TWEEN FOCUS: FRIENDSHIPS
When I was 13, I started high school. My group of friends from primary school, the girls who I played Marco Polo with during long hot summer days in the pool, skipped rope with at school break, and slept over at on the weekends also moved to the same high school. I don’t know how, or why, but at high school, those same friends stopped wanting me to hang out with them. It started with things being said about me behind my back, and it ended with being excluded and frozen out of the group. Everything was new, I’d moved from a small school with one class per grade to a big high school with 5 classes per grade, and knew no-one but these girls, they were my comfort and familiarity and so to feel like I didn’t have them anymore was devastating.
I was a sensitive kid, without the skills to know how to assert myself, and so when the first red flags of this came up, instead of standing up for myself and acting with confidence, I spiralled into sadness, anxiety and deepening low-self esteem, choosing to sit on my own in the library at first, but not before enduring months of furious letter writing on exam pad paper, (these were the days before cell phones!) written to each with spiteful mean things said, and passed to each other between classes.
I eventually moved on and made new friends, friends with whom I had more in common, if I’m being totally honest, and was able to recognise that I had always been the round peg amongst a group of square holes in that group, but the affect that the experience had on me left me with some trauma. It was a devastating time, and if I look back on it now I wish I had had the confidence to stand up to them, and the skills to have not have let it affect me so deeply.
If you are a woman or an older girl, in fact even a male, it is unlikely that you will not have experienced something similar. Tween friendship drama is almost a right of passage, and I wish that I had been more prepared and had asked for support during this time.
What is it about this period between the ages of 10 and 13 that causes friendships to become so emotionally charged and with so much conflict? There are many factors that cause this. At this age, girls are pulling away from parents and family and gravitating more toward the pull of their friendship groups who become so hugely important in their lives and with such huge focus placed on them, that they burn with an intensity that was not typical in past friendships.
Acceptance is a huge part of this age and it is acceptance from peers now, not parents that is needed, so a need to identify and be accepted by the group is a major priority. At this age, self-confidence is also lower and so this drives the need to be accepted even more, and girls at this age may spend a lot of time over-thinking things and focusing on details that they would never have considered before.
Brain development at this age affects what can happen in tween friendships. With the limbic brain (the emotional centre) holding the reigns, and the pre-frontal cortex still in development (the part of the brain that can help with executive function which would include self-control, self-regulation, flexible thinking and perspective taking) still in development this can add to the incendiary nature of friendships.
There are four major causes for instability of friendship groups during this age, these include toxic friendships, exclusions, disagreements/ conflict and bullying.
TOXIC FRIENDSHIPS:
The person who is displaying toxic behaviour is the friend who tries to control. There are two types of toxic friends, those who want to change the person by trying to control them, and those who try to get them to do things that they feel uncomfortable with. This may look like a friend who will tell their friend that the way they dress is uncool, or it may look like the friend who tries to pressure their friend into drinking or taking drugs. It is different to bullying because bullies are not friends, they don’t know their victims well and so it can be very insidious because it can be masked as ‘caring about how you look’ or ‘just wanting you to have fun’.
Here are some tips to help your daughter through a toxic friendship:
Allow her to feel the hurt and don’t try to suppress it by making light of it.
Don’t trash talk the friend, rather try to widen perspectives on how they see the friends behaviour. Focus on behaviour rather than making it personal.
Work on helping your daughter to identify how they feel around the friend displaying toxic behaviour.
Help your daughter to work out what it is that the toxic friend is getting out of their behaviour, (usually it is a sense of control or power) as once this is understood it can be ‘deactivated’ by working out how to respond accordingly which can include laughing it off, walking away, or asserting herself.
Help your daughter to make friends outside of school by joining clubs/ groups/extra murals with like minded individuals.
If the friendship needs to end, support your daughter by role playing how she will have the difficult conversation with the toxic friend where she asserts her needs. Ie. “I need you to stop gossiping about me, it is really hurtful, and if it does not end we cannot be friends any longer”.
EXCLUSIONS:
As per my experience, being excluded is traumatising at this age, when the need for acceptance and stability is so huge. Loneliness and feeling socially isolated can be especially damaging to girls during this phase. Shifts in friend groups is normal, the friends she was friendly with when all that was needed was a game on the go and proximity have changed as friendships are formed on the basis of similarities, likes and dislikes and common hobbies, and it may be that your daughter is the one feeling the need to change friend groups, it is important to teach that these must be handled sensitively, whilst remaining authentic.
Have a discussion on how friendship groups changing is normal. Make it clear however that meanness or unkindness is unacceptable.
It can be tempting to try minimise the pain they are feeling, but try to allow them to feel that pain, it is very real for them and dismissing it will only make it worse.
If your daughter is the one being excluded, focus on the exciting possibility of making new friends.
Talk about ways of being assertive, and confident. Often during episodes of exclusion, girls can become overwhelmed, and standing up for themselves does not come naturally at this time of overwhelm.
Help to widen up their perspectives about what they do have in the way of other friends outside of that group, rather than focusing on what they don’t have.
DISAGREEMENTS / CONFLICT:
With the intense nature of friendships at this age, it is only natural that disagreements and conflicts occur. Their friends are their worlds, and many hours are spent dissecting and analysing the behaviour of their peers, with much time spent discussing what she said, how she said it, and what they actually meant by this. Help your daughter to widen her perspective and the lens through which she views the world so that she does not get stuck in rumination and thought loops.
- Help them to acknowledge their own role in any pain cause and help them to see how this could have caused offence and how to apologise.
- Teach basic conflict resolution:
1. Affirm the relationships “I value our friendship”
2. Make I statements. “I feel hurt when you say mean things about me”
3. Acknowledge and own up to their part. “I know that I said that you don’t belong in the A team, that wasn’t very nice of me”
4. Come up with a way forward. “How can we be better friends to each other, our friendship means a lot to me”
- Practice with role play.
- Teach them that it is usually possible to repair a friendship, and that compromise is a good thing, but giving in is not always the best as it is also important to stay true to yourself rather than just giving in to fit in.
BULLYING
Thankfully, unlike exclusions, disagreements and toxic friendships, few adolescents are directly involved in true bullying , where a child is repeatedly mistreated and unable to defend themselves. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, and can happen at both boys’, girls’ and co-ed schools, with boys bullying girls and girls bullying boys.
Only use the term ‘bullying’ if you are certain that is what it is rather than an incidence of exclusion or a toxic friendship.
Recognise that bullying can be emotional, physical or cyber.
Listen to your child first, before working out a plan and deciding whether or not to involve the school.
Write down each incident, so that if you do approach the school, you can offer precise evidence.
Try to ensure that you remain calm when addressing it with the school, whilst it is only natural to feel strong emotions, it will not help the situation. All schools should have an anti-bullying plan.
Evidence suggest that trying to make the bully and victim meet to sort things out leads to further victimisation.
Whilst it is natural to want to contact the parents of the bully, this rarely leads to resolution, as the bully’s parents will only have heard their child’s version of events, and the bully may frame it that they are the one being mistreated.
Involve one trusted adult at the school, to get their perspective on the situation, try to avoid speaking to many other adults at the school and other parents as this can lead to all parties reputations being destroyed.
On the whole, friendships are incredibly valuable resources for girls during their tween years, and some of these friendships go on to last many years, and with some guidance and knowledge, navigating the trials and tribulations of these friendships can be eased, and help girls with their self-confidence and self-esteem to passage successfully towards older adolescence.
Resources:
Reviving Ophelia: Mary Phipher, Phd
Untangled: Lisa Damour
Under Pressure: Lisa Damour
