She was the only girl in her class who wasn't invited to the sleepover-and the night of the party, all the girls sneaked out in their pjs and wrote LOSER on her driveway in chalk.

She got fifty emails in one day, telling her she'd better watch her back.

She tried to join in the game at her youth group, but everyone turned on her, throwing ice and food. Her mom is thinking about changing churches.

Every week. From mini-women who just want to go to school or church or dance class without being humiliated.

Bullying is rampant, but it doesn't have to happen, and it shouldn't. Do I even have to point out that the moms of tween daughters have a huge responsibility not only to help their girls deal with this travesty, but to enable them to stop it entirely? You can do this, and I think I can help.

Getting Clear: The Who, Why, and What of Bullying

You probably remember fights erupting among the little girls when your daughter was preschool age. "She took my toy. She took my cookie. She took my friend." You probably also remember how easy it was to restore peace and get everybody playing nice again. "Give her back her toy. There are plenty of cookies to go around. You can all be friends." If some Really Mean Mini-Girl didn't get that, a short time-out usually did the trick, or "we" just didn't set up play dates with her anymore. Sigh. Would that tween altercations could be remedied that easily.

Even if you tried that early childhood approach now (to the accompaniment of "Mo-om, you're embarrassing me!"), it wouldn't work because (A) you're not there with your daughter every minute of every day anymore, so you may not even know bullying is occurring until she begs you not to make her go back to school ever again, and (B) it's important for her to be empowered to deal with peer abuse herself-up to a certain point, of course, which we'll talk about further on. You are, as always, the guide and the ally. Here's what you'll need to know going in.

The dangers to the bullied

Bullying is seldom a one-time attack. When a bully gets the response she wants-cringing, crying, crumpling-she feels in charge and in control. But tears dry and the resilient tween target regroups. If our bully is going to stay on top of things, she has to continue her bullying, creating a threat that doesn't go away and probably gets worse. She knows she can create a hamster wheel for her targets- Each time this occurs, the target loses more of her power to simply be who she is. That makes her easier and easier to bully, until she feels hopeless. From first attack to that feeling that there is no hope of ever getting off the wheel, a number of things can happen, none of them good. She becomes convinced she's everything the bully says she is; her real personality is smothered as she comes to believe she's a loser.

She turns the anger she feels toward her aggressor on herself, often giving her an "angry edge" so that she always looks like she's about to "flip out." That makes it hard for her to develop relationships even with non-bullies.3 If the abuse is physical she may suffer injuries; if she's at the end of her rope with the verbal abuse, she may lose control and start the punching herself (for which we almost can't blame her).

She becomes depressed; her grades drop off or she makes up excuses not to go to school; the joy goes out of activities she once enjoyed.

In cases of ongoing abuse, she may come to believe she deserves to be hurt and turn to self-punishment in the form of cutting or anorexia; older tweens in seriously abusive situations have been known to contemplate suicide.

She becomes physically ill with headaches or stomach problems that can become chronic.

She may try to get back at the bullies and become one herself; her wonderful God-given personality is twisted into something it was never meant to be.

She eventually thinks nobody can be trusted, especially if the bully is a former friend; for a long time she hesitates to believe in real friendship.

Her self-esteem and confidence in social situations erodes to nothing; she carries that self-doubt into adulthood, long after the bully is out of the picture; there will, in fact, always be bullies, and she will be easily cowed by them; most tragic of all, her perpetrator may be her spouse.

The additional dangers of cyber bullying

Again, this is anything cruel or harmful that's sent through an email, website, blog, chat room, Facebook, text, or cell phone call. While it would seem that that sort of faceless intimidation would be less threatening than name-calling in the cafeteria, it can, in fact, be more so. If a girl gets a ton of emails telling her to watch herself at lunch tomorrow, she may not be able to tell who to be afraid of and avoid. Everybody becomes a potential stalker. If she receives a half dozen texts from various unknown numbers, calling her names they would never risk saying out loud, she doesn't know who it is that hates her. Going from class to class is like dead man walking. If somebody spreads a rumor about her on a blog comment, hundreds of people could read it. She doesn't know who to defend herself to. Who's seen it? Who believes this nasty thing about her? Every time she turns on her computer, she's terrified she'll see another hideous picture of herself somebody has doctored up, a picture which lies more convincingly than any RMG could do before a fascinated crowd in the girls' restroom.

All the things that are true about in-person bullying apply to cyber bullying, but in some ways abuse in cyberspace has even more power to hurt.

It can be extremely difficult to find out who the RMG is, and most tween girls don't have the technological knowledge required to do so.

The abuser may be someone she least suspects, since a girl doesn't have to be the leader of the mean clique-or any clique for that matter-to bully online or over the phone. The bully can hide behind her computer and say whatever she wants. If she herself has trouble feeling significant, this can become an addictive boost for her "self-esteem."

The abuse happens in the victim's personal space, usually her own home and maybe even her bedroom. It can feel as if there is no getting away from it. If she has a cell phone, she might even wake up in the morning to an attacking text message.

