I know DCs falling out with their friends is an age old problem and I honestly usually try and stay out of it, encourage them to sort things out for themselves.
However, DD is 10 and this situation seems to get worse every week. She is friends with a boy in her class. They made friends when they started the same school 2 years ago and seemed to hit it off immediately. He makes her laugh, they have alot of common interests, he is helping her with her guitar practice - you get the picture. The problem is, at least once a week, for no apparent reason, he turns totally against her, accuses her of bizarre things and is generally nasty to her. An example is that a few weeks ago, her told a teacher that she had arranged for a year 7 boy to beat him up!! He has accused her of this before and I may even have posted about it then. He calls her names, torments her in the playground and tells people all sorts of lies about her. He hates her being friends with anyone else and sadly, she has lost other friends because of it. She seems totally unable to stand up to him. If he is mean, it makes her cry, she cannot understand how someone who is supposed to be her friend can be so mean. I think she is bewildered and doesn;t know what to say. I have pleaded with her to try and distance herself from him, I cannot understand why she wants to be friends with him but she insists that she likes him alot.
Now, on a weekly basis, she is coming home in floods of tears, she is apprehensive about going in to school the following day and is generaly miserable for a couple of days. He seems to delight in telling her that he can say what he likes because he knows she always forgives him.
I am at a total loss as to what to do. I don't want to ignore her misery but I am so fed up with listneing to the same thing week in week out. I don't mean to sound harsh, of course I will always let her talk to me about it. She doesn't want me to talk to the teacher because she thinks he will then give her more grief for getting him in to trouble.
She is not a confident child, she doesn't like confrontation, she hates the thought of upsetting anyone and she CAN be a bit sensitive.
Is this run of the mill friendship stuff or should I be doing more about it?
(He has been to our house and I know his Mum although not that well. I spoke to her about it once before and she said she would speak to him, he then spent the next 2 weeks telling DD that she had got him grounded and he hated her for getting him in to trouble). I do have certain theories about why he is like this but I don't want to be too judgey and I don't know the whole story.
Sorry it's long, once I got typing I couldn't stop!!!! Thanks if you got this far.