Why she may be outgrowing some friends
Researchers tell us that personality development during the early school years is associated with major events in the child’s socialization. While parents have significant influence, a child’s external experiences with the outside world will have substantive impact. We don’t need to delve into theories advanced by Erikson, Skinner or Piaget to witness the changes our children have undergone through the ages. For me, I have seen my daughter’s personality transformation as she had persisted through moving cities, divorcing parents, changing school and many other happy and sad moments. Even though she is an only-child, we have extended families everywhere so she doesn’t feel like it’s only her with me or her with mom at any time; she has cousins, second cousins and more uncles and aunts than she has fingers. At my friend’s house, she even referred to their younger child as her sister. But even doting parents can provide only so much and that is why we place a lot of hope (and expectation) on our children making their own friends.
My daughter though, isn’t pals with everyone. She’s actually quite selective. And even some of her oldest friends (from preschool and Kindergarten) have not lasted through the years. What surprised me is how much these once inseparable gal pals are now strangers with fading familiarity. Clearly history doesn’t guarantee longevity of friendship. From my observations, I’m noticing that it didn’t matter whether her friends were girls or boys or whether their parents are still together or not. Proximity or frequency of visits also didn’t matter either. She has an old friend who lives one street over and they see each maybe once a year. She has another friend who lives an airplane ride away, and they instantly regroup whenever they get together. I’m seeing that friendship has less to do with the other person and more to do with herself. The primary determinant for a long lasting friendship is value she holds dear and to what extent the other holds the same. How the friendship will endure doesn’t necessarily depend on birds-of-a-feather engaging in the same actions—like an extracurricular activity, but on common values that transcend into emotions. In other words, it’s not what she does, but what she thinks.
Friendship has less to do with the other person and more to do with herself. How the friendship will endure doesn’t necessarily depend on birds-of-a-feather engaging in the same actions, but on common values that transcend into emotions. In other words, it’s not what she does, but what she thinks.
The other night, I invited one of my daughter’s friend and her parents over for dinner. The adults had great conversations. At the end of the evening, my daughter asked me not to invite her friend anymore. “I think they come as a matching set, so I can’t invite the parents and tell them to leave the kid behind,” I said. Well, it appeared that all her friend did was play Xbox for the whole time. I had made the simple assumption that because they were the same age, in the same class and have, what I thought, was the same common interest, they’d naturally get along. Boy was I wrong. Through observing interactions my daughter has with other friends, I’m also learning not to benchmark her against her peers. I shouldn’t anyway, but I fully saw that out of the 15 girls in her class, 3 were full-on bookworms, 1 was a sheltered wallflower, a couple of narcissists and 3 were discipline-lacking, attention-seeking shit-disturbers. My daughter doesn’t like to read much, definitely not a wallflower, has only mild narcissistic tendencies and will disrupt for legitimate reasons. With the exception of one or two, I don’t think many (or the rest) will survive my daughter past Grade 6 as she’s already calling some of them bees with itches.
My daughter does have a very small group of girlfriends she goes to for different reasons. I’m also learning from her that friendships are based on shared values that do more than give and take with each other. They solve each other’s problems, express empathy and confide thoughts and feelings with each other. Compromise isn’t even a currency in the friendship as there are no trade-offs and no expectation of return. They also don’t keep score. At this stage of friendship development, girls truly want their friend to be better and willing to throw their own resources to help them get there. My daughter has affinity to girls who have gone through similar struggles. This kindred attitude to each other is requisite for developing mature friendships that will last through times. These relationships will also be far more likely to survive hardship and hiatus than fair-weather and situational interactions.
As parents, we need to be very mindful about how our daughters formulate and build friendships especially with members of the opposite sex. She needs to pan her cohort for real gems and not settle for the next shininess thing. As much as we teach our daughters to expect a lot from themselves, we have to teach them to expect more from their friends. They will be her crutch when she needs them the most. As I’ve always believed, a person’s true character isn’t revealed at the best of times but at their worst, so too are friends. Those who don’t stick around when the times are bad aren’t really friends at all. And so for this reason, I stopped asking her why she doesn’t hang with so-and-so anymore.
