worried about dd1's only friendship

[fridakhalo]

in the past 3 years for various reasons we have had to move house 3 times, including moving from city - country, from country to another city, and then back to the first city but in a different area. All this has taken its toll on all of us in different ways, but I think on my 7 yr old dd most of all. She claims to like her new school, but has chosen as her only friend the one child I would have loved her to avoid. This child is emotionally very very needy, disturbed, and immature, and I really dislike my child's association with her. I have tried to see the positive in this child, but I am afraid the negative really outweighs. She adores my dd and showers her with presents because my dd is the only one in the class who is nice to her. this in itself I find really sad and a bit sick. At first when dd started the new school she made efforts to mix with a large group of girls, and I do invite different girls home to play each week, but the friendship has now evolved to the extent that people refer to them as a double act. I have to work very hard to hide the horror on my face, and I KNOW my dd is aware of my dislike for this child..

Apart from encouraging her to try other friendships, what do I do? what is worse is that next year the classes are being mixed up and we have to fill in a form to name our child's best friend. I would LOVE for them to be split up next year, but noone else will write my dd down as her friend.

can I butt in?
I do understand how you feel Frida. My ds has had one very close friend since reception (he's 9 now)who I really think is not a good friend for him. Friend is a bit of a spoilt bully. Dh and I have had long agonising talks about it and ds himself has many times declared that he doesn't want to be x's friend any more but next day is best friends again.

But - we have decided that overall it is better for ds to have that friend even if he's not a friend we'd choose for him. By having that friendship ds has suffered quite a bit but also benefitted from having a mate when not having a mate in the playground feels like the worst that can happen to a kid. He has also learnt a lot and has learnt to deal with x in a very mature way. Now at 9 ds is finally spreading his wings and making friends in new social groups but is still best friends on and off with x. Overall we feel that we did the right thing to let the friendship continue and anyway there is nothing we could have done to stop it even if we'd wanted.

It sounds like your dd's friends creeps you out a bit, but in the end what's the best for your dd having a weird friend or having no friends???

I think you are reading too much into this Frida - I mean, she's only seven. You make it sound as if she is possessed by the devil. I can see you find her creepy but what does she actually do with your dd? What does 'acting out on a subconscious level' actually mean here?

Yes yes and yes. I am probably freaking out unnecessarily. I do feel very stressed about it. Aloha she is a devil child! They were being each other last night, and it all got a bit damienesque, as my daughter refused to stop "being" her friend. In theatre (where I work) if you are doing an improvisation, it's part of that work to ensure that at the end, you come back to yourself, you reconnect with reality. What happened with this child last night was that my daughter seemed unable/unwilling to reconnect with her reality. Now I am all for imaginative play, but a) it has to be fun and b) it has to end at some point.

You don't think you're letting your imagination run away with you a bit here? Devil child?

My son was a polar bear for quite a long time yesterday. 'Call me Poly' he insisted. Sometimes he's a kitten called Silver. Play for children is much more absorbing than 'improvising' I think. And they like trying on other identities. Obviously you don't like her being the other girl, because you dislike her. But she isn't stealing your dd's soul. HOnestly!

I think you are reading too much into it. She 7- you say you get on OK with her mother, so presumably she's not loony. I think you are ascribing adult emotions and behaviours to her. She may have a problem understanding where reality stops and starts - lots of children do- ds2 thinks that Thomas the Tank engine is real- (and I know adults like that), but I think its a bit unfair (from what you have said on here) to make her out as being evil or possessed or something.

If you really don't want your dd to be friends with her then you will have to stop her seeing her. But then your dd will have no friends. I would still imagine that once she has found her feet she would drop any limpetty weird friends anyway (or not see so much of them).

Girls are big into secret clubs and stuff anyway- I was from about age 7 to 9 and we had all sorts of secret stuff going on with various friends. I don';t think pretending to be each other sounds weird at all for that age group. I would think it was odd if they were 17, but not at 7.

baka's right - aged seven to nine I had gangs, secret hideaways, code words, magic crystals, we used to sneak out of our parents' houses when everyone was asleep and go and do silly pointless things like break into the school - I really did live in my imagination at that age.

