Most of the time the behaviour isn't really intended to be toxic. There are kids who have been like this since...well, probably since they took their first faltering steps at nursery, snatching other kids' toys away or always being the kid who hogs the ride-on toys at playtime. Through junior school they're the kids who dunk your trainers in puddles when you're not looking, or steal stuff from your bag to dump in the classroom bin. And of course in teenage years it bottoms out as a whole range of toxic behaviour, spanning from mean and hurtful things said, physical / emotional abuse and in some cases just plain outright cruelty. Cliques are formed, these kids want to establish themselves at the top of those cliques and so it goes on.
Our daughter spends a lot of time assuming that there's something wrong with her, which makes me both angry and sad because I was in the same boat at school, always on the periphery of any social gathering, always the one the teacher had to sit next to on the coach on school trips, picked last for teams in PE, you name the cliche and I was right there living it. It took me a very long time to realise that 'fitting in' is optional, you don't have to - but if you crave validation from your peers, you have to work out how to work the system in place and realise that this same system is polymorphic and changes almost on an hourly basis. Sometimes, as I found as I progressed through school and onto college, it was just easier to say "oh fuck this" and just carve my own route through those times.
Friendship is something teens live and die by, and it's so important to them to feel like they belong - yet at the same time in some cases (particularly with our daughter) she doesn't realise it's a two-way street and friendship / trust have to be earned as well as given from the friend and the befriended.
After all the tears (which seemed to go on for a good couple of hours she dried her eyes, got ready for Guides and went on a 4km hike with them in the evening out in the fresh air and countryside (which we're lucky enough to have a bit of where we live). She came back clear headed, ready for whatever the next day would throw at her. I admired the hell out of her for that.
Trying to impart advice or experience from our own teen years (for both my wife and I) is pretty tough as the whole map has changed. Internet access / social media has made things doubly difficult, and for all the times we try to limit screen time / social media access there's the wailing and gnashing of teeth that this leads her to being 'left out of things'. Other parents just shrug and let their kids get on with it, figuring that their kids are tough enough to make their own mistakes. We put limits in place (which is a constant cause of arguments) but not unreasonable ones, it's just nice for there to be times during the day where kiddo isn't glued to her phone screen and can actually be conversed with. Over the summer holidays this will probably slide but for the time being it does at least mean she still maintains non-screen related interests.
Kids are cruel, by default it seems these days - and it has a lot to do with fitting in, a hell of a lot to do with being led by example (you can bet your arse that if a kid's parents are the sort of snobby stuck-up 'we are richer than yow' types, their kids will be exactly the same), and also a lot to do with picking out those sensitive introverted kids as ripe for being on the receiving end of that cruelty. What a damned shame.
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