Dealing with friendship issues in WhatsApp (Yr7/dd)

[angelinwellies]

It’s been a great year. Dd has excelled since moving to secondary. It’s been a roller coaster but more or less on an even keel.

Suddenly though it’s gone sideways. The friendship group seems to be splintering. Not a massive surprise and in some ways I expected this much earlier what with new friends and schedules etc happening this year. I did not think we would get through unscathed but neither has anything been happening so all in all it’s been a relatively pleasant experience. She’s won awards for academia in school. I’m confident of her school work as I have clear markers. Friends suddenly not so much.

All her peers use WhatsApp. It was clear not having it sidelined her, there were always plans and chat she simply didn’t know about. So we now use it. It’s been ok. Or at least not enough to tell me about very often. Two weeks ago I realised it had turned. One girl decided she didn’t like her. She’s been creating side groups to discuss dd and pulling friends in (as u can on the app).

Im thinking of deleting dd from the general groups and setting one up with just her actual friends on. Surely the others would find something new to talk about? The constant frenzied typing, ‘I’m fine’ comments and Pavlovs dog type of behaviours is putting me on edge and I therefore cannot believe she’s not suffering.

Dd now sends me screenshots of all dodgy items and deletes from her phone. We put in forced downtime and restrict phone use using controls. We are reasonably savvy. I thought we had a middle ground that was working.

Im not friends with these parents. I work, they didn’t. There were no ways what with covid to do that kind of thing across much of her juniors. Our friends tend to be outside school.

Id be interested in others constructive thoughts or experiences or just support. As yet we haven’t gone to the school. It feels like it’s been going on a while, but in reality it’s just two weeks since she told me. Im wary of going in guns blazing too fast. I need to research their position on online cyber things outside school but involving school pupils. In my experience schools are pants at dealing with bullying. I don’t really have much hope from every article and watching friends that the adults ever actually sort things out….. Why are we so useless at sorting out something we all experience? I’ve never felt so flipping useless or unsure of how to act next. This is whole new territory for me.

I know she won’t like leaving a group as it states that. I’ve stayed part of groups I hate for similar so I can hardly ‘side eye’ her for the same. I’m well in my 40’s. Is there something obvious and practical we haven’t tried yet….? It’s a conundrum.

thanks for reading

Unfortunately this is really common. It's not that schools don't want to help but it is really challenging. These large WhatsApp groups always lead to huge conflict - often starts as something small but has huge impact on the victim. Messages are sent outside of school time and many parents don't monitor what their children are doing on them. In schools, phones are usually banned. If something spills in to school, there is more possibility for the school to intervene. Contact the school, they will help but manage expectations that this can be fixed quickly.

Unfortunately this is common so it’s good that you haven’t gone in guns blazing.

i would ask her how she wants to handle it. Maybe ask her to speak to the form teacher or if she wants you to. They will then probably do an assembly on being kind.

but as the girls mature they do realise that this is not nice behaviour and i always advise my teen that if girls are mean to stay away from them so as long as she has other girls to hang around

Yeah, I think secondary is a very different animal to primary school. Visiting sometimes got things done. That’s not my sense this time around. I appreciate both your input.

dd seems comfortable avoiding these chats and hopefully if she’s not on them they will move on.

If nothing else I’m more ‘switched on’ now. Just got to ride out the next six weeks…..

It's so tough. I went through this with dd, it was horrible. She's now a lot older and doing really well but it really effected her school life.
Ds is now in year 7 and I encourage him to be a lot firmer about anything online, we've done lots of talking about not stay in any what's app groups who don't serve him or make him feel bad in anyway. Comparing both experiences I think helping them have very firm boundaries is definitely needed.
He will usually show me most stuff he's not sure about but he got a crappy message from someone the other day and he just blocked them straight away and told me later. So I think it's paying off slowly and he's setting his own boundaries.
He usually removes himself from big groups now as he gets fed up with millions of notifications. Small groups with genuine friends is definitely better.

Teach her how to mute chats and that it's perfectly healthy to step away from unhealthy dynamics. If they don't get a reaction they'll get bored. Tell her how immature, insecure and jealous this person must be if they feel the need to be putting your dd down and shutting her out. What that means is that in reality the other friends like dd more. Dd should rise above it ignore rather than leave, make herself aloof and 'busy' and her nice friends will see the other one for what she is.