10 year old girls and their friendships

[bibbitybobbityhat]

Is it tricky for everyone?

My dd told me her heart is hurting today. I could burst into tears, tbh.

She has always been part of a large fairly easy going group at school. There have been very few fallings out, they are a nice group of girls to play with.

But now they have all paired up and have best friends ... except dd.

God, I feel wretched for her .

Can I do anything?

Yes. Girls are very fickle at this age and fall in and out a lot.
I recommend that you can get your dd to invite individual girls back to your house and do fun stuff with them, even sleepovers maybe.

Alternatively some girls in this situation start to hang out with the boys (who don't do the falling out stuff)!!

Girls are bloody horrible! Best friends one minute, hate each other the next. It does appear that the ones who spend most time together out of school stick together more. IME anyway.

with 2 girls aged 9 and 12 I know how this feels.

As has been suggested tea/sleepovers is a good route or a fun day out. Divide and rule

Also try to have other irons in the fire with outside of school activities like cubs or Brownies, a sport, dancing or a club.

Friends from a different arena is empowering and doesn't mean you rely on school for every friendship and don't feel the stuff that happens at playtime quite so keenly.

Absolute feckin nightmare.

The only consolation is that it really really does change week to week.

And talk to her, empathise, tell her yeah, it's shit (appropriate word), but shit happens and explain about growing up and changing and learning to cope and how it absolutely WILL all get better.

And do th eother stuff too.

Yip it happens.

And it is indeed shit.

But it does honestly get better.

Second (or third) the divide and rule and the lots of other activities.

Ugh, 10 year old girls and their friendship issues are the bane of my existence half the time. I have half a class full of them and, to be honest, the boys aren't perfect little social citizens either. I don't think I've had a week without somebody feeling left out, bullied or hurt since September. Sadly, it's just the age they're at. I even had to watch the most hateful video sent from one child's ipod to another where this beautiful, sweet seeming 10 year old is threatening to bash another's head into a pulp - nice!

Not really sure what to advise for your daughter. The pairings will probably be different next week but that isn't going to make her feel better tonight. Maybe she could invite 2 or 3 for a day out or a sleepover?

Yes, I am going through the same problem myself and it is absolutely heart breaking. DD doesn't have much in common with most of the girls in her class and it's al become very difficult since her 'best' friend left.

Some of the behaviour has been the type of silly, 'girlish' behaviour that takes place at this age with regard to friendships - x and x are not my friends - but this usually sorts itself out after a few days.

Some of it has been horrible - cyber bullying - my dd not having anyone to play with at lunch time and being left own her own to read. Interestingly (and sadly) no one at her school has ever thought to ask why she is reading on own her like this - and I picked up from another conversation that they just think that she likes reading.

I've no solution for this as it is a universal problem. when it has become very bad, I've spoken to her teacher. I know that she had decided to go and see the learning mentor the other day, but didn't in the end as she had a friend that day!

I have told my dd to ignore the behaviour and to focus on secondary school which is not that far away (she is adamant that she is not going to the local school, whre most of these girls will be going). I've also arranged activities outside school where she has met other girls and and seen the potential for better flriendships.

Its awful isn't it. Anothere one here with a 10yo DD in tears. One of her good friends today whispered to another girl (loud enough for DD to hear) "she looks like a geek with her cardigan round her waist".

DD is saying she never wants to go back to school.

I've explained to DD about how some girls can be really bitchy and how its normally the girls who are very insecure themselves. That they try to make themselves feel better by putting others down. Only thing is I'm now worried DD is going toe tell this girl tomorrow "my mum says you're a bitch and that you're really insecure".

Definetly try and get girls round at the weekends, evenings for tea. Is your DD in Brownies or anything like that? Might help widen her circle of friends.

I'm hoping that things get better in secondary school, I suspect they might get worse though.

Oh bibbity

Girls of this age can be horrible to each other at times. As people above have said, it is all to do with insecurity and the whole clique thing, etc.
DD had a difficult time when she was 6 and another girl became friendly with DD's BF - it was a steep learning curve, but now she is an expert in getting on with just about anybody!

I second the inviting several round (definitely not a "pair" only!) for fun / tea, etc. And letting the teacher know - seating plans, pairing for work, etc can be manouvered to support your DD with strengthening friendships.

The teacher at our juniors regularly mixes them up re seating which helps a bit.

In the past I have been on the verge of steaming in (probably not the best plan, but you do feel protective) only for things to blow over the next day and everyone to be best buddies again.

It's so hard to know when to get involved, if at all.

I had this problem at school myself when I was the same age, was about the same time I decided the sensible boys were a better bet! I then had a best friend who was male til being about 13/14 when I went back to having a gang of girls for friends. fingers crossed for her

You've described my DDs life to a tee. She falls in and out of friendships at the drop of a hat and then gets sad because she doesn't have a best friend.
To complicate things, DH teaches at her school which isn't ideal and we are leaving this one to move to England soon so it will start all over again.
The only thing with having a group round for tea is make sure there aren't three. Three is a bastard number. Two will inevitably make a group leaving a singleton as the odd one out.

I have two ten year old girls and their friendships have been a problem for most of this school year, falling out, making up ..... bloody nightmare and I'm sick of it all. I have now taken the route of not getting too involved unless it gets physical.

