Mother in Law: Be wary of those who want to divide and conquer

A new kid, Lily, started in Deceptively Angelic Child no. 2’s class in January. At the end of the first day, DALC2 came home and excitedly said 'Can I go to the park, Lily is going!' 

I reluctantly agreed to this. I seem to have two of the most sensible children in the country and I do not need to put many more restrictions on them than they put on themselves. My mum tried to get me to smoke marijuana at university so that I would stress less about my exams, and I can imagine I will be doing the same in a few years. Anyway, I said she could go to the park for half an hour. But to keep my eye on this new kid, I decided to walk the Enormous Puppy in that direction a few minutes later.

About half a dozen 10 year olds ran over to stroke the dog. 'Hello, I’m DALC2’s friend, Lily', announced the new girl. From the thirty seconds of conversation that came after this, and my observations of them as I carried on walking through the park, alarm bells went off in my head. There were no first-day nerves. She intended to be the leader of this pack. This pack that has been in existence since preschool. I messaged one of the school mums to say I’d met the new girl. She messaged back with the red flag emoji. I felt reassured that I wasn’t entirely mad.

The problem is that we have been here before. A new girl started in DALC1’s class in Year 4 (for the sake of anonymity let’s call her the demogorgon) and our lives were turned upside down. DALC1 is now in Year 8 and the experience has continued to shape her as a person. We are a four-figure sum down in therapy costs.

I was dreading DALC2 coming home from the park and saying Lily was her new best friend, or that she wanted a sleepover at Lily’s house at the weekend, or maybe just to move straight into her house permanently. But I knew I had to play it cool. And that I could be wrong.

'She reminds me a bit of the demogorgon', I said. That was as cool as I could manage.

Much to my surprise, DALC2 replied 'Yeah, I know what you mean, Mum.'

She reeled off a list of things Lily had done that day that made her feel uncomfortable. She’d been assigned a buddy but had ditched the buddy to hang around with DALC2. She had asked DALC2 if she could copy her work. She had asked another girl if she could jump in front of her in the dinner line, for no particular reason other than that she wanted to get her food first. The list went on. The final straw was an awful lot of swearing once they got to the park.

'I have a prediction for you,' I said. 'I bet she makes a play for George next'. You may recall that George and DALC2 are the Scott and Charlene of Year 6.

'She already has' was DALC2’s reply. This kid sure had a busy first day.

DALC2 was disappointed, but not sad. She was not scared. She was ready to quietly protect herself, her lovely friendship group, and her little romance. Come and have a go, Lily, if you think you are hard enough.

I text the school mum, 'DALC2’s sussed it all out and is on top of it.'

'I knew she would be,' she replied.

So, and this is the point I’m coming to, if my 10 year old can spot someone with these subtle behaviours and decide that she’s not going to let them disrupt what’s important to her, why do so many managers not see this stuff and allow jerks to disrupt their teams? Sorry for the Americanism, but I saw DALC2’s approach described recently as a 'no jerks policy' which I thought was a good way of putting it. 

A wise man said to me 'don’t fill a hole in your team with an a-hole'. If your team is cohesive and happy and profitable, and all the things we want our teams to be, don’t take for granted how fragile that ecosystem is and how easily it can be disrupted. Individuals like this will be wanting to divide and conquer and team leaders need to be aware - and ready to protect the whole. It requires guts, because inevitably these people have a bit about them, but if DALC2 can do it, you can too.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article