do, does it really matter? Your value comes from within—not from them. I know it’s hard, and mean people really do suck, but they can only affect you if you let them. Just as they make their choice you get to make your own. Don’t squander that on people who don’t lift you up.”

This parenting thing makes me feel like a broken record. Only time will tell if I’m getting through to her.