Dd is sat in her bedroom sobbing and sobbing. Is my advice shit?

[VivaLeBeaver]

I've been trying to talk to her but appparantly my advice is crap. She's 13yo.

Has had a good group of friends for two years, four of them in total. All nice kids.

Now another girl has started hanging around with the other three girls but dd reckons right from the beginning this girl has hated dd. given her funny looks, ignored her, got the other three to meet up with her at break and exclude dd.

Dd says sometimes she's in the common room with her friends and her friends say they're off to the library for 5 mins and for dd to wait there and they'll be back. They don't come back and dd goes to find them and finds them in the courtyard with this girl. So dd feels she's being ditched by her mates.

This girl has told the other girls that its dd being mean to her and bullying her. Dd denies it but this other girl seems quite convincing. One of the friends did ask the girl to give examples of times when dd had been horrid to her and the girl couldn't.

So today they're all together and the girls tell dd and the newcomer to apologise to each other. Dd said sorry. The other girls told her to say it properly. So maybe she said it with a bad grace as in her mind she's done nothing. They then told the other girl who said that she didnt do apologies. The others seemed to brush that off and said how good it was that everyone was friends. . So dd sees it as unfair that they pull her up for a poor apology but not the other girl.

This girl then says to the others about meeting them at the weekend, etc. while giving dd a bitchy look. I told dd that she should say '" great, sounds fun, see you there, etc". But dd reckons she doesn't want to meet them for swimming if this girl is going to be there and that noone has specifically asked her to come.

I've told her to be as nice as she can to this girl. That if she is horrible (because she thinks the other girl is horrible to her) that if her friends see her being horrible that they will think the other girl is right and that its dd who's a bitch. I've said ignore the dirty looks and concentrate on been friends with the others but to be nice to this girl even if its a bit fake. Just a "hi X, how are you" would go a long way.

Is that shit advice? Should I ring the school? Its been going on since the end of last school year.

I think she is.

At a guess I'd say the new girl was a shit stirrer and troublemaker. I think your DD shouldn't have much to do with her. And make some new friends as these ones don't sound great. But that's easier said than done. Totally agree with finding activities to do at lunchtime and then she won't be hanging about waiting for those girls.

here's another book that might help (I think Mean Girls might have been based on this!):
www.amazon.co.uk/Queen-Bees-Wannabes-Boyfriends-Realities/dp/0307454444

Thanks. Mthat book looks good, have ordered it.

Oh God. I'm just looking at little tiny slumbering 16 month old DD and thinking of all she's got in store. :(

Best of luck OP, so good she wants to talk to you about it!

Yeah, we have our moments but overall I think we're close.

I have walked in your shoes, and my heart goes out to you. I received excellent advice on here and followed it with some success.

"Dd has asked me to ring the HOY as she says she feels that she's the one being bullied."

It is psychological bullying and IMO very damaging to self esteem. I have had this with DD and the school got involved. I was worried that they wouldn't believe me but they did and were very supportive.

I don't understand why teenage girls are so flaky and why some of them are so manipulative. I didn't have this at school, but there was no such thing as social media in those days.

To this day DD won't go for a walk round our village on her own because she says all the girls in her school year hate her, all due to the lies of one girl.

She has made other friends, and more importantly most of the girls in the original friendship group have made friends with her again.

Dd had this and intentioned it to her form tutor. I specifically said that I did not want her to speak to dd, but felt she should be aware, in case it all blew up. Dd was mysteriously given a few special lunchtime tasks with some different girls and a member of staff overheard the other girl bitching and had words with her. Dd never knew I contacted anyone. The school were great.

Dd now has a new friendship group and is still friendly with the other girls.

NancyCracker

That was me. This happened to my DD in year 9.

I always said to her that school mates are like work colleagues. You are thrown together with them simply because you have to be in the same building for extended periods of time. This does not mean that they will necessarily be real friends. You have to do your best to get along, but don't have unrealistic expectations.

Friendship comes from shared interests, similar ideas and values, compatible personalities.

Year 9 is still an impressionable age and this sort of situation is all too common.

Once DD started joining in outside activities she made friends with people who shared her interests and values. She became more confident and discerning and developed much better friendships as a result.

