dd accidentally accused girls of serious things they never did

My advice to my DC has always been quite straightforward -

(1) hang out with people who make you feel good about yourself

(2) avoid the ones who bring you down

(3) avoid drama

(4) be kind, but not a pushover

(5) this is how adults do friendships

Good luck. I think your DD might be best just avoiding these girls completely and looking for some nicer friends

A salient lesson in not listening to hearsay, gossip and second-hand news. I'm not sure there's much she can do really except try to widen her social circle.

I think your DD has just learned a valuable lesson. You getting involved won't help.

I wouldn't be a teenager again for all the money in the world. I don't have any practical advice, but do tell her the crazy teenage drama stuff gets better as everyone grows up and that what seems life ruining now/of deathly importance won't matter in 5 years time.
She needs to avoid the crazy friend completely - by which I mean don't try to be friends but also don't get involved in more conflict/tit for tat either. Even if she is now going around badmouthing her with screenshots etc, that is likely to become less and less effective as people figure out what she is like. If she (the friend) is always the one in the centre of drama other people will figure it out.

DD needs to immediately ditch her "bestie". That is not how friends behave.

Bestie will then probably move on to do this to someone else and the other girls will see its bestie related drama and not your DD at all.

It's hard when this happens, poor DD

Your DD needs to find new friends and remover herself from the drama

I think all you can do at this stage is to talk through how she could have handled the situation differently.

And obviously ditch the "bestie" if she hasn't already done so.

The girls have been acting weird around her; we are on holidays now and they snap her less often and replaced with surroundings instead of their usual selfie.

That's not really weird though is it? Although I'm surprised they want anything to do with her at all.

The best way to 'navigate' this is to help her accept she was duped by her 'bestie', and that if this sort of thing was to happen in the future, not to accept gossip without proof.

But I suspect she's learned her lesson, so the next part is to move on and accept what she's done means the girls will probably strongly avoid her now.

The may believe her but that may not be enough. If it were me I may believe her but I also wouldn't trust her again. She believed something someone else was saying about me and didn't even speak to me about it or get proof and she went to the form teacher about it.

I think your daughters learnt a lesson here and she should ditch the bestie and find some new friends.

Nobody here can answer that really, but it seems unlikely that they will trust her again as she has proved herself to be a pretty poor friend. Yes, she was "duped" by the "bestie", but ultimately that was the result of the choices that she made to listen to the other girl's toxic gossip. She could have chosen to handle it differently but she didn't. Lesson learned.

If the girls are still being civil and friendly towards her, I think she should count that as a win while accepting that they probably won't want to get too close to her going forward because of the lack of trust between them. In the meantime, I would encourage your dd to branch out and build new friendships with people who haven't had any involvement in all of this silly drama - it's a tough lesson, but she needs to understand that if you treat your friends badly, apologising for it afterwards may not be enough to "fix" the friendship.

I've never seen the word 'bestie' typed so much or realised people said that in real life. I'm sorry this is such a pointless post lol

Sounds like the ex bestie has confidence issues and a jealous streak, the trouble is she sucked your DD in and she believed her rather than her two other friends.

The letter’s been sent now and hard as it might be, I’d try and take your DD’s mind off it, she’s tried her best to apologise, that’s all she can do. Has your DD also spoken to the teacher letting her know what’s been going on?

I really hate the word... and the concept tbh. Imo, we should encourage our dc to develop multiple friendships rather than relying on single individuals!

OP, imagine you were the mother of one of the falsely accused girls. I imagine you'd be telling them to give your DD a wide berth, to protect themselves from false allegations?

Your DD has learned a tough lesson and I'm sympathetic to that, but sometimes, you can't turn back time. Actions have consequences. Treat it as a learning experience, not a failure

@Shortfatsuit Yes, that's also part of my advice to my DC. Have a wide circle

Yes, it was maddening reading it but that's on me sticking with reading the thread lol

Well, I don't really agree with the concept of being a "bestie" personally, and I always discouraged this kind of thinking. And frankly, if not listening to toxic gossip without any evidence makes you a "bad bestie", then so be it. The "bestie" clearly wasn't a good friend in any case.

I always taught my dc to behave fairly towards everyone and not to get involved in this kind of drama.

I apologise if lm wrong but is this the op who pretends to post as an adult but is actually the teen? The opening post is written in a very ‘teen’ sort of way…

At this point, your DD needs to stop hanging out with the girl lying and causing drama (if she hasn't already) and then focus on building friendships with people who weren't involved in any of this.

The other 2 girls being friendly is a bonus, but honestly you cannot blame them for wanting to keep your dd at arms length. Your dd would be better off accepting that and going with it. Maybe they'll get closer again as time passes, maybe not but either way trying to force the issue will be counter productive.

I do feel terribly sorry for teachers having to deal with this sort of nonsense. Must be very wearing!