Dealing with the Mean Girls

I happened upon Are You Teaching Your Daughter To Be a Mean girl? the other day completely by chance.  It struck a nerve, though, probably because of the timing in which I read it.

I never dealt with mean girls growing up and Kyndall hasn't had to deal with that yet, either.  I would say it was age--she's only in third grade, after all--but Libby has dealt with it, and she's only a first grader.  I think some personalities are just more susceptible to mean girls.

In response to the article, I started thinking about how we could teach our daughters not to care about the mean girls.  I want my girls to know that yes, there are going to be mean girls (and boys!) in life, but we can't give them power over us.  

I want to build up my girls self-confidence so that they can, in the words of T. Swift, shake it off when someone says something mean to them.  

I want to teach them that they are beautiful.  And smart.  And precious.  And nothing anybody says about them can change what they are worth. 

I want to teach them that it's more important to be beautiful on the inside than the outside.  If someone else wins the prize... the award... the position, it's ok to be disappointed.  But you also have to be happy for the other person.  Especially if that person is considered a friend.

As a mom, it's my job to teach my girls that they won't win everything.  And they aren't supposed to.  And rather than offering them a consolation prize for not winning, I need to teach them to be gracious.

We are lovers of music at my house, so I'm all about these two songs:

Any tips I missed on how to teach our children to deal with mean people?