When Sara left home on the first day of sixth grade, she was super-excited about starting middle school. She was anything but excited when she got in the car at the end of the day.

Sara told her mom that her friends since kindergarten had decided to end their friendship. The leader of the group had told them, “We don’t like her anymore,” a statement that launched Sara and her family into a year of chaos.

Every impulse in Sara’s mom wanted to hunt down those girls, but she knew better than to do that. In conversations with other moms, she asked, “Why all the meanness?” Many of the women had not only experienced this with their children, they had gone through it themselves. In fact, they could still recall the interactions in painstaking detail.

“Peer pressure and rejection hurt so much because it hits a youngster’s self-esteem, which is still wobbly at best during the preteen and early teen years,” says psychologist Dr. Susan Hickman from the Mental Fitness Institute in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“To make it worse, children at this age have not yet developed good filters to distinguish that this type of experience may be more about the other person than about them. They immediately translate the bad behavior of others into seeing themselves as unworthy. In reality, these two are not connected at all.”

Whether young or old, everyone has the need to belong. So the feeling of rejection hits a person right in the gut.

“If children can’t get a good sense of belonging from a peer group at school, parents have to help them work a little harder to develop a sense of belonging elsewhere, such as through team sports, extracurricular hobbies, neighborhood peers or community groups,” Hickman says. “Once they establish a group with which they can identify, it’s much easier to teach them how to dismiss their peers’ bad behavior and grasp the fact that it is really not about them.”

Hickman believes teaching children mental fitness skills is the key to navigating these tough situations and evaluating their own feelings. Learning how to challenge and confront false ideas can keep them steady for the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, you can help your child with these steps:

• Develop healthy self-esteem that is not affected by hurtful people’s negative opinions. Help them solidify an appropriate sense of self-approval – regardless of others’ bad behavior.

• Learn healthy coping skills in the midst of negative circumstances. Self-talk is a key component to this. It’s important for them to cope positively with emotional upheaval instead of harming themselves or flocking to unsavory peers. Walk them through identifying healthy ways they can cope.

• Keep perspective. Teach them to assess how much the situation has to do with themselves versus the bully. Get them to ask: Why might this person act this way? This teaches them to identify with the other person and separate themselves from the event. It also helps them look at their own behavior and make necessary changes.

• Find alternative strategies and resources for fitting in. Trying a new hobby, joining a sports team or even finding another friend group may help. A busy mind is far less likely to think negative thoughts.

So, how exactly do you teach them these crucial skills?

“Think of it as you would any other skill, such as tying your shoes,” Hickman says. “Know what you want to teach them and show them the steps to reach their goal. Gently correct any missteps and model the next step for them. Then, have them practice the behavior until it comes naturally.”

This will take some time and probably patience. But in the end, you will have taught them how to handle life situations and their own emotions with dignity.