TRINITONIAN OCTOBER DIGITAL

FEATURE ARTICLE
Green-eyed
Monsters
CONQUERING THE FRENEMY!
by Donna Verrydt
“Do not teach your
children never to be
angry; teach them
how to be angry.”
– Lyman Abbott, former American
Congregationalist theologian, editor
and author.
Jealousy is a natural human emotion, one that we
tell our children, from an early age, not to have.
Children shouldn’t be taught to feel bad about
being jealous or made to feel weak for showing
their emotions, but rather how to effectively manage
them. However, when your child’s natural emotions,
including jealousy, are exploited by their friends – well
then, that’s a whole other ball game!
We’ve discussed bullying at great length and it will
always remain an ongoing issue. But bullying is not
just confined to name-calling, rumour-spreading
or physical abuse by a child’s corridor enemy. The
manipulation and exploitation of a child’s raw
emotions is also a form of bullying and most of the
time it’s done by the person or people closest to
them – usually their friends! This gives rise to the term
‘frenemy’ – a friend/enemy or a toxic friendship! And
at the heart of most toxic friendships lies jealousy.
Frenemy!
For schoolgoing kids, friendships offer a powerful and
necessary sense of belonging. We want our kids to
feel accepted, respected and loved by their peers,
but never to be used as pawns in someone else’s
popularity game. And never for one moment doubt
that this is a game. It is the social survival game of
life. To dominate the social hierarchy, sometimes
jealousy is promoted, through mean behaviours such
as leaving a child out of a conversation or not inviting
one child from a group to a party.
Children on the receiving end of this type of
behaviour, experience a rise of jealousy that
compromises their feelings of adequacy and
acceptance. These children need to be taught how to
express their feelings with assertive communication
skills and confidence. Children should be able to
say things to their peers like, “I don’t like the way
you are treating me right now and I feel angry about
what you just said/did/pretended not to do,” and,
“I’m not going to let you treat me that way again.”
As parents, we can only try to teach our kids how to
manage jealousy and how to build confidence; with
confidence, they can walk away from toxic friendships
and end jealousy for good.
The Trinitonian | 25