Jenny Jones: My bully daughter makes her friend’s lives a misery. Is it my fault for being too soft on her?

My daughter Emily is what you might call a ‘golden girl’. A 19-year-old university student, she’s beautiful, slim and strikingly tall with long hair and perfect skin.

And she’s clever with it too, always in the top set at school and sailing through every exam.

But the most defining thing is how popular she is, the Queen Bee of her social circle.

The problem is, much as I love her, I also know that she rules that clique with a hard, mean heart.

She calls the shots when it comes to what – and who – is of interest to them as a group.

She dictates where they hang out, and how they pass their time.

Anyone who annoys her gets punished – either ostracised or ridiculed, as she sees fit.

And if some fatal line gets crossed – another girl outshining Emily or getting too much attention from a boy she likes – then the offender gets pushed out altogether.

I know this partly because her cousin, Beth – who’s the same age and attended the same secondary school – shared unflattering gossip with my sister, who fed it all back to me.

Like the time Emily made one of her friends return the bracelet her parents had bought as a gift for her 16th birthday.

Why? Because Emily liked the look of it – and decided to ask us to buy it for her own 16th.

Emily didn’t want people to think she’d copied her friend, so insisted she get a different one.

Then, once the bangle was back at the jeweller’s, Emily changed her mind, which meant neither of them had it.

When I asked her about this, she shrugged, said her friend hadn’t minded and asked why I was making a big deal out of it.

At the time, my sister pointed out that, if either of us had behaved so awfully to another child, our mother wouldn’t have stood for it.

She was right. Mum, who died of cancer when Emily was a toddler, was incredibly strict and cared deeply about what other people thought of her.

If we did wrong she said it reflected badly on her.

He’s adamant she’s just feisty, more tough than mean, and reckons that will help her be one of life’s winners.

Maybe that’s why I always took a gentler approach to parenting with Emily, since I found the whole experience of living up to somebody else’s idea of a ‘good’ person to be a crushing one.

I was loath to tell my daughter off if she played up when she was little, preferring to praise her when she was good rather than criticising her when she did wrong.

I don’t always remain silent though.

Recently I overheard her posting horrible voicenotes on a group chat, belittling a girl as ugly and ‘heavily filtered’ who’d posted a picture on Instagram.

Cringing, I walked in and told her how nasty she sounded.

Instead of being embarrassed, Emily indignantly demanded to know why I thought it was OK to hang around her bedroom door listening to private conversations.

Exasperated, I walked out.

She’s too old now to take her phone away as punishment, so what else was I supposed to do?

She slammed the door shut behind me with such force, two ceiling lights in the kitchen below fell out.

Emily refused to speak to me for two days.

All the while making a show of lavishing her father with love and affection in front of me, which he, unhelpfully, lapped up.

He’s adamant she’s just feisty, more tough than mean, and reckons that will help her be one of life’s winners.

Emily’s behaviour has often made me feel embarrassed when I encounter other mums in our village.

One even sarcastically asked whether my daughter could provide a list of boys it was OK to date.

This was after her daughter got the cold shoulder for going to the cinema with a lad Emily briefly had a crush on two years earlier.

Emily’s behaviour also cost me a valued friend I made at the school gates.

Angela and I met when our children started primary school together. Emily and her daughter, Holly, became close, and we got on well, too, going for drinks and meals without the kids.

But then Angela called me, eight years ago now, to say what a cruel, vindictive and thoroughly mean little girl Emily had become.

I listened in horrified silence as she described how Emily had sidled up to every child in their friendship group, whispering that come lunchtime, they were to pick out every bit of onion in their food and dump it onto Holly’s plate.

What made this practical joke particularly cruel was that Holly retched at the smell of onions and always removed every trace from her food.

Emily and her friends knew this, but they followed my daughter’s orders, laughing as they did.

“She was humiliated, knowing that every one of her so-called friends had done Emily’s bidding even though they knew how much it would upset her,” cried Angela.

She believed the trick was payback for Holly beating Emily to a coveted role in the annual Christmas show.

I never imagined my daughter – a much loved and desperately wanted IVF baby, born after two failed attempts – might be a mean girl.

She was a sweet baby, and I noticed with pride how she mixed well with other kids, from nursery onwards.

There always seemed to be a crowd of little girls around her at pick-up time, and the staff raved about how confident and sociable she was. It helped ease my guilt that Emily didn’t have siblings, putting her at the centre of my world, and my husband’s.

I’m constantly treading on eggshells in case I say something to upset her

Looking back, I can see how we spoilt her with endless toys, day trips and attention, to try and make up for that.

When she started primary school, her social magnetism became even more pronounced. At our first parents’ evening, Emily’s teacher told us that our daughter’s classmates followed her around like bees to honey.

Hearing this, I felt happy. As a child, I never felt pretty enough, cool enough, clever enough to be in with the popular girls. But Angela’s outburst, when Emily was 11, forced me to see the whole truth for the first time.

I promised my friend I would speak to my daughter and make her understand that the way she treated her friends had to stop.

“Holly’s mum’s lying,” Emily shrieked.

“I didn’t put any onions on her plate.”

Which was true – she’d made the other girls do it – but hardly the point, as I told her.

Cue hysterical crying and angry denials, which I knew Emily was faking but meant I had to either call my own child a liar or back down.

I’m embarrassed to say I chose the latter. When I later relayed all this to my husband, he shrugged it off, saying Holly needed to toughen up and that Emily was a born leader.

It was then that I came up with a ridiculous plan to try to bring out a kinder, more nurturing side to my daughter: I bought her a puppy (which she showed little interest in, and has been my responsibility ever since).

I believe that had I tried harder, Angela and I might have salvaged our friendship. And perhaps Emily wouldn’t be so awful now. I can only imagine how much the fact that Emily and Holly remain friends to this day must stick in Angela’s craw.

Emily is far from being all bad. She’s funny, witty, full of energy and fantastic company. Most of the time I feel great warmth and affection towards her.

We snuggle on the sofa watching TV together; we enjoy going to the cinema and I feel so proud when I’m out with her because I know other people will look over and think ‘what a beautiful girl’.

But I’m also constantly treading on eggshells in case I say something to upset her – and have to put up with days of her being in a mood with me.

That is where her power lies. I had thought things might change when they all went to secondary school, where other strong characters might give Emily a taste of her own medicine.

But no, her clique just seemed to get bigger. I comfort myself that at least now she’s at university, I’m unlikely to hear about how mean she is to the next lot of girls to get pulled into her orbit.

But I do have to live with knowing I failed in one important respect as a parent; I raised a mean girl who makes others’ lives miserable.