QUESTION; My daughter, who's 10, made a stupid joke on Twitter the other day and now she's very upset because lots of people at school have been tweeting back saying she's stupid and even worse.
She's apologised for it, but it doesn't make any difference. I've told her just to ignore it, but she says she can't and she's crying all the time and won't eat. I'm so anxious about her. I keep reading of children who've killed themselves when they're attacked like this, and obviously this is worrying. How can I help?
Mandy
ANSWER: You’re right to be worried – though not, perhaps, as worried as you find yourself. The first thing, surely, is to encourage your daughter to stop her Twitter account. Just give it a rest for a month so that things have time to die down. And it will also mean that your daughter won’t be able to log in and read more horrible remarks, or reread the past ones.
On the odd occasion when I’ve received a cruel letter, I haven’t kept it, to mull over. I’ve chucked it straight in the bin. Every time you reread cruel remarks aimed at you, you are traumatising yourself once again. It’s like accidently cutting yourself on a knife and then recreating the pain by deliberately cutting yourself just to remember what it was like.
Then, I really would tell her teacher – presumably these unkind remarks are made mainly by peers at school, unless the tweet has spread further afield.
And then explain that Twitter sets in stone passing remarks that usually flit through people’s heads. For instance, after a phone call from a friend, which I thought was bit high-handed, I might put the receiver down with the words, to myself: “Who the f*** does she think she is?” I’d never say that face to face.
Remind your daughter of the many times she’s come back from school and said nasty things about other people – she might have described her teacher as a nightmare, or her friend as an idiot. No doubt she occasionally says things behind your back that she wouldn’t like you to overhear – such as “Interfering old cow!”
The problem with Twitter is that people turn these trivial thoughts into print. They don’t have the imagination to realise how hurtful it would be for the person concerned. Anyway, more often than not, they’re getting rid of their own rage about something that has nothing to do with what the person wrote – writing things on Twitter can often be the equivalent of kicking the cat.
Another way to help your daughter – which is useful for other painful situations, too – is to encourage her to put her worries on some kind of internal mental shelf, to look at later. Tell her to make a specific worrying time – between 4pm and 4.30pm, for instance. Then she can worry and cry all she likes. It’s quite a useful technique.
I was told once that something I’d written here had caused immense ripples on Twitter. As I never saw them, I never lost a moment’s sleep. A while ago, I had a storm of emails from all over the world telling me I should have been murdered at birth. But, incredibly upsetting as it was at the time, it all blew over. The mob soon got baying over some other poor wretch.
Support her as much as you can, and try to help her pity those sad people who have nothing better to do than to vent their anger often on total strangers.
The Independent