What can parents do When Girls Fall Out?

I think we all know that the friendship bonds that girls form at school are very important. When things go wrong, for whatever reason, it can be traumatic for the girls, and of course, for the adults (parents and teachers) who try to support them. To make things even harder, girls find it near impossible to express precisely the problems they are experiencing and that can be for three reasons:

1. The dynamics of girl friendships are very fluid and change from moment to moment. Just as your daughter is standing in the kitchen ranting she may receive a text with a couple of emojis that changes everything. As a parent it is really important not to over-invest emotionally in your daughter’s rage; remain concerned but detached from the detail.

2. Your daughter hates being told off by you and the harsh reality is that that means she will be reluctant to tell you all the truth, if that means admitting to behaviour that was less than perfect. You have to learn to accept that, from about the age of 7, your daughter is likely to be filtering the truth in her replies to, ‘how was your day?’

3. The complexities of girl friendships are extreme. To explain the historic motivation behind a look she received on the playground might take several minutes, involve multiple ‘players’ and events that go back months or even years. Often, the harder they try to explain their conflict the more confused the listener becomes, leading to the inevitable conclusion by both child and parent that it really just isn’t worth explaining.

So, we start from the point that the conflicts and upsets are hard to express and might change at any moment. What next? Well, as a parent do you think you have a tendency to over-react? Do you:

· Keep pumping your daughter for more information even though she has made it clear she doesn’t want to give you anymore?

· Is your first thought to assume your daughter is being bullied? (It is possible, or course, that she might be being bullied but that is rare and a conclusion you should come to only after careful fact-gathering.)

· Is your first instinct to ring the school and complain about incidents that have happened around your daughter, be they at school, at the weekend or on online?

· Is your first instinct to phone another parent to challenge them over their daughter’s behaviour?

If you can answer yes – or even maybe – to any of the above you may want to consider that you are over-reacting and that over-reactive parents are very hard for girls to be with. The more you over-react the less likely she is to tell you the truth or confide in you at all – even when there is real trouble to be shared.

Do you have a tendency to under-react? Do you find it hard to find the time to listen to your daughter properly, giving her your full attention? Are you just too busy to be the best parent you can be?

I recommend the excellent book When Girls Fall Out, which says:

1. Be loving but tough.

2. Listen, and listen some more; then do not offer advice unless it is asked for. (OK, you can say, ‘I have something to say about this which might be helpful, would you like me to share it with you?’ But no more.)

3. Once the listening comes to an end and the monologue is running out of steam, distract your daughter with something to take her mind off her troubles. Best of all, find something to do or talk about which will make her feel good about herself – what is she good at, what good memories can you share of her past successes?

Parenting is hard, there is no doubt about that. One surprising but undeniable fact I have learned after delivering over a hundred Girls on Board sessions to thousands of girls over the last six of years is this: when I ask the girls in front of me if friendship issues are made better or worse for them when the grown ups get involved they ALWAYS say ‘worse’. They need the support of adults but they don’t want us or need us to fix their problems.

GirlsonBoard.co.uk