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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We need to teach our kids to be resilient.

Sometimes people are mean.  It sucks.  For whatever reason, people sometimes hurt each other's feelings.  Sometimes they do so by accident, sometimes because they don't quite have the skills to navigate tricky social situations, and sometimes on purpose.

It happens with adults, and it happens with kids.  All the time.

To me, the best thing we can do is help our kids learn that they can handle these things.  They can survive being hurt, disappointed, angry, and even temporary lonely.  These are all normal feelings in response to other people and events - social and othewise.  Sometimes things go smoothly and in our favor, and we feel comfortable and happy.  And sometimes they don't.  But we're strong enough handle both without falling apart.  And we absolutely don't have to chase people who are unkind or uninterested in us in order to be happy or even ok.

To me, our job as parents is to give our kids a safe and loving home base with the family.  A place where they'll be loved and accepted for who they are, imperfections, social disappointments (even social "failures") and all.  Not everything is a problem to be solved immediately.  They can be loved and accepted right where they are until the tides change.

And on that note, past the age of 9 or 10, I think the ball is in our kids' courts - not ours - when it comes to their social life.  Rather than try to work with the other parents to get our kid included, we should instead encourage our kid to find ONE person who is kind, open-minded, inclusive, or just plain not caught up in the social BS of the day.  We don't need a crowd to be happy, and neither do teens.  They just need someone they can feel safe and comfortable with.

I have a friend who is trying so hard to get her DD included in a group of other girls (my kid is in another grade, so it's not her group of friends.)  And though I like my friend a lot, I am seeing first hand how much her efforts are hurting her DD.  The other girls find it weird (they make their own plans, they no longer do it through their moms),  and it's only reinforcing her DD's belief that it's super important she be accepted by this particular group.

Personally, I think she would be far better off encouraging her daughter to find ONE girl at a time who she genuinely connects with.  For a bunch of reasons this isn't happening authentically with this group of girls -- they're all really into sports and have been playing together for years, while my friend's DD hates sports but is now being forced by her mom to "try" them in order to be with the other girls.  It's a terrible fit and again seems to be signaling to her daughter that SHE needs to change to fit in with THEM rather than just be herself and find friends who are similar, even if it means not being part of that group.

Finally, I think my friend's motives are nothing but good and pure.  She wants to help her daughter feel socially happy and accepted.  But to me, she's really undermining both her DD's social life and her confidence -- in her own "likeability"  and also in her ability to cope with the inevitable disappointments that come when we don't click with a particular person or group.

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X10000

High school parents - do NOT go to the principal (!!!!!) when your child’s friend moves on.

Would you do this with a date? Are you teaching them to stalk people and get arrested?

I have seen this behavior by high school parents - STOP overcompensating and projecting. It’s NOT about you. [/quote]

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