My oldest daughter, who is in 2nd grade, plays with 3 other girls in our neighborhood: Sophia is 12 but doesn't mind playing with the younger girls, she's on the quiet side and is fine with not playing with everyone all the time. Taylor is 10 and can be manipulative, controlling and sneaky but she has an alpha personality. Kayla is the same age as my daughter and the one my daughter gets along with best, but she is very easily manipulated. Typically Sophia and Taylor tend to leave Kayla out (but not my daughter) so Kayla was always more of my daughter's friend. I would always encourage my daughter to play with Kayla despite what I would hear Sophia and Taylor say about her and not wanting to play with her.
Also, Taylor's mom didn't care much for Kayla. She would tell me all sorts of things about stuff Kayla would do or say at her house, but I never saw that side of Kayla. It got to the point where I felt like she was telling me these things because she was trying to get me to change my opinion of Kayla and not have my daughter play with her anymore either (i.e. exclude Kayla). I was even outside once talking with Taylor's mom when Sophia and Taylor came up all annoyed because Kayla wanted to play with them but they didn't want to and Taylor's mom said in front of the girls, including my daughter, "I know, you don't like her (meaning Kayla)" and basically said she would tell Kayla that Sophia and Taylor couldn't play. I didn't like this interaction, I thought it was hurtful especially with an adult involved. Later that day I made sure to have a talk with my daughter about not letting the other girls' opinions of Kayla sway her own.
Fast forward to these past couple of weeks and Sophia got sick and hasn't been out to play in 2+ weeks, so Taylor was kind of left without a "right hand man" so to speak. At this point, my daughter and Kayla had been playing together almost everyday. But when Taylor got into the mix and started paying attention to Kayla, Kayla seemed to forget all about my daughter. I even caught Taylor trying to do some exclusion of my daughter with Kayla in tow and Taylor was whispering to my youngest daughter right in front of my oldest daughter. Now Taylor and Kayla are even doing an after school activity together! I totally don't get it, especially with the way Taylor's mom had always talked so poorly of Kayla.
Part of me wants to go talk with Kayla's mom about it because since they live around the corner, I know she doesn't see the interactions of the kids who mainly hang out outside by our house or out back by the neighborhood park. I seriously doubt Kayla's mom knows about Taylor's prior exclusion of her and how my daughter was always there for Kayla and not letting herself be manipulated by Taylor.
I just don't know if I should do this or if it will open up a can of worms. I wouldn't go down there to bash Taylor, just to more make Kayla's mom aware of how Kayla and now my daughter are being treated. I'm friendly with Kayla's mom and I feel she's a reasonable person, not prone to gossip, but again I don't know if it's better to just keep my mouth shut, which is hard to do knowing that my daughter's feelings are getting hurt.
Your thoughts are appreciated!
Wow, some really great responses! Thanks everyone! I will definitely keep these thoughts in mind for when the situation comes up again and I agree with dealing with it by talking it through with my daughter and not by micromanaging the other kids or talking with their parents. I am very proud of my daughter for not being much of a follower and while that sometimes can contribute to her being left out, I feel that part of her personality will serve her well in the long run.
Did you really just refer to a 2 yr old as " manipulative, controlling and sneaky"? A 2 yr old?
I think you need to calm down and leave things alone.
I'd probably do some off the street time with the kids. One on one so that they can see that person for who they are and learn to feel what this street stuff is doing to the other girls.
Then I'd stand up to the girls. Like when they came up I'd have told my daughter she needed to include the other girl or she was going inside.
I find it interesting that you hadn't considered telling Kayla's mom that her daughter was being treated poorly and excluded by the older girls before, but now that your daughter is on the receiving end of the bad behavior, you're motivated to talk to this girl's mom and inform/warn her? You may want to examine your own motivations here. And yes, stay out of it.
You should be talking to your daughter about her feelings, what she can do/say, etc, not the other mom. Girls' friendships are constantly in flux, one day they're best friends the next day they are on to someone else. If you try to micromanage these things you're just going to make things hard and weird for both you and your daughter.
And make sure she has other friends over after school and on the weekend, not just the ones who happen to live on her street. I mean really, I'm sure your best friends aren't necessarily your neighbors, right? It's not fair to expect our kids to always be good friends with other kids just because they happen to live on the same street.
You need to back off and let the kids navigate this on their own.
Your job as a parent is not to intervene in every social interaction your daughter has, it's to create an individual who can cope.
You need to stay out of the minutia of these girls' interactions with each other. Instead, when your daughter comes to you with concerns, help her learn coping techniques, such as verbally standing up for herself, or finding other friends, or playing by herself, reading, doing art projects, etc.
