Child getting grief from my 'friend's' daughter

[Billyandharry]

My dd has just been dumped after a year by gf. All very sad and horrid but kind of to be expected mid teens. V sad but doing my best to keep her busy.
Annoyingly they are part of the same friend group but hoping the dust will settle and they can all be ok (my dd and her ex are both mature/generally nice kids)
Problem is one kid in their group has been shit stirring vis social media.
Made a hard situation so much worse just for fun.
The kid is my friend's daughter - I've texted and told her to ask her dd to butt out as she's creating so much unwanted drama.
Friend won't answer my call and says she's 'staying out of it'.
I'm sooo angry with her. Aibu to expect another adult esp a mate to get her dd to lay off.?
Does noone give their kid a bollocking anymore in middle class circles?
I'm soo angry and bewildered by this. Aibu? Be nice it's been a bloody awful week.

Honestly this stuff is par for the course at this age. Your poor daughter though it is absolutely horrible going through it.

I think your job here is to teach her how to handle situations like this so if they come up again in life she is tooled up for it.

We’ve had it with our two daughters. Focussing on spending time with them and encouraging other friendships helped the most, The friend groups often come apart in these situations. It is really horrible but if you can support her through and not prolong it with her it will pass.

Op I think its great your so called friend wants to stay out of it.. send her a message and say you completely agree , and you're not expecting 1000 words on the subject by noon.. all she has to do is tell her child to do the same. She don't need to do anything other then that.

Tbh it would have to be pretty serious wrong doing before I'd blur boundaries between my friendships and DCs with their friends. So if it's not the level that would have you speaking to a parent you didn't know, then it's best not to take advantage of a friendship and ask a mum to get involved just because shes your friend. Better to support your DD to navigate this sort of issue for herself. She will encounter trouble makers throughout her life and needs the skill to handle them and/or the ability to ignore them.

@Aladdinscarpet thanks for being kind- I'm trying to do just that. The break up is hard enough without the 'stirring' but seems it's par for the course these days!

@Sunsetbeachhouse thanks for replying- I've kind of said just that. It's the lack of empathy that im gob smacked by. I think she has her dd on a pedastool tbh.

Everyone has their own kid on a pedestal. You can't tell her how to parent hers and she probably has good reason for staying out of it like picking her battles to make her relationship with her daughter work. You say she is your friend - treat her like one.

@5128gap - i hear you but it is serious! I agree they need to learn how to navigate stuff themselves but I do think with the shocking levels of online meaness that sometimes the adults need to step in and safeguard the child. (I recognise I'm in the minority with this view).I just hate bullying of any kind and there's rarely any repercussions for the bully coz the kids are left to it.

@Spinet Hmmm well she's really not a friend after this! Ofcourse we all have our own family issues but jeez i like to think I'd get to the bottom of stuff if one child was being really hurt! My loyalties lie with dd here i.e the child. P.s you missed my note 'be nice ' but hey ho. That's the world we seem to live in eh?

Staying out of it is the smart play, unless we’re into bullying and school exclusion types of problems.

Getting involved in social issues between kids doesn’t help them resolve things, prevents them developing their own strategies, muddies the water in adult friendships and frequently only makes things worse.

Comfort your daughter, keep talking with her and helping her think of ways to navigate this.

But don’t try rope in another teen’s parent. It rarely goes well.

If it is serious and bullying (your OP wasn't really clear on that as stirring can be milder) then that's different and you did right to speak to the parent as you no doubt would any other parent. I don't know why your friend wouldn't address something like that (did you show her what her DD had said?) It seems very lazy and irresponsible of her if she knows the severity of it.

My middle daughter got involved in some unkindness over social media. 4 months of no phone, monitored online and basically treating her like a 6 year old taught her discretion is the better part of valour.

Sometimes as parents we have to get involved to a degree and teach our kids right from wrong.

OP, you said you:
told her to ask her dd to butt out as she's creating so much unwanted drama.

If she messaged you “telling” you to get your child to “butt out” of a social situation, ask yourself honestly how you’d react.

Bearing in mind everyone believes and prioritises their own child, put them on a pedestal etc, would a message like that make you think “I must reprimand my teen”? Or would it make you back off from the whole thing and wonder about your mate’s judgement?

I understand you’re upset for your child. That’s understandable. But when we’re upset we don’t always make the wisest choices because our feelings cloud our judgment.

But it is bullying? It will have a massiveimpact on the situation.
We in the UK have the unhappiest 15 year old girls in Europe. Does noone else think we 'stay out of it' too much? And no I'm not advocating helicopterparenting here.

@5128gap yes i showed her and yes I think she's being lazy and irresponsible.

@Balloonhearts - good for you. I like to think I would do similar everyone is so loathe to be involved/bollock their kid i just don't get it. I really don't. Makes me sad coz do many sad girls out there in the wild west of the internet.

@BabaYetu - ofcourse we're ALL defensive of our kids but I think I'd atleast get to the bottom of it and act according.

And the message the 'bully' gets is - do what u like there's no repercussions?! That just seems so wrong to me but I do know my view is very unfashionable.

I don't think I was not nice. I think I was direct, which is different. You're not treating her like a friend by insisting she takes your daughter's side in this.

OP, you are on your daughter's side. She is on her daughter's side. In this circumstance if I were her I would talk to my daughter about it and see what was happening - and yes I would try to ask her why she was being horrible if I thought she was, but I would not take someone else's word for it and nor would I enter into a conversation with a friend about whose daughter said what because that's the fastest way to lose a friend. I probably would say 'I''m staying out of it' even if I wasn't really. They are teenagers but you are not, so you have to at least try to keep some distance from the drama even if it pierces you to the soul (which I know it does).

In my experience, it's a much more middle class thing to be very involved with kids and their social lives, to the extent of organising "meetings" with the kids and parents to "discuss" situations. Not sure if this is still the case (and obviously I'm generalising) but that's been my experience.

Sympathies, OP. I can't imagine hearing that my DD had been bullying someone and not at least wanting to investigate and have a quiet word with her to make sure either it wasn't happening or it stopped.

My DD is younger than yours, but when I found out she'd made some horrible comments to a classmate, I texted the mum to apologise, and made sure my DD apologised properly to her classmate as well.

@Spinet ffs im not 'insisting' anything. Asking her to have a word with her dd? Empathy much?

I think it depends on what you mean by “stirring”.

When it comes to teenager relationships and rumours and such invoking breakups in 100% staying out of it.

Unless someone’s making serious allegations like police need to be called or violence/ threats being made it’s teenagers navigating the world of true friends v acquaintances v social group issues.

When two people date in the same friendship group a break up will always divide the group with sides taken. The same when a marriage ends.

What is the "shit stirring" though? As you've since posted saying the friend's DD is bullying. Is she sending abusive messages or inappropriate photos? Or is she effectively taking sides and making passive-aggressive digs about the other party? Maybe she has a fair enough reason to take sides, relationships and breakups are always going to be complicated and you won't know the full picture. Unless lines have been crossed to the point where you could show the message to a third party, like a teacher, and they would say "clearly A is bullying B here this is inappropriate behaviour, reaches the threshold of bullying in our behaviour policy and must be stopped" - then it's just friends having a falling out. And parents have different levels of when they feel they should get involved in teenagers and their interpersonal drama.

@tattygrl I live in an excruciatingly middle class area. Seems parents are vvv involved in activities etc but some/most fairly absent in terms of emotional stuff. And something isn't working if we have an epidemic of sad 15 year olds in the UK. I despair.