I agree she needs sets of friends. After a similar incident at school, I broadened my group of friends.
It's a lesson I have never forgotten, I don't mix groups of friends and it works out nicely. Not that I fall out with friends often but it's safer not to. Wendy's are still out their after all.

Good luck OP, I feel for you my six year old is in a class with some mean and manipulative girls ( they are six fgs) I'm frankly horrified it starts so young, lots of grouping up and excluding. I keep steering mine to have lots of friends.

Oh goodness my dd had a very similar thing happen at the same age. It was psychological bullying and very unpleasant. Also rather clever of them because it wasn't something that anyone could put their finger on exactly.

The other girls clearly didn't want the drama of her leaving the group as it would have highlighted their insidious behaviour. So to the casual observer (ie teachers) all was well. But they made sure the friendship thermostat was firmly set at zero towards dd at every opportunity and would talk loudly in her hearing of all the fun things they'd be doing and posting online notes of lists of my best friends excluding her. The slightest expression or comment from her would be seized upon and used in a kind of reverse victim way. It was vile and desperately upsetting . She's a gentle quiet soul who was ill equipped to deal with it.

I too advised the be nice don't give the the ammunition they crave to turn the slightest comment from her around to be used against her. Brush off the things they'd say to exclude her. she'd be in the middle of a chatty group isolated, with none of them talking to her day after day.

I did also push her very hard to edge away from the group and to find new friends. This is extremely hard to do at this age as often groups have become established and they're all watching each other like Hawks for any hint of an upset. So dd was left trying to join in with new groups whilst never saying why when asked she wasn't with her 'usual' gang.

All I can say is that slowly over time and sorry but it took ages she was accepted into the new group. She's made new friends, lovely ones. But what it really took was for them all to mature and to grow away from this kind of behaviour. Now the previous group which has whittled away in numbers look rather pathetic and immature keeping up their original stance in the face of Dds continued smiles and other people now comment how odd they seem. Dd continues to say nothing on the subject.

It was an awful couple of years for her. I did eventually get the pastoral care teacher involved and she gave dd somewhere to go and talk in confidence. It helped at the time. I would say in retrospect the whole experience has armed dd well for any future situations that may crop up in life. It was an awful way to learn though.

I think it is almost a rite of passage.

Getting them through that period is tough though.

It just doesn't seem to be an issue with boys does it?

I agree with the majority of posters, as upsetting as it is - she needs to remove herself from the group with as little drama as possible (avoid giving them any fodder to slate her). I can still quite vividly remember the politics of teenage girls. This new girl sounds like a nasty piece of work. With girls like that, you either try to beat them at their own game (which, unless you're also a nasty piece of work, is difficult to do) or bow out and let them get on with it. I always did the latter and never regretted it. The friendship group she is losing are not worth fighting for, they sound fickle and disloyal to me.

Once she removes herself there will be no sport left in the situation for the Wendy, so she will have to move onto the next thing - and she will fuck up and reveal herself in due course. But who cares about her anyway as she's mal-adjusted and hopefully won't feature in your DD's life any further. In the long run she's done your dd a favour in revealing that her friends aren't up to scratch.

It really is so tough. We, as adults, can see that really these "friends" are not real friends at all and that she would be so much better off avoiding and forming new groups - but oooo so much easier said than done. She is not even my daughter and I want to give her, and you, a hug.

Just try and reassure her that stepping away from these people is because she is worth more than people treating her like this. She is better than that. Walking towards better friends - walking because they failed as friends - not her. It is their failure. Not hers.

Of course one of the worst modern aspects of this is that it doesn't stop at the school gate any more with online access to people. I would suggest monitoring that side too.

My dd was probably the only teen in the world who wanted nothing to do with facebook as she knew it would provide an excellent opportunity to the mean girls to pull her apart. Only recently has she shown a somewhat lukewarm interest in it (fine by me).

My heart goes out to you and your DD too.

My DD was bullied towards the end of Y9/start of Y10. Luckily she has some very, good very close friends who are incredibly supportive of each other, but it has had a disastrous effect on her self-confidence and anxiety levels.

Definitely go to the HoY (in our case it is the Head of Key Stage who was the best person to go to) - they took it all really seriously and dealt with it well. Her Form Tutor was great too and the Learning Mentors are very supportive.

Great advice above too.

