friendship - how can i encourage my dd aged 8 not to be friends with a girl

[Elasticbandstand]

the girl in question is extremely manipulative, very naughty but possessive over my dd, to the extent that she cannot play with anyone else .
presumably if i ban the frienship it wont help.

Youc an't ban it, but you can provide opportunities to form otehr friendships- which may or may not become additional to the existing friendship. Invite toehr children over to play, visit a different aprk- lots of ways to do this I woudl iamgine. Join something like rainbows, or of a bit older St John badgers- lots out tehre these days.

Could you invite other girls home for tea?

she seems to be overwhelmed

I'm interested in this question because I think we may have a similar situation brewing. Presumably this is at school? In which case you can't ban it. Wonder if it would be good idea to have a quiet word with the teacher, to make sure that in pair/group work your DD mixes with the others at least.

they do that i think, not allowed to sit together during the day.

You can't ban it and by that age Yr 4 (?) you just have to let them learn to work these things out for themselves. It is not particularly pleasant when it all goes wrong but your DD will learn a lesson.

She will learn that she is missing out by not being friends with other people etc but I think you have to stand back and let it take its course.

We have had the exact same situation in DD class. One girl systematically worked her way through all the girls until they got fed up with her but whilst she was your friend no one else could play games with you etc

year 3.
teacher thinks it is affecting her adversley,
whole of parent's evening taken up by this "problem"

So if the teacher is aware of it then that is a good start. Perhaps you need to talk again to discuss tactics?

Personally I think you send out the wrong messages to children to explicitly say "You can't be friends with so and so" but you can have other girls over to play, sleepovers etc and talk to the teacher about now allowing them to sit together.

teacher can't think of any tactics. but is going to ask around.
i think dd is going to have to realise herself and not give in, i spose.

we have a similar sit. in yr 3, other child takes advantage of ds1 and taunts him to provoke him into getting into trouble- but ds1 (ASD) doesn't understand. They were forcibly seperated at Infants, but Juniors wont do that. However, after other kid was off sick afew days and ds1's reports got much better ds1 finally cottoned on to what we'd been sayinga nd amde the link himself, and now refuses to have anything to do with other kid.

They do get it, eventually.

DS is younger, but he had a freind wh was extremely possesive and did his best to sabotage any other freindshhip DS had. (telling DS he would not be his freind if he played with others, threatening other children who played with DS, etc etc) and also constantly talked rto DS in carpet time, so that DS replied and they both got into trouble.

I talked to DS about freindship being about everyone, and helped him to find the right things to say - like 'I can play with x, y and Z and still be friends with you. You can play with all of us. It's up to you'. And telling him that it wasn't rude not to reply when on the carpet.

So helping him negotiate the friendship and get his terms listened too.

But you can't ban, no. I think they do have to work out how to manage themselves and freindships independently.

thanks for that.

that was obviously a surrepticious bump for evening peeps.
my dd is otherwise quiet (not at home) and doesnt want to upset people.

final chance to have your say

there was a girl my dd was friends with - didn't like her - she was a bit "rough" not in a tough way - in acrude way - i let dd know my distate - didn't make much difference. shey are not friends now despite going to same seior school - senior school sorts stuff out. but its aloooooooooong wait