You will not be able to micromanage all of your daughter's social interactions, especially once she's in middle school, so now is the time to teach her to be able to tolerate the inevitable ups and downs of relationships.
So no, don't go talking to the other moms about this. This is a blip in your daughter's life, and it needs to be treated as such.
Your daughter is 7 or 8. These girls are significantly older. It sounds like pretty typical behavior given the ages and the fact (yes, fact) that girls this age do better in pairs.
No, I would not go talking to the other moms about it. It's your job to help your child develop resilience and move on. Yes, it hurts to be excluded, however, you need to teach your child about reasonable expectations in friendship. No, these girls aren't really her *friends*--- they are good acquaintances who play when it's convenient, nothing more.
I can guarantee you that if you go to talk to these moms and they tell their daughters what's up, they are only going to exclude your daughter more and look at her as tattle-tale. They will also perceive you as being controlling, because that's sort of what's happening here.
Sometimes, the hardest thing we parents have to do is not fight every single battle for our child but to teach them that there are times when it's best to let go. I have had my own experience with this-- most moms have. The more we make out of a situation, the bigger we make it, the more energy we give it--- the harder (NOT easier) it is for our kids. Better for her to learn that not everyone is going to want to play with her all the time and help her to focus on other things. You need to let this go.
Don't talk to Kayla's mom.
You don't know the whole story, and it is hard to be unbiased when it is your own kid.
Instead teach your daughter how to navigate these situations. Teaching her to identify what is going on in the scenario and helping her to develop tools and use them will empower her and help her learn to pick out better friendships as she gets older.
Unfortunately, she is going to encounter these types of scenarios more frequently as she gets older so use this opportunity to build up her confidence on how to deal with them by helping her speak up. Helping her learn and use phrases that apply to specific situations will help her much more then mom stepping in.
I also have a second grade daughter who is a bit of a follower and tends to gravitate towards the "alpha personalities". A few times already she has ended up on the wrong end of the leadership stick. So we talk about what "she" thinks happened and go over scenarios on ways to handle it that empower her and don't blame others.
I am slowly reading "Queenbees and the Wannabees" and "Reviving Ophelia" which covers girl aggression and friendships. The American Girl Doll company also has a few books that I am going to look into to that deal with how to handle these situations that are second grader friendly.
I have been also researching old posts on this website regarding this topic and just read "A Bargain For Frances" to my daughter. Frances keeps trying to win the approval of a friend that keeps taking advantage of her and then Frances finally wises up. It was a great way to teach my daughter that friendships are not about how much you do for that person.
Good luck
ETA: just make sure your daughter is brining this to you. She may not be as invested in these friendships as you think, and their behavior may not bother her.
Your interpretation of the interactions of the children may not be in line with the truth or the facts. If your daughter isn't complaining about her friendships, I would say back up and let her figure it out for herself.
As others have said you are WAY too much into this. The other thing you could do is have your daughter be a part of a club, group, or activity that takes up her time. This doesn't mean she won't encounter the same kinds of behaviors because people are people and we have to learn how to deal with all kinds of people. The sooner the better in my opinion so you can learn to master interacting with different personality types and begin to make wiser choices about who you want to be and who you want around you.
Lifetime learning isn't a sprint but a marathon and you can't take the test for your child. Life will test her, your role is to equip her to pass the test.
Stay out of it and let girls learn the ropes
Let these girls work it out themselves. Be there for your daughter.
Steer clear as much as possible form interfering other than to make sure you tell your daughter things like, "Don't exclude people" and "Be sure to tell your friends when they aren't being nice to you and stick up for yourself" and "Don't play with them if they aren't being nice" Then just let the cards fall. As they get older, you can be more diligent about serious things.
My daughter has sort of a "mean girl" by nature friend who I've put in check several times for excluding others (not my daughter but my daughter knows there will be hell to pay if she participates in exclusion with that friend) and I also talked to her mom about it. Sort of like, "Yeah, our girls (even though it was just hers) were leaving out another girl and I told my daughter she can't play with yours if this happens again." I also had to stop letting my daughter text (from my phone) that girl because the other girl was sending mean texts, which I told her mom. And actually the girl has been acting a lot better lately since I never let her slide and she knows bad behavior means not hanging out with my daughter. But they're in 4th and 5th grade. In 2nd grade, things are loosey goosey and not so serious imo.
