“Ashley’s not my friend anymore! I hate her!” Harsh words coming from anyone, but especially your young daughter about her closest friend, or so you thought.
Good, bad or ugly, friendships at school are a necessity in your daughter’s development. As a parent, it’s your duty to foster that development. Since the day your baby was born, your first responsibilities were to feed and protect your young. That started the bonding process – the needed link for balanced development.
Watch the motherly instinct that surfaces when a mom finds out someone hurt her baby, even if it was that someone said something mean to her. Forget the sticks and stone, words DO hurt. We want to protect our children from skinned knees and broken hearts. But the fact is we are not training them up in the way they should go if we don’t allow them to experience a little pain. It’s a necessary evil in life. The way in which we react to this is what is most important.
Let your baby cry on your shoulder. Welcome the opportunity to use the experience as a springboard to talk about friendships at school. It’s your responsibility to explain to your child that friendships are fragile and then teach her the importance of not only choosing her friends wisely, but then also knowing how to treat them and truly be a “friend” to them. Everyone wants to be loved and accepted. Boys are not exempt from friendship woes; it just tends to be more dramatic with little girls.
While explaining the facts of fickle friendships may not fix things for your child, she may actually hear you now and listen to you later. Either way she will in the long run appreciate your advice on friendship as she sees its truth being played out in her life.
More From Alyssa
Meet & Greet