I had to explain to DD today that her friend isn't really a friend
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Anonymous
| Meant to add to the above - the girls are 10. |
Anonymous
OP here and it wasn't a lecture. Did I say it was a lecture? |
Anonymous
| I think you did the right thing. I've had to have similar conversations with my daughter about not tolerating rotten behavior from friends and standing up for herself. I don't want her to think that she is not worthy of friends who treat her with respect. Right now she has a friend who always seems to be doing and saying mean things, but then backtracks and says she was just kidding if my daughter calls her out on it. I've been encouraging her to seek out other kids who don't act that way. (She's ten.) |
Anonymous
I agree. My DD also is eight and dealing with a difficult friend. They have know each other for three years, but this friend is often mean to my daughter. Sometimes she is nice but other days she'll run away from her when my daughter tries to play with her or set up a game and tell my daughter she can't join the group. I don't think she targets only my child; it sounds as though she excludes different kids on different days. I told DD some friends are good friends and some friends are "sometimes friends". You may have disagreements with good friends but they care about you and aren't mean to you on purpose. You don't trust sometimes-friends with your secrets and if sometimes friends are being mean, you go play with someone else. It also has been an opportunity to talk to her about not going along when she is *not* the one being excluded. |
Anonymous
Are you a mom to boys? I am and I feel like we let our boys navigate through life with less intervention than girls. Yes, painful to watch sometimes, but interfering is not something I do unless 8ts absolutely critical. |
Anonymous
Yes, I am a mom to boys, and grew up with brothers (and my mother grew up with brothers). It seems to me that children know the difference between a best friend, a good friend, a sometimes friend, and a bad friend and can decide whether to keep a friendship or not. |
Anonymous
NP here. That's a pretty big generalization, saying that it seems "children know the difference."They don't necessarily just know it instinctively; they learn by experience, and experience can hurt, so what's wrong with a parent offering consolation and advice when it does hurt? If children could always "decide whether to keep a friendship or not" then they wouldn't do things like stick with friends who treat them badly. And kids do that sometimes, as they learn to navigate friendships. It's not "interfering," as a PP says above, to do as OP did and just point out that yes, there are so-called friends who are not really behaving like real friends. Children learn what friendship should look like from their experience and from what their parents teach them about friendships and how people should treat each other. It's appropriate for OP to have said exactly what she did. She wasn't interfering -- she was supporting her child but not telling her child what to do. |
Anonymous
I call them frenemies. |
Anonymous
Maybe this is why women tend to over analyze friendships and generally are horribly critual of esch other. The analyzing and moms interjection start that conditioning from go. |
Anonymous
Put the wine glass down. |
Anonymous
NP here. I agree they learn by experience, but that's why I'm extremely unlikely to intervene in these sorts of cases. Gaining experience works better when you figure it out on your own, instead of when it's explained to you. There are obviously exceptions when the child is in real danger or it's crystal clear he kid will never figure it out, but I'm likely to stay out in most cases like this. |
Anonymous
I disagree. I don't think you can throw out this one-size-fits-all guide for parenting. It takes mixture of allowing them to make mistakes sometimes and helping them talk through things at other times (or after the mistake). You have to follow your gut as to when to stand back vs. when to intervene. It also depends on your child. You know your child best as far as whether they benefit from talking things through or if they prefer to work it out for themselves. You can't necessarily expect what works for your child to work for other peoples' children. My DD wants to talk to me. If she comes home upset about being treated poorly, I'm going to offer comfort and help her work through it. I do think it is a good idea to angle the conversation so that you are making them think about it ("what do you think you should do...") vs. just telling them what to do, but no way am I not going to help her and have these conversations. |
Anonymous
| We are all meant to live and learn. Overprotective moms ruin it for kids (their own and others). |
Anonymous
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I have 2 boys ages 5 and 7 and have a different perspective. Our boys play with several kids on the block of varying ages. We've been neighbors for 5 years and kids play with one another outside often. When any of the neighborhood kids have a friend over, they play with their guest and not the neighborhood kids. No one feels bad.
My kids have friends over and the child who has a friend over often wants to hang out with his friend and not with his brother. |