Her daughter is ruining our friendship! Help.

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I've been friends with my best friend since we were 3 years old and we have been through so much together. We are now 50. My friend has one daughter, she came from a large traditional catholic family and so she swore she would only have one child.

He daughter (13) is horrible. Very loud, knows everything, attention seeking immature demanding and controlling. She was bullied in the later years of Primary school ( She has little appreciation that not everyone thinks like her and so fights if they disagree)

She has discovered secondary school is horrible and has no friends. She loves adults and strives to please them so her peers see her as a "teachers pet".

My friend blindly takes her daughters side in every argument and has lost many other friends over this. She is now in dispute with the school because she feels they aren't punishing the children who are mean to her daughter enough. So she has approached the other parents herself.

I have never commented about her daughter or her parenting. I thankfully don't have kids the same age as her so there is no requirement for my kids to socialise otherwise I know we would no longer be friends.

My problem is that now I'm going through some tough life stuff and my friend only wants to talk about how awful people are to her daughter. How mean everybody else is. I've not met her all summer because I'm fed up with it.

I want to gently Say to her that maybe the problem is t with everyone else. I want to ask why even her cousins don't want to know her.

Any advice on how to approach this?

OP, I'm sorry that you're going through some tough life stuff. But I have to say that your post seems rather dismissive of your friend's struggles. It's absolutely awful when your child is being bullied.

You can kindly try to be the voice of reason or let her know you need support too, but just checking as I don't want to assume you're not conscious of this – surely you know that her daughter will always take priority over you?

If she can manage the balancing act of maintaining friendships and fussing (even if unhealthily) over her daughter then great, but if not then you just have to distance yourself

I am afraid I can't appreciate her struggles. She has made her daughter the centre of her universe. It ruined her marriage and and has lost her her other friends. I've been part of the problem because I've blindly supported her. Always through the divorce and through the fights with other parents and her siblings.

I think I've never really had anything big happen in my life so I've never noticed the support only goes one way.

I rang to ask for advice a few weeks ago and I needed up listening to how her daughter was given a demerit for forgetting her PE kit in school and how shes devastated about it so friend had to cut call short to take her out for dinner to cheer her up. I've only had text interaction over the summer holidays.

Yes, but again her daughter takes priority over you. You are just a friend and her daughter is a loved one. If she doesn't respond well to your advice or attempts, then you just need to find another friend

There are a lot of parents like that I think. They raise obnoxious, rude and entitled kids and cannot understand why people don’t like them. No child should be bullied however no matter how awful they are but by the same token she is teaching her child that she is never wrong and that it is always the other person’s fault instead of explaining how she could behave better. That is only going to get worse as time goes on so I wouldn’t count on her being there for you. She is blinkered, deluded and too wrapped up in a child whose actions are a direct result of her poor parenting. She has bigger fish to fry. Leave her to it, she doesn’t sound like a good friend and nobody has time for a one sided friendship.