Focus on teaching your daughter the skills to manage these situations. Try to avoid labels like "manipulative" - kids are learning social skills, trying on different personality types and behaviors, and responding to the changing dynamics of different kids of different ages in different combinations. You have to be alert to not only when your daughter is being excluded (and more importantly, when she is cognizant of it and hurt by it), but also (very important) to when it's happening to other kids!
If your daughter is upset, get her to talk about what it feels like to be excluded, what she can learn from it, how she can develop empathy.
I absolutely would not talk to the other mom about it - there are way too many adults involved in kids' relationships here. The point is, the kids are playing and you can't be there to referee every single interaction. Your perspective, and the other girl's mom's perspective, are completely skewed by just seeing a portion of the behavior or going by a kid's reflections on it. You also are likely to put your own adult viewpoint on a kid's reactions - which is often inaccurate.
Kids have to learn to be self-sufficient, and they only do that by having to work things out themselves and, yes, by being hurt or rejected. They learn to move on to more rewarding friendships by avoiding those which are constant sources of frustration and hurt.
There's already a huge challenge here with 12 and 10 year olds trying to be friends with a couple of 8 year olds. In part, that's okay because older kids develop leadership skills and younger ones can be mentored as well as flattered by the attention. But the older ones are still learning too, so there's a huge maturity gap overall. It's just not always going to go smoothly. I grew up in a neighborhood where kids of different ages did SOME things together but also went their separate ways on many other activities. I suggest your help your daughter learn to recognize and navigate that.
Your job is to teach your kid that she has to learn to a) work it out, b) learn from it, and c) shake it off. The more you get absorbed in it, the fewer skills she will develop. And she will pick up on your stress level and have a tougher time in situations where you're more upset than she is. Of course we want to protect our kids from hurt - but that's not real life. We have to give them skills to rise above it, and to make choices.
STAY OUT OF IT! This is typical stuff. And this is why you never take sides when your child comes to you complaining about another child. They may be in a fight one minute, and best friends the next. Your child will not forget what you said about her friend and may even repeat it to the friend. You just empathize but let them work it out on their own. It's good for kids to learn how to deal with hurt feelings.
And BTW, do you plan to tell the mom that you saw HER daughter being excluded on a regular basis, but didn't think it was important enough to bring up until it was YOUR daughter being excluded? That will go over well!
I would recommend having your daughter play mostly with Kayla and not as much with the other two, especially Taylor. There is a pretty big age gap and it sounds like, in this case, it's causing problems. Taylor is probably manipulative because she is three years older than your daughter and Kayla, so she finds it easier to take advantage of them. It's not really a healthy friendship for anyone involved and, since they aren't classmates, it's not necessarily a friendship worth having.
Don't go to Kayla's mom about this. Instead, take the time and energy you're using now to ponder these detailed interactions and just starting getting your daughter more play dates with kids she knows from school, church, scouts, sports, dance, whatever she does--in short, start ensuring her social circle expands way outside this neighborhood clique. If she already does such play dates, have more, and have Kayla over to play on her own by invitation, rather than encouraging hanging out in the neighborhood with whatever group happens to be around. Of course she'll still go play with the neighborhood kids, and will have to navigate these sometimes painful changes on her own, but if she always knows she has other friends from other parts of her life, she'll be fine.
The clique won't last a lot longer anyway. These age gaps are pretty big right now, and second graders are a whole different kind of kid from kids of 12. I'm surprised the two older girls haven't already moved away from wanting to see so much of the younger girls anyway, though it seems that the 10-year-old likes to have Kayla as her sidekick--and loves to create drama between Kayla and your daughter. Huge red flag there that it's time for your daughter to be too busy for hanging out when Taylor's around.
Please get and read "Queen Bees and Wannabes," a good book about girls' relationships. Taylor is a preteen queen bee in the making, first excluding Kayla and then excluding your daughter, whispering to your other daughter, etc. etc.. And her mom is feeding the drama, intentionally or not, by badmouthing Kayla. If you get entangled in telling Kayla's mom about all this, you could end up feeding the drama purely by accident, especially if Kayla's mom hears nothing but glowing things about Taylor from Kayla; Kayla's mom may be confused at best and angry at worst if you come and say Kayla doesn't "get" the older girl's motives. Just leave it.
I would ensure that your daughter has her own, age-appropriate activities with other kids based on interests. You'll have to do more chauffeuring and make more calls to arrange things, but in the end it's worth it, because when the neighborhood stuff ages out and kids no longer want to play, your child will have other friends she knows from other places.
Meanwhile, teach your daughter that friendships change over time, and if Kayla starts saying, "Hey, I'm doing this great activity with Taylor!" your daughter can smile and say, "That's so cool for you!" and move on to "Do you want to play X now?"
