To not know what to do?

[yesitssea]

Dd is 10. She's in a group of 3, 2 girls and a boy who have been pals since nursery.

The girl has always been lovely and kind but the past year she has developed a kind of strange tendency towards some negative behaviours and my daughter is baring rhe brunt of it.

I would like some advice please.

The first one is this girl has started using 'secrets' and 'private chats' as a way of excluding people. For example I had the three of them to the park the other day. The girl went up to the boy and said 'I need to speak to you' and turned to my daughter and said 'it's private'. This happens all the time.

The secrets things is similar. On the same trip out my daughter said something like 'x was being horrible to y on Roblox the other day' and this girl said 'oh you don't know the whole story, but I can't tell you because it's a secret'. My daughter said 'I think I do because I was with X and Y today and they told me the story'. This is one example but it leads into the next change of personality.

The other thing she does is adopt whatever thing has gone wrong to another person and make it worse. E.g my daughter has dispraxia. She is having physio to learn how to walk properly. She has in shoe calipers and she hurts her hips and ankles frequently.

She was going through a rough patch recently and this girl stated saying 'oh my ankle is really bad, I've been to the doctor and I've torn a ligament'. My dd is autistic and said 'no you haven't you did climbing with me last night' and the girl ran off crying, and my daughter got told off for upsetting her.

These are small examples but it's getting my daughter down. She feels excluded and belittled. If she goes to see her counsellor at school this girl 'sees her counsellor twice at the weekend' when my daughters family member died this girl had 'two family members who had died' and she was sitting alone in the yard because she was 'sad'.

I just know what I can do. My DD is confused and doesn't know why her friend is different and making her feel bad when they have had 7 years of friendship.

The reason I have posted this now is because I have them at my house and this girl has just whispered into the boys ear and nodded at him as if she's just told him a big secret. But then wouldn't ('couldn't') tell my daughter.

Oh dear- all my paragraphs are gone!

Hi OP,
I’m sorry your DD is experiencing this. I have 4 DD and one of them is autistic. At about the same age your daughter is, friendships became a lot more complicated. I think my daughter simply didn’t do the whole ‘secret’ excluding behaviour you are describing and didn’t understand why it was being done to her as she is a very straightforward personality and uncomfortable with what she sees as deceit. It was really difficult for my DD to interpret the social nuances but she knew she was being excluded. I spoke to the school (who weren’t amazingly helpful but could at least keep an eye on the situation) and I encouraged my DD to explore other social situations (she went to a Guide Group that was totally separate from school friends, for example).
It might also be an age thing: there’s a lot of upheaval of friendships around the time kids love from primary to secondary in my experience.
I hope you get some good advice but keep reassuring DD that it’s not her fault.

*move, not love

Encourage your DD to widen her social circle. If she has lots of other friends, this girl will not be a big part of her life.

There's nothing you can do, I'm afraid. Your daughter will have to learn to deal with difficult people, because she will encounter them throughout life, as we all do. We can't control other people, only how we react to their behaviour. She should also be taught that she has the power to end any friendship that doesn't make her happy.

Yes. We talked about how you do not have to be friends with people who treat you badly.

She understood but still wants to pursue the friendship. She even wanted to make this girl an 'apology cookie'. When I asked her what she was apologising for she said 'she told me about all the things she has going on in her life and it's really sad' when I asked about what that was she said that her brother (he's 4) kept taking her stuff and her ginea pig died a few years ago'

I said then what are you apologising for? And she said she just felt like she should ☹️

Hmm I've had an email from this girls mum. She's said her daughter came home yesterday upset. Said that her daughter had said mine had been mean to her.

I've asked my daughter had they had a falling out and she's said no, had a great time and as far as I observed there was no tension/fall out. But I wasn't with them full time.

I dropped them off and they did a hug and see you at school when we left.

Urgh.