My daughter is 10 and goes back to school tomorrow 😔 she’s going into P7 (Scotland). We’ve had a lovely holiday but she’s full of anxiety tonight.
So she has this friend, Annie. They haven’t been friends for very long, maybe a year or so, but last year they played together at school most days. Annie is very possessive of my daughter and doesn’t like her playing with other people. She can be moody and unkind (but she can also be lovely and clearly thinks the world of my daughter - I don’t think it’s coming from a bad place, more jealousy/insecurity). My daughter is shy and quiet and kind to a fault, and to be honest lets Annie walk all over her a bit (We’re working on this but not getting very far). She struggles to stand up to her. My daughter hasn’t seen Annie over the holiday at all (her choice).
My daughter is also close to another girl in her class, Ellie. Ellie lives beside us. They didn’t play together at school last year but they hang out together out of school, and the girls have seen a lot of each other over the hols.
Long story short, my daughter doesn’t want to hang out with Annie as much, and wants to hang out with Ellie instead sometimes (in fact her ideal would be for them all to play together but Annie hates Ellie and can be rude and unkind to her - so that is not an option)
How does she gradually extract herself from this friendship, with minimal drama/unkindness? I’ve suggested she just start gradually saying to Annie that she wants to play with Ellie sometimes, but she says Annie will just follow her and then she’s mean to Ellie and my daughter is stuck in the middle and doesn’t know how to deal with that.
I’m at a bit of a loss to be honest.