faltering friendship

[Anonymous]

What do you do when your 10-yr old child decides they no longer want to be friends with another child who they've known and liked for years. What makes it trickier is that we are close friends with the parents, and it's getting really awkward.

[Anonymous]

Don't push it with your kid. Kids that age change friends approximately every 30 seconds, and your pressure would just guarantee conlfict between the kids. If it's meant to stick, it will stick, but your child has the right to choose their own friend in any case. Just do things with the other parents separately.

[Anonymous]

Accept it, but also talk to your child about what family friendships mean and how being a member of your family means being kind and inclusive to all the members of their family. That's different from being friends.

Then, don't push togetherness, but don't exclude this family from family oriented things, either.

What do the other parents think is going on?

What are your child's reasons? Maybe they are just drifting. Maybe your child is making the right call and you folks just don't see it yet. Maybe your child is a "mean girl" or maybe theirs is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't push it with your kid. Kids that age change friends approximately every 30 seconds, and your pressure would just guarantee conlfict between the kids. If it's meant to stick, it will stick, but your child has the right to choose their own friend in any case. Just do things with the other parents separately.

I agree on this advice. We had similar situation with DD- she started being the mean girl to a really nice friend of hers. DH and I were very upset, tried to "help" things, which I think made the estrangement last longer... It lasted about 6 months, and then spontaneously, on their own, they started talking again. I remembered doing the same thing at this age, quite often. I would have WWII with friends, we would feud, and then after a while, we would give in. It takes a lot of energy to stay angry.

I would try to ignore it unless your child or other child is doing something over the top. They will resolve on their own, but it may take a bit, maybe even as long or longer than our situation.

As parents, maybe you can acknowledge with the other parent that you two are going to let the kids work this out themselves. I do think that is a good route to try. Good luck. This age can be a challenge!!

[Anonymous]

And, I'm afraid, your daughter may just have grown in a different direction from her friend. My daughter (now a teenager) is no longer friends with a number of my friends' children -- children that she pretty much grew up with. It is REALLY painful for me. She is nice to them, but they don't have much in common any more.

[Anonymous]

Am I the only one who remembers this happening in their own childhood? My parents had friends with children my age and younger. We grew up and had nothing in common at all. My parents continued their friendship and we were all cordial when we were together. It was no big deal.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, it happened to me. My parents had neighborhood friends they were friendly with, and I played with this one girl my age as a preschooler and early elementary girl. We shared birthday parties, etc.

As we grew older, I just stopped liking her -- not sure I ever really liked her, but she was just always around.

I see her now and then -- she's still really weird, we still have nothing in common. My mom used to nudge me, "Go out, play with "Mary""... and I never wanted to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Am I the only one who remembers this happening in their own childhood? My parents had friends with children my age and younger. We grew up and had nothing in common at all. My parents continued their friendship and we were all cordial when we were together. It was no big deal.

Happened to me too. But with my own I'm tempted to step in (I know I shouldn't and largely don't), and we parents tend to project a little.

[Anonymous]

Happened to me, too.

[Anonymous]

This is a good time for your daughter to learn how to be polite, even if she is not good friends with someone. She is old enough to know the difference. Your daughter should not be expected to invite the girl over to play; however, if the girl comes as part of a family invite, your daughter should behave as a good hostess.

It's what (successful) grownups do, too.

[Anonymous]

This is all normal. Michael Thompson is an expert on children's social behavior and wrote a great book on it - The Social Lives of Children - or something like that. Great book!