I must be doing *something* right

I haven't mentioned a bunch about it lately, but my oldest, the 9yo, she's a gymnast.  She and her four teammates (all 8 or 9yo) started competing this year.  As expected some of the girls are better at certain skills than others.  And of course, I'd be remiss to add that there is one girl (we'll call her Rose) who is just plain awesome.  She has the natural talent, the body type, and the drive to work hard and be the best.  At the last meet I was surprised that my 9yo got a higher score on the vault than Rose - because usually Rose has her chit together and kicks butt.  Anyway.  In the last month SmartyPants has come home from practice a couple of times saying that Rose and "Beth" have been talking about "Indy" and saying how she should just quit the team because she's not as good, and Indy is just going to hurt the team when competition start back up in the fall, etc.  In other words, being really catty.  SmartyPants was telling me about all this drama and how she stuck up for Indy, saying that Indy works hard and is a great person to have on the team, etc.  This talk at home died down for a few weeks, so I figured whatever Beth and Rose's reasons for their behavior had passed.  And then we come to Monday.  SmartyPants says that Rose and Beth are still being mean and they won't listen to her when she tries to stick up for Indy.  Okay, mind you, my girl has the tendency to come across as lecturing when she is doing this (eh uhm, not sure where she gets *that* from).  So I told her to talk to the coaches before Beth and Rose got to practice.  (We are usually early and because of the time Rose gets out of school, is usually late.)  SmartyPants did just that.  I guess the team was talked to by the coaches about the situation which led to Rose and Beth saying, "well, if she stays, we are going to quit the team."

It just really surprised me to hear this coming from these girls.  They have always seemed very mellow and easy to get along with.  I've had both of them individually over to play and/or spend the night and never had a problem with them excluding my younger girls.

So we had a talk about empathy on the way home from practice on Monday.  How sometimes people are just mean - usually it's because they are unhappy with something in their life and want to feel power over something.  I reminded my girl that there wasn't much she could do to convince Rose and Beth to be nice.  She just had to continue to be nice to Indy and maybe walk away (if possible) when they are being mean.  I also commended my girl on wanting to stick up for her friend *to.her.friends*.  How many adults don't do this?  Heck, sometimes I have a problem with it myself.  My 9yo knew what was the right thing to do and did it.  That fact alone makes my heart swell with happiness.  She may forget to do these things at home sometimes (okay, a lot of the time), but she does get that there was an injustice being done and wanted to try and fix it.  I'm proud of her.