My Aria

After having a tearful heart to heart with my ten year old daughter, my heart hurts and I want to cry. She was upset and not wanting to go to school tomorrow. When I finally got her to tell me why, she bursted out in tears to say that no one likes her. In her mind, the kids in her class think she's mean, that she's fat (@ 10, she stands at 5'2" and weighs 120 and wears a size 8 1/2 women's shoe!) and that they hate her. She feels like she only has her one best friend and that the other girls keep trying to take her away so she'll have no one. She says she tries to talk to some of the kids in her class but they walk away from her after she says hi. She cries as she tells me that no one talks to her in class. All she wants is for them to like her. She says this is why she gets so fustrated in the mornings trying to figure out how to do her hair because she wants to look nice. I watch her look at herself so critically in the mirror and it hurts that all I can do is hug her and not fix it. I'm her mother. I'm suppose to be able to fix it when she hurts. It all reminded me of when I was that age and how I felt ugly and fat and how the group of girls I thought were my friends turned their backs on me and started talking about me. Why do girls have to go through this? Is it really that difficult to teach our daughters how not to be catty and accepting of who a person is rather than what they look like? What am I suppose to do for her? I don't like feeling helpless like this. I'm suppose to make sure she's smiling. How am I suppose to help her make it better? Is there even a way of making it better?