I think you are judging this friendship too harshly and I think you are doing it because you yourself dont have many friends in the area.

Maybe you haven't managed to communicate just what is so repellant about her but tbh she sounds pretty normal to me - lots of dd1s friends use baby voices and cry a lot too.

Forgive me, did you say you had spoken to the mum about the presents? Thats what I would do. If it carried on I would speak to the child. Sorry if I have missed that you have already done that.

Oh, and I would take all the presents from my child and give them to the other child's mother with a nice comment like 'your dd gave these to my dd, and I'm sure she was just being lovely, but we couldn't possibly accept them'.

yes agree

or you can say to the child 'you musn't give dd all your lovely things, keep them for yourself and dd can play with them when she comes round. Don't give her any more things sweetheart.' thats prob what I would say.

i think you are over reacting too - sounds normal to me. And my experience of friends who have tried to control their children's friendships has been that the children have dug their heels in and it has prolonged a friendshipo past what would have been it's natural course. I would try and relax about it whilst encouraging other frienships.

Am interested in why you say when she is with this child 'it's like I don't exist' - isn't that true of most children when they have a friend over? I hardly see my son when he has a schoolfriend back and sometimes it takes hima while to come down from his boy-cloud at the end of it too!

Isn't that one of the best things about having a friend over? Mum gets left to her own stuff whilst the children disappear into their own world.

And YES it is NORMAL that you don't exist when friends come to play. That is the whole point of it IMO - even if, as when my ds's little friend came round recently (they are 4) her mum and I were enjoying the peace and total absence of our children, only, on investigation, to find them both naked trying to flush each other down teh toilet (yes, standing in the loo) because they were 'playing being poos'.
When my oldest (my stepdaughter) was this age, she and her friends would just vanish and dh and I would look at each other and think, um, what do we do now? Then we'd have a g&T!

frida i do think you need to let go a bit and help your dd make new friends rather than trying to force this friendship to end, as that is likely to be counterproductive...

BUT i do know where you're coming from and i think if the friendship and the girl give you the creeps, that's probably based on something genuine. some children/people in general just are very strange, needy, pathetic and even frightening. (it must be horrible for them as well, presumably they can't help it.) it may not seem like it now but you have a radar for this kind of thing and your dd probably does too - she just needs to feel strong in herself and that she needn't rely on this one friend. she should also understand that the presents/neediness don't mean she has a duty to the friend.

Thank you all. I'm really glad I posted under a pseudonym as clearly I am coming over as rather unhinged [mad grin emoticon]. Your advice seems very sensible - and I am sure that,had I read this thread myself, I would have replied in the same way. I LOVE LOVE LOVE imaginative play. I run several drama clubs for children. I am all for being poos, secret clubs, etc etc etc. I don't need my daughter to need me when her friends are round, and I enjoy the break, yes - but I do need her to be able to "see" me if I need to talk to her, and I do expect her to be able to return to normality. I guess it is impossible to convey in words - but yes this little girl spooks me and yes it is just a feeling but it is a really strong one. and yes enid I am sure if I had a close friend in the area I would be able to talk to them and put things in perspective. But that's why I'm on here - I can't go slagging off this girl to other mothers in the class, it would be vile to do that to her mother..... I guess there is nothing I can do apart from encourage the other friendships and try not to get so freaked about it. I'm actually surprised that none of you ever encountered a freaky child before, or went to school with one, or were one . frida.

well i have known some frida!

there was little boy at a playgroup i worked at as a teenager and to be honest he freaked us all out - poor lad was only 5 but behind his back we used to joke about him actually being an alien etc. not nice i admit, but he was just very odd and humourless and scary. and as i've said i've known adults too who have that pathetic/needy/controlling/presents thing going on.

i'm not saying "anyone a bit different should be shunned" - not at all - but you do want to avoid being the only friend of a strange, domineering or controlling person - at whatever age - and i think it is your role to help your dd see that - in a softly softly way.

I think that what frieda is describing is a child who is instinctively using controlling behaviour, maybe because she is anxious about not having friends.
I have been subject to several controlling "friendships" in my life, I now see them coming but am fairly inept at nipping them in the bud.

ds1 is a completely freaky child (severely autistic). Bizarre beyond belief. He's not possessed though.

