Child is severely left out
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
| Don't be passive. She finds friends. She decides. |
Anonymous
|
Most of the time these things will shift around again. What can seem like the end of the social world is often completely better in a month or so. I have 3 kids and saw this play out several times.
That said, I once heard the saying: "the best way to survive middle school is to have some friends outside of the middle school." So definitely encourage your daughter to invest in outside relationships as well. |
Anonymous
Exact thing happened to my DD in 8th grade, and again in 12th. Thankfully, DD had other friends to hang out with. Tell her to make plans with other friends. It sucks. GL. |
Anonymous
+1 do not do this. My kid went through this twice, and she would've been mortified if I called the parents. I was tempted to, but it would've made things worse. |
Anonymous
Another +1. The girl will just defend her actions and mention some stupid thing OPs daughter did that annoyed or offended her in some way. And guaranteed it's stupid nonsense but nothing will change. |
Anonymous
This. It sucks but there is nothing else you can do. You can’t make a-holes not be a-holes. |
Anonymous
Has she tried one on one hangouts with some of these friends? |
Anonymous
This happened to my oldest in 7 th grade it was so hard She found her people in college I’m Sorry OP |
Anonymous
|
Sorry. It's a tough situation.
We made sure to fill free time with opportunity to meet other kids like non competitive sports, tween/teen yoga, baking class, tween events at the library. This gave DC something to do with kids their age. Also encouraged building family relationships with distant cousins. Those relationships were easier, but not local. Make sure you are making weekends fun if they can't hang out with friends. Things improved greatly in high school. |
Anonymous
| The answer is to encourage new friendships and older ones, participate in lots of activities, and meaningful family time with siblings and cousins if she has them. Good luck to you. Hugs. |
Anonymous
That's a terrible solution. It doesn't help your daughter learn anything about how to cope with mean girls and rejection, something EVERY youth is likely to face at some point and the earlier they learn how to deal with it, the earlier they can keep honing their skills and learning how to handle the social pressures, learn that Queen Bees and worker bees like her now ex-friends are not really responsing to your DD... whatever made QB exclude her (usually jealousy or feeling she's a threat or just plain old meanness and need to feel "better than") is 95% of the time not actually anything the person on receiving end of QB's exclusion and meanness did. This isn't about trying to tell QB's parents to reign in their child. Plus, most likely, QB learned these behaviors from her parents, so it wouldn't work anyway. This is about the hard stage that almost all middle schoolers (and then high schoolers) are in: awkward, non-sensical social situations that hurt, are confusing, feel damning forever, but are what most people the same age go through at some point and are a learning process to get through, survive through, and learn how to thrive. Learning self-care and how to understand behaviors you don't understand. Good luck OP, and please don't call the QBs parents, that is a waste of time and not what you want to model for your DD. Model self care, sympathy and focusing on her own happiness, like all the suggestions here to find new activities outside of school, look for new friends, and find people who make you feel good when you're around them. |
Anonymous
| Same PP ^^ When I say "model sympathy" I don't mean for QB, I mean OP's DD, sympathy for herself. Try to help her to go as easy on herself as possible and to understand that often we won't understand why other people are mean, but it isn't usually truly about us and even if it is, doing what QB is doing is all about QB's issues and not about DD. |
Anonymous
|
This sounds like bullying, honestly.
OP: have you called the school’s guidance counselor ? |
Anonymous
|
This happened to my DD in 7th grade as well. The group didn't totally exclude her but more and more DD was focus of their criticisms, their teasing, their mean girl ways. And this was sort of a "popular girls' group" so DD was terrified of leaving it or calling any of them out on how they were treating her. They also tried to isolate her, make fun of her if she was nice to or talked to other girls.
DH and I really had to talk to DD about how middle school is hard for EVERYONE, this sucks, and these girls are NOT actual friends. Friends don't treat anyone that badly, and certainly not their inner group friends. But DD struggled to figure out who else to eat lunch with or talk to in classes, as she also found herself dressing differently from how she wanted to, because they made fun of some of her choices. We encouraged her to join some different after school activities at school from her friends, told her to blame us for making her go, and that helped a little. Also tried to do new activities or one-time events DD was interested in, which also helped a little, but none of those solved problem. In end what worked was mostly us telling DD over and over that 1) these girls' meanness was not DD's fault, and the meanness doesn't mean anything is wrong with DD. The mean girls are the ones with something wrong with them. And 2) she'll never win if she stays with them, the meanness will just get worse, and she'll feel worse about herself when it's not even her fault. What also worked was watching several tween/teen dramas with our DD, I remember "The Perks of Being A Wallflower" was one, it's definitely got some adult themes in it but it showed just how complicated tween and teen behaviors are, the roots of some of those complications, and that and other films with strong themes of how you have to be yourself, and shine as much as you can as yourself, and look for people who are drawn to your real light, not the fake light of fake friends. And yes, we showed her the Blind Melon music video for "No Rain" with the Bee Girl. Probably showed it to her more times than she wanted to see it, but it became a family joke and the song made her very happy when played strategically. In the end she decided to break with them, and I will never ever forget the call I got at work in middle of day, my daughter calling me crying, alone in an empty classroom with the lights out that she'd snuck into to eat her lunch alone because she no longer wanted to eat with them but she had no one else to eat with and was afraid if she ate alone in front of everyone, she'd look like a loser to everyone. My heart broke but I was also SO PROUD OF HER. I told her this was brutal and so hard, but so the right thing to make the break, and she picked the next most interesting person in one of her classes to try to sit with, they started talking, and DD eventually admitted she had no one to eat lunch with and the girl invited her to eat with her friends, who were considered way less cool, but they were so nice and DD finally got a "f*** it!" attitude (without saying the F word, of course LOL!)(no, we let her say it in that context). She didn't feel good or happy or settled into a new friend group until mid-8th grade, but it did happen. Middle school is ROUGH, and sometimes high school is even worse. Because the stakes are higher in high school (romance, popularity, all magnefied in importance in HS) but it's all rough. Good luck OP, I hope your DD protects herself and gets out of that friend group soon! |
Anonymous
| OP here: My daughter’s group is also (like pp) the “popular” girls group. Not only are they popular, but really liked. My DD is worried she would turn into the “weird kids” if she said anything to the group leaving her out. I really don’t know how to help her, because she has been crying every night but is too scared to do anything. |