How interesting. My DD is also in Y5 and I have really noticed the difference in the girls this year - lots more cliquey-ness and some really horrible things going on. Then I realised that I was the same age when I had problems with friends at school. My take on all this has always been to say 'this is not about you, this happens to everyone at some point' to try and avoid DD getting the idea that she's a victim. I know it may not help with the day to day pain but I'm hopeful that in the long run it will mean she can have good friendships without feeling like she's different. I honestly do believe it happens to everyone sooner or later.

If it's any help, a friend's daughter was really being excluded by her class last year but since going into Y6 it all seems to have got much better.

Oh God, I thought it was just me.

My DD is 11 and used to be in a group of five/six girls but she was always the outsider. I work full time and therefore I don't pick her up from school. The other girls all go to each other's houses, to the park, etc, after school and she has slowly been ostracised from the group. They don't even invite her when they get together at weekends now.

She's found another friend but, again, it's difficult for her to socialise with her outside of school. I've given her a front door key and sometimes allow her and this friend to walk back from school (half a mile) and play at home, but only if I can skive off work early and get back for 5ish.

I'm sure that when she goes to secondary school in September things will change and I have no doubt she will meet a whole new group of people and have many more best friends.

Aaaaargh - I could have written most of these posts over the last couple of years. It is heartbreaking isn't it? My DD 11 (Y6) had a 'good' group of friends on a sports team, but all the others have been invited onto another, better team, apart from her, so they all meet up three times a week outside of school and she is being slowly ostracised. I am sure it is not intentional, but the mothers are also very pushy and tend to steer their children towards certain wealthy popular girls.

She now has other friends but they are the ones who don't play sport and prefer to hang around the local village eating chips, which is not exactly DH's and my idea of what DD should be doing with her weekends.

I invite girls for sleepovers, but only ever one at a time. Do others recommend having more than one at a time?

She also does Guides and Dancing and I am trying to get her back to a drama class.

My mantra to my DD is that I am not friends with anyone now that I was friends with in Primary school

The balance shifts massively at secondary. The queen bees are queens no more and the kids tend to expand their friendship groups. You still get the bitching, but they have more choice over who they hang round with, plus they're at an age where they have more freedom to see friends out of school unsupervised.

I have been pinning my hopes on secondary school - but unfortunately the numbers are less than half what they normally are (independent) so I am worried now that DD will be stuck with the same nest of vipers she is with now.

There'll still be a bigger mix. x

yes tricky for everyone. DD1 is 14 now but Yr5 was a bad time for her. I second inviting girls round and other activites outside school it does get better - honestly and Yr7 was the turning pint for DD1

Got DD2 in yr 5 now...sigh...

My dd is year 5 had this badly a year ago, though now it has settled down quite a lot, if that gives you any hope.

Keep telling her it will change. If it's her turn today, it'll be someone else's tomorrow, sadly, and what she will learn from it, ideally, is not to revel in it when it's someone else's turn to be left out.

Sadly most kids don't think of it this way - they're just (understandably) so happy it's not them who are being left out that they join in with the nastiness and perpetuate the situation.

But it will change. I used to say this on the way home every day for months. And she'd be crying, and I almost would be, and she'd say 'but L and Z are always going to be best friends now, and R and I run away when I try to play with them, so how can it change?'.

Who knew that K who had always been in the background would suddenly become a good friend, or that T would join the class in year 5 and the whole dynamic would change again? And now dd is friends with pretty much everyone, and L and Z who spent their sleepovers making lists of who they liked in rank order and then telling everyone the list on Monday actually spend most of the time they're not together slagging one another off.

Invite one kid - maybe a different one from that group if you can.
Buy 'Queen Bees and Wannabes' - bit Americany, but I found it helped, also with my year 9 dd who went through a rough patch a while ago.
Don't know if your dd is keen on reading, and you might not approve, but I gave my year 5 Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye to read recently and she liked it - last year I don't think she'd've been ready for it, but I think if she was going through the same thing now it would be helpful.

It will change - but doesn't your heart just ache for them until then? Good luck x

In answer to the OP: no, not everyone. My DD1's life isn't like this at all. But I am clearly in a minority on this thread, and I do sympathise with the rest of you.

motherinferior - your DD is clearly one of the popular girls then

I think the popular crowd is where the worst bitching goes on! My DD is learning this and deciding that actually, she's not so bothered about being popular, and is going to look for friendships from different circles.

I agree - there seems to be more bitching among the 'in crowd' - jockeying for status maybe? It must be horrible for both the girls and the parents having to cope with the fall out. It goes straight through you when your loved ones are being hurt

When my DD was in Yr 5, she was in the same group of four friends that she'd had since Yr 3. Yhey had the odd up and down, but nothing like what you are describing. It might have helped that they were all 'young' for their age - more into Sylvanian Families and playing chasing games than Justin Bieber and mobiles.

In fact, a year on, they are still like that lol! The class is divided into the 'mini teens' and the 'still children', and I am grateful for the fact my child is in the latter group. I'm hoping greater age and maturity will reduce these sorts of things when they arise in future - but I think it is wishful thinking!