Ok, things seem more positive today.

The girl who seems to have been believing dd the most tried to talk to the others but they refused to listen to her. Said dd needed to leave x alone because x was having panic attacks.

Dd and the nicer girl went to see the HOY and the pastoral person and told them both everything. Both these teachers are totally on dd's side and said there is no way she's been bullying X and that basically X is bullying dd.

They asked dd what she wants them to do about it. Dd asked if she could think about it over the weekend.

So as I see it the choices are;

Hoy talks nicely to dd's flakey friends and nicely tells them to not believe such daft rubbish.

HOY talks to x and tells her that her behaviour is nasty and unacceptable.

Or both together.

Dd's fear is that it back fires and X just says dd is getting her into trouble and everyone believes it. Which I can see happening. I don't know what to do for the best. My gut instinct is both. Read the riot act to X and tell the other girls to stop believing rubbish?

It was everything backfiring that made me say don't involve the teachers, previously.
It seems like they're addressing it though. At least they're aware of it and any possible trouble can be dealt with because they're not totally in the dark.
Hope it all works out ok.

Thanks. Yes, it could easily go either way I reckon.

I had similar issues in that school year (bluddyell - a scary long time ago ) and I think your advice is good.

It just isn't what she wants to do - which is understandable - but she will get there. Are there any outside of school groups she could join? Meet some new people and help her confidence in making new friends?

FWIW, I found things greatly improved during the next year when the form groups were broken up by everyone doing their own subjects at o-level. You seem to make better friends with people who have more similar interests then, rather that the ones you clung onto when you went up to big school!

This happened to me at school. I left the group because I'd had enough and joined some other friends.

I the end the group that I left fell out spectacularly (parents, teachers etc got involved). The girls became nicer individuals when they stopped hanging around together and one of them (the worst one actually) ended up becoming one of my best friends!

They all made up eventually but had already learned the error of their ways so still stayed nice people :o.

I would tell DD to make new friends and keep her distance.

Is it possible for the HOY to do something help dd and her friend make new friendship groups - start new lunchtime interest group, or something like that? It would give her something to focus on and take time out from the time of day when she is more likely to be excluded. It may not seem directly relevant to her but would help her over the transition of losing the old friends and gaining new ones and maybe help others who may be having problems. So many of us have had similar experiences at this age that she cannot be the only one.

My dds' school used to do Peer Support - dds spent many lunchtimes sitting in a room playing snap with the occasional younger child with them, looking for a listening ear. They also did things with the form teachers of younger pupils to encourage this, and had plenty training. Maybe she could suggest this and get involved in it when she is a bit older (it is usually y11 and sixth formers). It needs committed teachers to run it but can work well.

She probably just wants everything to go back to how it was but that is not going to happen.

My dd had almost the identical situation at the end of year 9 - new girl joins group - DD and new girl don't like each other - new girl arranges social stuff excluding DD - DD confronts friends - friends all turn on her.

I did get the school involved as they were so vile to her (two in particular) but the reality is the friendship is over for DD - like the OP's DD, my DD just wanted everything to go back to normal but that was never going to happen.

Of the original group only one even acknowledges DD anymore - all the rest (including one we have known since she was born) actually ignore her - she has not been included in anything since about July BUT difficult as it was (and it was very scary for dd) she has made new friends - she really had to push herself out of her comfort zone to do this.

DD is now part of a much bigger social group and goes out much more as there is always somebody available to meet up.

I really feel for your DD OP. My advice would be to try and smile at other girls, ask to go in to lunch with them and things will progress. Like your DD mine said that all the other girls were in groups so there was no room for her but there is always room.

Also - i would second the advice about silence. I advised DD to keep silent hen they were having a go at her - they couldn't deal with it and ended up saying things they didn't meant to.

One further point the old group is now quite splintered - the two queen bees do a lot together - the others ( and a few other hangers on) seem to be hanging around waiting to be included.

Sadly my thread has now been deleted as it was in chat but I got some excellent advice on here.

Good luck to your DD.

One other thing - when DD told her former friends that she thought that this girl was trying to push her out of the group the queen bee would tell dd that it was all in her head.

Don't lt these girls undermine your DD - she needs new friends - I am sure there are lots of other girls who would love to be her friend.