11 year old daughter - struggling with low self-esteem

[nitestar_24]

My youngest daughter (out of 3 girls), just turned 11 and she has been struggling with low self-esteem.  She does not have hardly any friends. The on friend that she plays with has a love/hate relationship with her.  Her 12 year old sister is extremely social and so all of the kids want to play with the sister and not with her and that makes her angry and she lashes out.  I try to put a stop to this by removing the sister when friends are over but my 11 year old just doesn't seem to want to play much with the other kids either.

In addition to the friend issue, my 11 year old has made comments about "being the worst daughter ever" and feeling like the "black sheep" of the family. Whenever I hear these comments, I talk to her about them and explain this is not so. She tends to make these comments when she gets in trouble for something - normal kid things like not doing her chore or her homework, etc.  

Also, she has always wanted to play with boys rather than girls and when it comes to toys, she wants to play with the boy toys like bakugan and pokemon and such. She loves to watch anime (which I have to really monitor) and she makes comments about gays/lesbians a lot such as saying she doesn't need a husband to have babies and her friends at school are lesbian etc... not bad or mean comments, just comments. These comments just kind of come out of nowhere like when they show babies on a commercial or a couple hugging she will say it doesn't have to be boy/girl that girls do that stuff to....... just enough to make me sometimes wonder?  

At anyrate, I could really use some ideas on how to raise her self-esteem, help her be comfortable with who she is and maybe just to know that these things are normal for 11 year old girls?  (I have two older girls who were quite different).

[margypops]

My 3 girls all had a lot of sibling rivalry and still have ...I thought that each gets jealous when the new child comes along, its hard on the youngest they take most of the flak and I had to stand up for her.With your youngest I guess this is part of her low esteem I cant see it changing unless the others , change their atittude towards her. Its possible you may want to speak to them,are they apt to gang up on her so she has the two of them to defend herself from, as thats tough imagine how you would feel .Maybe some counseling help for her as if she has to battle this alone she will always feel like shes alone .I have also seen it in another family and the sisters did gang up on the one child,who became very anxious . My personal opinion is you have to protect them and make sure they are not bullied .

[nitestar_24]

There is definitely sibling rivalry...... We are working on using kind words and tones of voices lately as it seems they are constantly wanting to be at each others throats sometimes lol.  I think it is normal sibling rivalry from what I've seen other siblings do......I do find myself in the position of always trying to decide if I should step in and defend my youngest or wait for her to respond in her own defense. I know it is not good to always defend her because then the older two start feeling like she is my favorite and yet at the same time I can't allow the older two to be mean......

Would you know of any good tactics for how to reduce the sibling rivalry or encourage them to "love one another" lol?

[margypops]

Could there be some sibling rivalry going on , any jealousy factors the older ones would feel, are they kind to her ?To make those comments tells me she is unhappy about something ..