I need to stay out of this friendship issue. Or do I?

[Rainallnight]

DD is 6 and in Year 2. In Reception and Year 1 she was very close to one particular girl, they were self-declared BFFs (we don’t encourage talk of BFFs but there you go).

This year, this girl seems to have turned against DD. At first I thought it was just normal friendship cooling off type stuff, not playing together as much etc.

But now every night DD tells me that it’s making her feel sad and that her former friend is saying things like ‘I don’t want to sit with you’, or ‘I’m not playing with you’.

I am very PFB about DD and am really having to sit on my hands to avoid intervening. I’m 99% sure it’s normal friendship stuff at this age and I just have to let it play out, advising DD appropriately about focusing on other friends and so on.

But there’s 1% of me that thinks it’s at risk of turning nasty. I was bullied in primary school and it started off with ‘I’m not sitting with you type stuff’.

But for lots of reasons, I just don’t trust my judgement and I’m not sure whether to just leave it or not.

The friend doesn’t have to sit by your DD or play with her if she doesn’t want to. I personally wouldn’t get involved as it may well pass over.

What I would focus on is encouraging your DD to take no notice of the ‘ex for now’ friend whatsoever- let her bloody get on with it, she’s what 6/7 years old…

Encourage your DD to make friends with others, as many as she can. Does she go to classes or clubs after school? Work on building her confidence etc. Are there other girls /boys your DD likes and can build friendships with?

Yes, that’s very much what I’m doing. I just keep fretting about it.

she does play with plenty of other people. This is just getting her down. I’m trying to be pretty breezy about it and focusing her on other people.

Funny, we have just been through similar with my nearly-6 year old. It was tough, she was really sad. But we kept with the approach you are using and it seems to have blown over, they were playing together today.

Stay out of it. This is an important part of her learning about friendships and how to deal with hurt feelings. She'll get over it in time.

That’s really helpful @MistyFrequencies. I’m glad your DD came through it.

Yes @mondaytosunday that’s what the 99% of me thinks.

Might be worth a mention in passing to the teacher. At that age we’ve had the teachers be excellent at steering people together or away from each other as needed, and they’ve always said they’d rather know before it becomes a problem.

There a good idea. There’s a parent teacher meeting after half term so maybe I’ll mention it then.