A woman left 3 teen mean girls at Starbucks a heartfelt note about kindness

Facebook/Michelle Icard

The letter written by Michelle Icard.

A North Carolina woman just gave some teenage mean girls a master class in kindness.

In a blog post for the TODAY Parenting Team, author and parenting expert Michelle Icard detailed a morning spent sitting next to three teenage girls at Starbucks. She flinched as the girls openly ridiculed some of their classmates, including a student who performed a song about being lonely at a talent show. They derided another for her singing voice, and even made fun of gifts they'd received from others.

"With each new topic I thought, 'This couldn't have been written in a more cliché-mean-girls way by a Hollywood scriptwriter,'" Icard wrote.

When the bad behavior didn't let up, Icard left the café. But she was conflicted, and felt that perhaps she should have intervened. Eventually, she decided to write the girls a short letter. Icard shared a photo of the note on Facebook:

 Here's the full text:

"Hi Girls!

I sat near you today in Starbucks and listened as you talked. You three are obviously pretty and hard-working. I wish your kindness matched your pretty exteriors. I heard you talk about a girl who sang a song about being lonely in the talent show-and you laughed. About a girl who couldn't be lead singer because you got all the votes, about crappy presents other people have given you…and you sounded so mean and petty. You are smart and you are pretty. It would take nothing from you to also be kind. - M."

She returned to Starbucks to hand-deliver the note (plus three Frappuccinos) and went on her way.

"I didn't want to shame them out loud or put them on the spot," she wrote. "But my hope is that maybe, just one of them was only going along with the others, and tonight she will think about that in a meaningful way as she's falling asleep."

Here's Icard's original blog post for the TODAY Parenting Team.