DiscoverYour Daughter

It’s Monday morning in homeroom and something feels off. None of your friends said hi to you—not even your BFF—and now they’re all whispering to each other as if the telephone game made a comeback. Wait…did they just turn and laugh in your direction? Did you just hear your name? All of a sudden, sirens go off in your head! Code pink! Level-three-friend-gang-up in classroom 10! Easy now…come back to Earth…breathe. You probably feel like you’re suspended in mid-air on a roller coaster. But don’t worry—you won’t fall off…if you keep your wits about you and handle the situation with grace. Not sure how to do that? There isn’t an exact formula (like x + y = friends stop being mean) but there are a few ways you can improve your situation.

Don’t…

Assume anything. You might think you know exactly what’s going on, and maybe you do. But it might also just be a silly misunderstanding! Maybe your friends are just playing a joke on you, or planning a surprise for your birthday. Maybe they’re looking at something on the wall behind you. You get the point. There could be a number of explanations for what’s going on. You won’t know until you ask!

Be hard on yourself. Don’t assume you went from BFF to enemy! It may have nothing to do with you. This probably sounds kind of silly. Of course it has something to do with me, you think! They’re looking at me, laughing at me—how could it not be about me? But stop and think: What are the odds you did something to upset every one of your friends? It’s more likely that one girl has an issue with you, and the rest are just following her lead. Why? Well, it’s easier to laugh along with the group than to not laugh and be on the outside.

Freak out! This is not the end of all your friendships. You deal with hard things all the time, and they always get better eventually. When you do badly on a test, you probably don’t think, Oh no! I’m going to spend the rest of my life repeating grades. I’ll be a 33-year-old eighth grader! Instead, you trust you’ll figure things out, right? You’ll get through this, too. If you freak out, you’ll be too upset to deal with the situation in a smart way.

Start acting. There are tons of ways you could act in this situation. You could pretend it doesn’t bother you. You could start whispering and laughing with girls you don’t know very well just to get back at your friends. But what good will that do? Then everyone will be hurt. It’s not easy to be honest when you feel attacked, and there’s no guarantee that everything will go back to the way it was before just because you’re honest. But the situation is definitely more likely to improve if you are honest.

Lie to yourself. Has this kind of thing happened before? Is there one friend who always finds silly reasons to be mad at you? (Like, “You wore purple on Friday. You know wearing purple on Friday is my thing!”) You don’t want to just throw away your friendships, but you may want to ask yourself who your real friends are. Friends may get upset and say things they don’t mean at times, but friends shouldn’t be mean most of the time.

Do…

Think before you speak. Have you ever noticed that when you fight with your mom, you regret blurting out the first thing that comes to mind? (For example: “Fine! I couldn’t care less if I’m grounded. Who wants to go to the movies anyway?”) The same idea applies here. If you speak before you think, your emotions will probably do the talking for you. And emotions usually aren’t too good at handling a situation calmly.

Speak to each girl alone. First it’s scary to approach a whole group of people! Second, you’re more likely to get an honest response that way. In a group, your friends may all try to act cool in front of each other. Finally, if you speak to each girl alone, you can keep the focus on your friendship with her, not on the group. You can ask why she’s upset with you, and tell her how you feel about how she has treated you.

Ask if you did something hurtful. You’re pretty awesome, but you’re probably not psychic. Ask each girl if you hurt her somehow. If you hurt only one of them and the rest are all just siding with her, tell them, “I know I have to talk to Katie about what I did, and I will. I didn’t mean to hurt her, and I hope she’ll forgive me when I tell her that. Whether she does or not, I hope that you won’t hold it against me.”

Treat yourself with respect…even if your friends don’t. If one of your friends acts really nasty when you talk to her, you may be tempted to just take it so you can get back in her good graces—especially if she’s the leader of your group. But no matter how cool she may seem, hurting you on purpose is not okay. Besides, if you don’t stand up for yourself, who will?

Give it time. The situation stinks, that’s for sure. It would be great if everything would just go back to normal, right now! That might not happen, though. It might take a little time. Maybe after you talk with your friends, they’ll think about what you said. If you tell it like is—letting them know you value their friendships and want to keep them—you’ve done everything you can do. The rest is up to them.

What Happens Next?

Now that you’ve done everything you can do, why not go home and enjoy the other things you have going on in your life? You know, the things that won’t change no matter who you’re fighting with at school: your family, the activities you like to do, the neighborhood kids who kind of annoy you but also make you smile because they look up to you. You’ve got a lot of good things going on, and that won’t change…even if a friend or two does get mad at you. In a situation like this, it’s just like your mom always says: You have to keep on believing in yourself. You have to believe that you don’t deserve to be treated badly, that things will get better eventually, and that you’ll be okay no matter what happens. Because you will.

Originally printed in Discovery Girls magazine. Share this with your daughter.