"Kiddie Cliques"
"Ruthless interplay
starts as early as 3rd grade"

"These days such
ruthless social interplay
can be found in the hallways
of your neighborhood elementary school,
as children learn to master -
or be mastered by -
the predatory 'pecking order'
of preadolescent cliques."

"In fifth grade I came
into a new class
and I knew nobody...

So I get to school a week late,
and Amy comes up
to me and was like,
'Hi Julie, how are you?
Where were you?
You look so pretty.'

And I was like wow,
she's being so nice
for like,
two weeks."

"...And then she started
pulling her bitch moves.

Maybe it was
for a month or so that she was nice.

And so then she had clawed me
into her clique and her group,
and so she won me over that way,
but then she was a bitch
to me once I was inside it,
and I couldn't get out
because I had no other friends."

"This preadolescent
transformation is not new.

Nearly every adult today
can recall some childhood memory
of those school years when
'best friends forever' lost out
to 'every man
for himself' survival skills.

But now the behavior begins earlier."

"Kids really smell out
fear and weakness
and they use it.

They fed on it
to strengthen themselves
and then prey on the weak,"
said Patti Adler,
who is an associate professor
at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"...incidences of 'team-teasing,
and even of kids being shunned
to the point of having
to change schools,
were mentioned repeatedly by the
fourth-,
fifth-,
and sixth-graders interviewed
for the study."

"Childhood cliques start
to rise up in about third grade,
forming gradually
out of first- and second-grade
friendship circles.

These groups start
to get more exclusive in third-grade,
growing larger and
pulling in more children.

It's then that the
rumor mill grinds up,
and feelings get hurt
as children test alliances."

Mahoney, Michelle, Kiddie Cliques, The Denver Post, December 26, 1995, p. E1