This girl still sounds normal to me. Needy- yes, lonely yes, but nothing more than that. You said early on that your dd hadn't managed to break into the established friend groups (and girls of this age are horribly cliquey and exclusive). It sounds as if that is why she and this girl have paired up. Surely not sinister? How about doing out of school stuff so she makes other friends through clubs.

i can totally see that a child labelled freaky or weird might actually, officially have special needs (as opposed to being just "needy")

but either way the point is, no other child should, on their own, have to bear the burden of being a needy or demanding child's only friend, especially if, possibly, they feel obliged to do that, or feel that they made their bed and have to lie in it, and aren't sure how to offload that responsibility. a parent can and should help a child learn how not to get too sucked into that kind of friendship... and/or learn that it's ok to become more distant from a friend or to make other friends.

imo especially important in this age of children constantly being told how important it is to be friends, share etc etc etc - well it is, but it's also important to have boundaries with friendships.

But from everything that has been said so far fridakhalo's dd enjoys this girl's company. If she was desperate for a way out of course it would be different.

Ds1 has never really had any friends, but at mainstream school he did have a little girl who adored him. Now I never understood what on earth she got out of the relationship (he's non-verbal blah blah) but she would invite him to her parties (only 1 that did) and "play" with him in the playground (ie he would stand there ignoring her whilst she stood next to him). On talking to her mum it transpired that she was very shy. He was her security in reception. By the time he left after a term in year 1 she had other friends. But I can now see that he did give her something - a chance to build up confidence.

I suspect something similar would happne in this case- friendships - especially if unequal run their course and people move on.

Baka, of course.I have three AS nephews who are decidedly freaky asin very eccentric and odd, but not scary. And if I knew the friend had SN I would treat the whole thing differently, and I might know how to handle her better. She doesn't have a diagnosis of any kind, which I find surprising. I guess that's the education system not noticing emotional stuff unless it is setting fire to newts/the school/stabbing your friends.

dd1 has jus told me that they are now being bullied as well. in a low grade way at the moment, and interestingly by BOYS which I have never heard of before . She seems incredibly philosophical about it, but I really feel for her - and apparently friend is not coping well at all. New in class and bullied already? and it is apparently because she has hooked up with this child. My dd can be loud, annoying,silly, immature etc - some of the girls in her class seem about 18 compared to her - but her friendship with this girl is just exacerbating those characteristics and not doing her any favours. My dd WAS in her previous several schools very popular and universally liked - her skills with people were her THING - and it is hard for me to see her in the bullied, unliked group - which is what I feared would happen.

Sorry baka we cross posted. I wish I could let it run its course. But I don't want her to be unpopular. . She has enough to deal with being in a new environment.

i thought it was interesting how at one point frida said the friendship did not seem to be fun. i can just imagine being "locked into" a friendship like this and feeling controlled. you might not actively be saying "help me escape" but you might still at some level welcome being encouraged to make other friends and being told it is ok not to have this person as a best friend forever.

ah I'm bowing out as I have nothing useful to add and we are talking at cross purposes (ds1 is nothing like a child with AS- and lots of children are scared of him).

I guess the bottom line is though that i really think you can't choose your children's friends for them. And if you try to then you just end up on the road to disaster, and make the "banned" child even more attractive. Presumably if your dd is now being bullied as well as a result of this girl, and she is a limpit and needy etc then she will drop her once she has other friends.

The thing I don't understand though is why you have this girl around if you really don't like her. Why not let her remain a "school friend" and do the whole clubs thing etc after school so your dd isn;'t seeing her after school as well.

If you are worried about them being together next year then the best thing is to share your concerns with the teacher (although I would tend to stick to talking about them being a bad influence on each other - and not put it all on the other girl- or the teacher will switch off). But then it sounds as if you risk your dd being left with no friends.

Thinking back I changed school at 9 and my best friend was very controlling and used to have me dangling (used to stop talking to me regulalry for no reason). She was quite possessive and controlling. (and we boarded so full on). By age 11 I was fed up, and got a new friend!