to tell my daughter her friends are horrible?

[Bumblingaround]

my 8 year old is in a class dominated by a few very mean girls (poss true of all classrooms i know) and often cries about being picked on by them, but at the same time wants to play with them and invite them to our house.
i've said why can't you play with so-and-so or someone nicer who makes you feel happy? the three worst offenders are from very unhappy backgrounds - should i try to explain this to my girl?

My 6 yr old invited two of his mates round one afternoon
they were awful to him
he seemed unbothered but one of them will definitely not be coming again, he was smug 'i've got a laptop, ds, blah blah, you haven't ', he said he didn't eat any if the food I offered and he was mean to ds and my little dd
my ds might like him but hell will freeze over before he gets invited round here again
oh and ds has never been invited to his house

sorry slight rant there

how do you mean 'unhappy background'??

one's parents are splitting up right now, another was the subject of a gruelling custody battle that was even splashed in the Mail, the other is ..well,, kind of bonkers really.
not sure my girl'd make much sense of it so don't know whether to try and explain their behaviour in this light..

all that sounds like normal family stuff. every family faces problems,dont see how explaining it to your dd will help....might make her worry more

and no,i have learnt NOT to ever critisise my dc's friends!

it's a toughie.i would keep encouraging her to play with other 'kinder' children,but tbh,all kids-even lovely one's-have the potential to be bratty or mean on occasion.

my dd is 4,and is very kind,polite,sociable etc but is sometimes influenced by other children at nursery.

like your dd,mine is picked on by 2 girls at nursery.."your shoes are ugly/hair is horrible etc...yet she still wants to play with them

i told her she should play with her other friends as these girls didn't sound very nice..
but nope,she persisted.
i spoke to nursery about it and they said they all seemed to play nicely together.however,i have noticed mean spiritedness creeping in,in the way she plays with her 2 year old ds..i don't know if it's just a phase that all kids go through,or if she's mimicking these girls..

i think all you can do is encourage them to stand up for themselves.they have to learn about self preservation at some point...

but no.i would refuse to invite them round to your house..like i refused to have them at dd's recent birthday party

We are going through this atm with dd2 and ds and have been through it previously with dd1. I will criticise their friends but in a "behaviour not the child" way IYSWIM. True friends are not mean to you and they don't leave you out and I don't see that there's any problem in pointing that out to your DD. I also think that encouraging her to look further afield for friends is a good idea as well, so that all her eggs are not in these girls' baskets.

The problem is, aren't the mean girls always the most popular ones, and everyone wants to be in the in-crowd...

Goldenticket has the right idea, I think. Tiny Clanger has had a couple of nasty "friends" in the past, and I really struggled not to badmouth them to her, just point out gently that some of the things they did in front of me were Not Good (stealing her share of sweets, throwing toys down the stairs etc).
I also second encouraging friendships outside school. These tend to be less pressured.

You need to be v careful how you play it - the last thing you want is for your daughter to say to the kids "my mum doesn't like you" and then end up in a row with their families!

If you can remember an episode where your DD was unhappy, perhaps point out, "do you remember when they did such-and-such that made you upset"? and hope that she decides that she doesn't want that again so doesn't want to invite them round.

I think you're right about this being a typical playground dynamic.

I disagree though about not discussing the possible reasons why the other girls are behaving like they are.

I always encourage DD1 to look at why because I believe there is always a reason, they could be angry or sad about something and this is the way they're expressing themselves. It doesn't make the behaviour right, but I turn it round by asking DD1 how she might feel if she was unhappy at home or school and whether this would change the way she behaved.

I also try to keep out of who she plays with and their numerous passing arguments, apart from listening to her talk about it and encouraging 'good' behaviour.

Of course there is a line to be drawn where normal arguing turns into bullying, and I don't like it when one incident is labelled bullying, but if it is systematic bullying then the school should be doing something about it.

I had this with my 9yo DD. I didn't want to say outright "you're not allowed to play with her", as I thought the romance of it all would make it worse. They were already "best friends forever" and would get all "oh they can't keep us apart" etc.

I just reminded her at every opportunity that the other child had said such and such. I invited other nice kids around, and praised them to high heaven afterwards at their kindness, manners etc.

She eventually realised it herself, and now sees former BFF for what she is.

[hi-fives me emoticon]