Girls and their fall-outs - What can you do?

[Purpleroses]

DD is 8 (Y4). Yet again she has come home very stressed and in tears by bedtime "X said we had to play her game, and I don't like her game. And she said she had to be the oldest, and I want to be the oldest, and everyone else is playing her game, and it's a stupid game......and I've noone else to play with......"

This is quite a regular pattern. It's not always the same X. Her friends change around quite a bit, but there are several strong personalities in the class (including her) and they fall out so much. All normal girly stuff, as I remember from when I was that age. But she is SO upset :( Crying and crying and saying she wants to go back to her old school (which was just the same, only she's forgotton). What do you do? I've offered to go and see the teacher, but really it's not that the other girls are really being mean, just that she wants to make the rules up and so does X, and she's lost as X is more popular right now.

I'm a pracitcal kind of person - I want to "solve" problems for my DCs. But I'm at a loss here. Very little I suggest she thinks is any good. Am I doing it all wrong? -should I just try and take her mind off it and cheer her up? What do you do with them when they're like this?

You can't resolve most of these, I'm afraid. Some little girls seem to love having others on a string, being friendly with a chosen few one minute and giving them the cold shoulder or bossing them around the next. However, it's not necessarily normal or acceptable. If you think there is actual exclusion, victimisation or other forms of bullying behaviour going on then talk to the teacher. A normally happy, confident child that is stressed, in tears and doesn't want to go to school any more isn't a good sign in my book.

If she tends to want to get her own way in group situations it might be an idea to introduce her to groups other than the classroom. Things like cubs or brownies, for example, can help teamwork skills and give her a slightly different group of children to be friends with.