Being able to read and reread what someone has said can actually cut deeper-and more often-than just hearing it once.

It can happen without adults even suspecting that anything is going on.

Other girls are more willing to join in and gang up because no one knows who they are.4 Thus, the dangerous reactions listed above are even more likely for a girl who's experiencing abuse that has no face. Of course, not all of those things happen to every girl who's bullied. Some find the courage to walk away, to grow from the experience. They all might be able to if they had the right kind of help. The problem is that the damage is often done before they've had more than they can stand and reach out in desperation.

Why girls don't tell that they're suffering from peer abuse

The reasons for keeping this to themselves depend on a tween girl's personality, as well as the reason she's being attacked (not that "reason" has anything to do with it). These are the most common.

At first she doesn't realize that what she's experiencing is bullying. She just thinks it's girl stuff she should be able to handle.

Once she catches on, she's ashamed about being a target. As far as she can tell, only the ugly, stupid, uncool people get bullied, so if she admits she's being attacked, she has to admit she's one of the misfits. Better to suffer in silence. She's unaware that girls who are too independent, too smart, and too gifted can also bear the brunt.

She's down on herself because she can't do anything to stop the bullying. She's convinced that if she wasn't such a wimp, she could get this girl to leave her alone. She thinks maybe she deserves it.

She's afraid that if she tells anyone, especially a grown-up, the bully will do something even worse to get back at her. She may even have seen that happen to other girls, and she thinks that if she just puts up with it, it won't escalate. She is, of course, wrong.

She doesn't think anybody can help. She knows other girls have seen the abuse going on and they haven't come to her aid. That must mean they either can't help her, or they just don't want to.

She's sure no grown-ups will believe her because the RMG has made it a point to be the favorite of teachers, counselors, coaches, and maybe even our target's own mother.

She doesn't want to be branded as the girl who will "rat you out."

Why bullying happens

I can almost hear you saying, "What possible reason could there be for this kind of behavior? These girls are just plain mean!" I'd be inclined to agree if psychologist Dr. Dale McElhinney hadn't explained to me that every kind of behavior has a reason behind it, a premise that makes sense if only to the person herself. "Even serial killers operate under a basic life premise," he says. "It's a false one, but it's the frame of reference for their choices every bit as much as our faith provides the basis for our more sane decisions."5 I'm obviously not suggesting that tween-age bullies are destined to become sociopaths-at all. But they do have reasons for tearing their fellow tweens' hearts to pieces, reasons we need to know about, not to excuse their actions, but so that we can treat and heal bullying from every side.

So, what possible premises could there be?

Yelling and belittling are just what you do.

A girl is likely to treat people the way she herself has been treated. If she's constantly screamed at and put down at home, what else does she know how to do? It's either that or be a victim everywhere else like she is in her own house. A certain personality won't let that happen.

The only way to get attention is to grab it.

If a girl has a naturally extroverted, gotta-be-in-the-spotlight personality (not necessarily a bad thing in itself) and gets zero attention at home, she not only craves that attention, she's angry that she isn't getting it from the people who are supposed to give it to her. She's absolutely right. Where she goes wrong is in taking out both her buried rage and her hunger to be at the center of attention on a girl who has nothing to do with any of that-even a girl who might actually give our bully some positive attention if she weren't being hunted down and humiliated by her. The irony is heartbreaking.

If you don't get on top, you'll end up at the bottom, getting squashed.

Girls often buy into this when they've been bullied in a previous situation and have a chance to start fresh elsewhere. It seems like a good idea to her to rise to the top in her new place before anybody gets any ideas about doing that to her again.

You can't let anybody see your weakness.

It sounds strange to say that a "mean girl" would be frightened, but it is often the case that a bully-girl is so afraid her "weakness" (a learning disability, a bad family situation, her basic insecurity) is going to be found out, she has to constantly show how powerful she really is.

Everybody's out to get you.

At home she's absorbed the idea that people only want to take advantage of you and hurt you, so why not hurt them first before they have a chance to kick you in the teeth?

I run my house; why shouldn't I run my class?

It's shocking when I meet the parents of an RMG and find out that they are lovely, decent, caring people who would do absolutely anything for their daughter. There's the problem. If a girl has been allowed to dominate the household, talk to her family members however she wants to, expect her every whim to be catered to-how can she be expected to give a flip about anybody else's needs beyond her front door? If any wish is denied, she's used to making life miserable until people come to their senses and give her what she wants. It doesn't matter if it's her parents, her "friends," or the unwashed masses who are annoying to her-if they cross her there's going to be trouble. This is the kind of bully a mom has the most difficulty recognizing.

I've learned from the women on TV and movies that I have to be powerful.

Physical aggression hasn't been presented in media entertainment as antisocial behavior for a long time, and the number of female role models in there kicking and shooting has increased. As for MTV, there is a positive correlation between the amount of exposure to their videos and physical fights among children of both genders.6 Our toxic culture's glorification of "hot, tough girls" gives ours extra encouragement to torment and hurt if they already tend to bully.