Why are girl friendship groups so difficult?

[MrsDux]

My DD (16) is in yr 12 at an all girls school and has had the same 2 'best' friends since she started in secondary school. Another girl joined their school, and friendship group, at the start of yr 12 and seems to have adapted well. Over the last few weeks her closest friend has been off with her and it's escalated to her blanking DD at any opportunity. It came to a head last week and DD spent most of the last few days in tears not wanting to go to school because of this girl (not ideal in yr 12).

DD is generally a shy, anxious child but has lots of people in school she would call friends but they are all in different friendship groups and she doesn't feel she can try and join these other groups at this stage in their school life.

I don't know how to help her but I hear so many stories like this from girls and very few from boys. Why are girls like this?

I’m so sorry this has happened to your daughter. The timing is awful.

It isn’t just girls though. For us it was DS that had friendship issues not DD, and earlier in school. I’d have hoped they would be a bit more adult by Y12.

DD’s main friendship group was from Y9-10 but she was often on the edge of groups rather than a main character. I would encourage your DD to gravitate towards the other friends that she has, even if she feels a bit in the edge.

You say there were 3 of them and the new girl joined making it 4? Is your dd able to hang out with the other girl? I also think she needs to go and hang with other girls in other groups and see how that goes.

I think she / you should also reach out to pastoral care. Much as school may say they can’t do anything to manage the situation unless someone is being actively unkind (although I think blanking someone is), your dd would have a point of contact. In year 12, my dd spoke to the pastoral lead at her school. This was about a boy being really mean to her. In the end, I managed to bolster her enough to speak to him and she smoothed things over. I was also in contact with school as dd was close to school refusal by this stage, and they told me they’d step in if dd wasn’t successful.

We have the summer coming up. Only a few weeks left of term. Maybe your dd can see other girls from school over the holidays and strengthen friendships there. Hopefully with lots of love, bolstering and strength from you, this will all blow over.

And if something terrible goes wrong, she does have 3 years to complete this stage of her studies, so she could start afresh elsewhere, but I appreciate for a shy, anxious girl, this may not be the best solution. My dd is very anxious. She needed to remain at the school.

My DD is in year 13 (so nearly finished school). In around Feb/March of this year, a girl whose friendship group had fizzled out joined her group and was welcomed by DD and her friends, turning them from a group of 3 to a group of 4 for the last few months of year 13. Tell your DD it's definitely not too late to find another group.

(Also, I have two DSs and I agree with other posters that boys go through this kind of thing too.)

Thank you all, I'm really trying to encourage her to hang out with other girls but she has a big thing about how awkward it will be with the wider group. We'll keep trying to go down that route. She seems to think this girl has turned the others in the group against her but I'm not sure how true that is or how much it's in her head. They're all quite shy girls and believe they could be easily swayed.

Also, I do know boys go through friendship issues too,, it's just that in my experience of my DS, they seem to be more open with what their issues are, rather than silence! We were lucky with DS that he doesn't take things to heart so I'd someone has an issue with him he was happy on his own for a while or just to chat with others. He made a whole new friendship group in y12.

I keep telling her that a few days of awkwardness is worth it for another year of happiness but she can't quite get over her anxiousness enough yet. She needs to learn a bit of fake it to make it but I think she's too 'in the trenches' at the moment