Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Can't please all the friends

DD9 is exhausted from trying to please her wide variety of friends at school recess. They won't play with each other, so they set up a schedule of when she will play with each of them and insist that she stick to it - and tell her they aren't "getting enough out of her" if she can't make it over to be with them on a given day. DD laments having so many friends and wishes she could get rid of a few. She wishes recess didn't exist and has started asking if she could attend another school because of this.

Any good advice on guiding a girl through these sort of friendship boundary issues? Remotely? Due to work, I can't volunteer on campus. None of this comes up during playdates because there is only one friend there at a time.

DH thinks this it's the school's responsibility to solve this problem. Does anyone think the school might a) try, and b) succeed?

DS8 had something like this going on and I just told him he needed to figure it out so I'd see if she can solve it. Maybe you could walk through some scenarios with her but it seems like a good opportunity to practice standing up to people you generally like but who are being rigid and annoying.

Plus, I suspect it is more that the kids like having rules to enforce on someone. Perhaps some are often the one in the middle with divorced parents who share custody?

Just my two cents but I'd tell her you are happy to talk about it but they're her friends and she needs to work this out herself.

Role-playing/modeling might be a good way to practice how to kindly decline playing with someone. It's a very beneficial skill, and necessary for not getting yourself pulled in many directions socially or in future jobs (knowing when and how to say no). Learning that you can set boundaries but still have friends. Frankly, I have always veered away from any friends that put outright demands on me or expected that I should put them ahead of anyone else. As an introvert, I don't want to feel obligated to socialize. On the plus side, it's nice to know you're wanted and liked; it's just healthier to know how to set your limits.

I would definitely ask the school to intervene. When DD was 8 she saw the beginnings of mean girl behavior on the playground. At first she was only an observer as certain friends targeted friends from other groups but it eventually turned on her. One particularly manipulative mean girl, who DD considered a friend so felt safe from, took control and started dictating who was allowed to play with who and at what times. One weekend we arrived at a local playground and DD was thrilled to find several girl friends from school playing together. She ran up expecting a big hello, hugs, etc. Instead this mean girl stood up, said DD was not allowed to play with them and the other girls were not allowed to play with her. Period. All were stunned but the other girls clearly feared this one girl and didn't know what to do. A couple of them shrugged apologetically and did what the mean girl ordered. A third just stood there paralyzed and began to cry.

Because this was at the playground everyone's parents were there to witness it. The parents of the crying girl were horrified and took the opportunity to discuss that she needed to make her own decisions, not allow someone to dictate being mean to a friend, etc. The girl explained that it had been going on all week at school and mean girl had threatened to cancel the sleepover planned for that weekend if she didn't follow orders about playing with others. The parents obviously would have intervened if they had known. The mother of the mean girl? "I know 'mean girl' is tough..." She was aware but unwilling or unable to address the behavior.

After this incident mean girl started targeting DD during recess and I advised the school asking that she be kept separated from her as much as possible. School SW tried to address the issue with the whole class but conceded it was just the beginning of developing mean girl behavior on the playground. By the end of the year DD was separating herself from the other kids in order to avoid the nastiness.

She also had one particular friend outside of school who literally had drop-to-the-ground-hissy-fit-tantrums if DD ran into another friend at the playground who wanted any of DD's attention. DD and I discussed and agreed that we did not like and would not reward that behavior. I overheard DD explaining to this friend that she had to understand that DD had other friends and she would NOT ignore them if they ran into each other. If this friend reacted this way DD gave her time to stomp off and have her fit and then after a while would go over and ask if she wanted to play. Inevitably the 3 would play together just fine. Now that they are 11 DD has had a few of these types of conversations with this friend and her other friends have learned to tolerate her for DD's sake but none really enjoy having her around. She has no clue how her attitude affects others but since her father is a psychiatrist I assume her parents have done what they can to address it...

Third grade is when mean girl behavior really starts. I have had two phone calls from parents where my daughter has been out of line (or perceived to be out of line: in the first instance she was, the second instance she was just being tactless). In both cases I used it as a teachable moment after determining what happened. I was at the mercy of mean girls when I was in elementary and it was really really horrible, so I have told my daughter that she will not be a mean girl, period.

The school may have been the ones to suggest the time slots solution. When my daughter had a problem where she wanted to play with one girl (her bestie) but did not want to play with a third girl too (who was nice but hogged a lot of the attention), this is what the teacher suggested. Eventually my daughter got sick of time slots and made friends with the third girl and now all five girls in the group play together. So the time slot may be coming from the school. But in your situation, I agree with longcut, it's a good time to teach her diplomacy skills (rather than doormat skills). At least she understands that being popular isn't all it's cracked up to be -at that age, that's all anybody wanted to be (if they weren't) and but the truth is you just need a good group of friends (or one). This is what I keep trying to teach my daughter.

Someone is being manipulative. I agree it is a good time to talk about healthy relationships. Better now than when she is starting an intimate relationship you think is unhealthy.

Thank you for the suggestions and insights. I was beginning to think I was overreacting but clearly several of you think this is fairly serious. She has been trying to work this out herself for a while now and it took some coaxing to figure out why she suddenly wanted to change schools and hated recess.

We have tried role-playing and discussing what friends are and are not allowed to demand from one another - a month ago. She did put a friend on probation for a week or two for bossing her too much, with a reasonable level of success. That friendship is now going ok during playdate time. Some of the kids might see her as a proxy for parents that don't always follow the kids' demands - that's a useful point of view I will have to think about. (It's the opposite of a divorce case, but more applicable.) The playground culture is that you can't say you can't play, and that's pretty ingrained in all of them. The problem here is the opposite: she is happy to play with A, B, and C, but they have *chosen* not to play with each other, so they feel they can demand her to themselves on a rotating basis.

We will have some further discussions on how to gently end a friendship and not be a doormat.

Oddly, this is the child that the teachers were concerned about only a couple of years ago because she preferred to play by herself if no one wanted to play the game she wanted to play at that time. They thought she should be more flexible and just do whatever the other kids wanted to so she could be interacting with them. I guess she learned that lesson too well.

And the thought of intimate relationships with this one make me shudder. She is going to be a hard adolescent to parent. You're right, puffin, better to get this part worked out now.