What do you do if your child's best friend is horrible to them?

[imaginaryfriend]

I'm driving myself slightly crazy with this one. My dd, 4, has a friend at school who she's known for a long while now outside of school. She's incredibly fond of her but in the last couple of months her friend is saying increasingly mean things to her at school along the lines of 'I'm going to play with so-and-so because she's pretty and you're not', being incredibly competitive and quite aggressive in her words to dd. I know girls all get up to this stuff but dd is getting very unhappy - she said to me tonight 'I really love xxx but she doesn't love me because she's so horrible to me'. I keep trying to persuade her to make some other friends too but she finds it v ery difficult to relate to children in general and she is devoted to this girl. My dd is one of those kids who needs a 'best friend.'

Any suggestions or do I just sit this one out and wait for it all to blow over?

Hmm, just brush it off and show your dd that you are not bothered by it.

I used to say to my ds, oh there's other children much nicer than so an so, choose them to play with if so an so wants to be nasty.

Dont be a sucker to the 'my childs an angel' brigade though cos sure as eggs is eggs she will of said the same or similar at some point or other.

ah, girls can be so horrible can't thye? Just be there fo her I spose. Their memories are short.. and i am sure she will be ok. i could tell stories of how my best friend was really horrible to me, but she was still my best friend for years

TT&TL, my dd's not an angel by any means, she's got a very standoffish moody side which leads to her not being terribly approachable / popular at school - I've seen other girls go up to her and say hello and she turns her head in a totally petulant manner which I know is shyness / awkwardness but probably just seems like unnecessary moodiness to anyone else. I think she's socially rather 'clumsy' she hasn't got her head around that girly competition thing, some of the girls I see there are socially way ahead of her. I sometimes think she's rather boy-ish in her interests and approach to people. But she's incredibly sensitive and forms very strong attachments to people, including friends, that's what I'm worried about finding a way to handle really, the way she gets so upset about unkind things being said to her.

aliceband, that's mostly what I've been doing but she's coming home every day in tears at the moment and I haven't found a good way out.

Hi - I suggest you find ways for your dd to spend time with other children outside school. DD is an only, so in order to help her make friends/learn to share/learn to wait her turn, handle a spat, etc (basically all the things an only child doesn't necessarily learn at home), I try to create opportunities elsewhere. Our flat is small, and not particularly suitable for playdates, but we have other children over for a play periodically. Sometimes we arrange a date to meet/take another child to softplay, or meet at a park for a run around.

Do you have any friends with dds who you might arrange to see regularly? I know one friendship blossomed for dd because she had a swimming lesson at the same time as another child the same age, and we'd often wander to the park with them for a swing after.

Seek out opportunities for spending time with others, or look to create them. Then try to integrate the times into your schedule so that they become regular occurences.

It may also help her if you're around to monitor time with friends - ie, if a friend says something like 'because you're pretty and she's not', you can say something like 'ooh X, that's not a kind thing to say. We should be kind to our friends' so that they both know what's not OK. Let's face it, at that age they're trying out all sorts of behaviour to see where the boundaries are, and you can help teach them.

Good luck. It's hard to watch a sensitive child struggle. Hope things get better.

That's the ideal solution I know earlybird. The funny thing is that this girl was someone we did see out of school before dd started there. They never particularly got along marvellously but we kept meeting up because the mum and I are friends and I wanted dd to get used to a child with a very different character to herself (have to say the friend is bright, funny, full of energy, in most ways much more 'normal' than dd, but is just particularly demanding / competitive with other children), then when the friend started at the same school as dd dd because totally attached to her. Now if I even suggest playing with someone else she says 'NO! xxx is my friend!' she just doesn't think she can have more than one friend. perhaps because she's used to having one parent. I don't know, she has a level of 'devotion' which makes life hard for her - won't hold anybody else's hand if I'm there etc. etc. But in lots of ways this friend is not making her happy, or at least doing nothing for her self-esteem which is already quite low (I feel constant guilt about that, sure it must be me somehow). Pre the friend coming to school dd was pals with a very shy little girl who was also the 'devoted' type - they wandered round holding hands, whispering, being a total little clique. But that friend moved onto the next class and dd was very upset until this other friend started. It's the case of a familiar face that drew her to this girl and also a liking of her brightness and sense of fun. But it's like she keeps expecting something from this girl that this girl isn't going to want to give, it's not in her nature, she's much more gregarious and 'fickle' (I don't mean that negatively, just that her attention span flits from things very frequently while my dd is a slow but steady plodding type who doggedly won't give up on something til she's got it). Having said that this girl is also very attached to dd in a different sort of way, she's very sad if dd's off unwell or is late in the morning etc.

I keep trying to work out if any of the other mums look like they might like some friends for their dds but most of them have quite large families and seem in a mad rush or the girls are all paired off with their groups of friends. There are a couple coming into school after Christmas that I'm going to 'target.'

I had a similar situation with DS1 and his best friend when he was that age (without the prettiness aspect of course) - it's not exclusively a girl problem. What worked in helping DS1 get over the problems was encouraging his interests and taking the emphasis off friendships. I know we all worry about our children's social skills, but it's possible to make matters worse by making that concern too obvious and undermining their confidence in their own ability to make friends. And what looks awful to us may be interpreted differently by other children, who appear to observe different rules to grown-ups.

I would talk to your daughter about what is reasonable to expect from a friend - it sounds as if she may be overdoing the devotion side at the expense of just having fun together. Is it possible that the other girl's behaviour is to do with wanting to make her own friends rather than have them made for her by her mum? If so, your daughter's clinginess is not going to help the situation, and nor is any further attempt at social engineering on your part.

On the more positive side, these early friendship problems are a useful preparation for later life. I'd really, really worry about any child who made it to the teenage years without having been through "I love x but x doesn't love me" at least once

Hallgerda, I've tried to encourage dd many times to make other friends and not to cling onto this one girl who is much more gregarious than dd.

Just to clarify ... the friend's mother and I haven't 'engineered' their friendship and the friend and dd have other friends outside of school. I don't think they'd be friends with each other just because we 'told' them to, children are much more willful than that. It's more complicated. The friend needs dd as much as she needs the friend but for totally different reasons. The friend likes the security of dd's friendship and dd likes the friend because she's familiar to her. The friend is incredibly possessive about dd, doesn't like her playing with other girls or even her talking about friends she has outside school. But at the same time the friend has her own separate friends and often plays with other children at school leaving dd alone. When that does happen and dd goes to play with someone else the friend rapidly returns and breaks that situation up.

Look, I know they're all just practising acting out different emotions on each other, I know they are very young. I began the thread because dd was coming home in tears and at the moment keeps saying things like 'I'm useless at everything' 'I'm ugly' etc. etc. Yesterday all day dd was totally miserable with very low self-esteem. I wondered really if there was anything I could do to help her. That's why I posted initially.

Could you talk to the school about this? They're usually only too keen to know what is going on in the friendship groups and can talk about friendship issues through circle time etc. Also they may see a different scenario when they have the children all day - they might be able to suggest other suitable girls (and boys!) for a trip to soft play etc . Worth a try?

Definitely, hot and bothered, I know one of the teachers in particular who dd is very fond of might be able to help. I'm planning that for next year in fact. There will also be a change because dd will be going full-time and her friend will remain part-time as she's 6 months younger. So dd will have to play with other kids when this friend isn't there. I'm hoping that will boost her confidence a bit.