We all want our kids to enjoy thriving friendships, to feel appreciated by supportive peers. But that’s not always case, and it can be heartbreaking to see the hurt, disappointment, and confusion our child feels when — for whatever reason —friends aren’t treating them as they should. How do we support our kids’ to navigate this? How much should we intervene? And what might intervening look like? Janet has an empowering perspective that she hopes will help, and she explains how it might apply in the cases of 4 different families who have recently reached out to her about their kids’ challenging interactions with peers.
Transcript of “Rejection, Exclusion, Teasing — What to Do When Friends Aren’t Kind”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be talking about a subject that can be pretty painful for us: when our child has friends that aren’t treating them right. Maybe other children are excluding them, rejecting them, saying unkind things, playing little emotional games with them. Most of us know that we don’t want to intervene too much, it’s not the way to make friendships bloom. Play works best when it belongs to the children. So what can we do? How can we empower our children in these situations? What do they need from us, and how can we help them to be effective with their friends?
I have several notes that I received around this topic, so that’s what made me want to talk about this today. And interestingly, they’re all about daughters and they’re all around five years old. I always find it interesting when I get these waves of notes that are all on one theme. Its appears like its suppose to be a sign that I’m suppose to be working on wanting to talk about that so I am going to do that today.
Here’s the first note:
Hi, Janet-
Your work has been such a lifeline for me. I found your work when my daughter was three months old and now she’s five-and-a-half.
She has a friend who she plays with at school and in the neighbourhood. It’s always been great, but lately there’s been more and more relational aggression from this friend to my child. I know this behaviour is common and typical, and I remember the same dynamic amongst me and my cousins as a child. But there were no adults monitoring our play. So while I know we grew out of it, I don’t know what to do. It’s hard when every playdate ends in tears. The other mom chalks it up to only child syndrome, but surely we can do something to help our girls.
It usually goes something like this: The girls are playing, then they differ on what they want to do next. The child will tell my daughter, “If you don’t do X, then I won’t be your friend anymore.” Then she will either refuse to look at or speak to my daughter or ask to go home. Sometimes they’ll be playing something and it will be time to go. My daughter will ask for five more minutes and then exuberantly say, “I get to stay for five more minutes!” At which point the friend will spin on her heels and say, “I don’t want to play anymore” and not acknowledge my child until we’re gone. No goodbye, refuses to hug (which we obviously don’t ever force, but it seems like she feels the power in withholding).
I just don’t know how to handle this, how to help them work it out. I’ve asked the mom if we can agree that the kids must answer each other even if the answer is no, instead of just ignoring, icing out, leaving. But should we as parents address the ultimatums or just identify, “Hmm, sounds like you want to do X, but you want to do Y. What are some ideas that would work for both of you?”
I’m tired and overwhelmed and would really appreciate your perspective.
So here’s the idea that I wanted to talk about today. Yet, it is a lesson, which can assist all of us, and I am only just beginning to get it, unfortunately. I think it is needed now more than it was before because of the impacts of social media, and all the comparisons it promotes, on children today. The FOMO (“fear of missing out”) that kids feel because they’re inundated with all these comparisons. The lesson that will help arm them through this now and in the future is this:
People only have power over us when we give it to them.
Yes, of course there are exceptions. There’s the power a boss has over us or someone we need to do business with or elected leaders, other people in authority, even teachers when we’re kids. But when it comes to most of the people we encounter in life, we get to choose the amount of power we give to them. It’s that thing of we’re speaking in front of an audience and everyone’s applauding, but then there are these few people in the corner that are kind of shaking their heads and they’re not applauding. And we decide to focus on them, we decide to give them all this power in our minds and hearts. It’s misappropriated and it’s not reality. It’s the same as getting all this positive feedback for something, but then you get a few bits of negative feedback that’s not even constructive and you decide to give that your time, your attention. We can’t let our kids do this, especially not with what they’re up against today.
So how can we teach them this? How can we impart the healthiest possible perspective to our kids so they can carry that with them, as a reminder if nothing else, that they own the power that they have. They get to decide who truly deserves and then continues to earn the power that they give them. You’ve heard me talk on this podcast about this idea of the power that we give to children when they have certain behaviours. Some of it we can’t help, we get triggered and we react and therefore we give power to that behaviour. Which then encourages it, unfortunately, and that’s the last thing we want.
Our influence is huge, and so to teach the children in these questions, all of them are quite capable of having a conversation with the parent about this idea of who we want to give our power to, that this is a choice. But the even more impactful way that children learn anything is through us, through our modeling and our influence. And so in these situations, where peers are being unkind, the best way we can teach our child not to give power to that behavior in those children is by us not giving it power. By us showing our children that that isn’t an exciting, powerful, terrible thing to be happening. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t respect how they’re feeling about it, but it’s this big challenge that we have to stay one step behind them in this process instead of pulling them ahead a little bit to what we’re feeling about it. I’m going to talk about how that looks with all these notes.
But what stuck out to me in this first one is this part right here where she totally nails it. She says that the friend “will spin on her heels and say, ‘I don’t want to play anymore’ and not acknowledge my child until we’re gone. No goodbye, refuses to hug (which we obviously don’t ever force, but it seems like she feels the power in withholding).” She feels the power in withholding, yes. And in this case, I don’t know how much of this is her child giving this power or if it’s that this parent is worried about this, therefore giving it power. It’s hard not to worry about this, but this parent says this happened with her and her cousins and everybody grew out of it. There were no adults monitoring their play. So she and her cousins grew out of this, but now there are adults monitoring this play. I’m not saying we shouldn’t monitor play. It’s fun to do if we can do it from a place of enjoyment and a lot of trust and interest in what’s going on and how the children are feeling about it, rather than how we’re feeling about it. That’s the challenge that I’m talking about here.
All this stuff is going on. She said “every playdate ends in tears,” so her child is getting upset about it. And that’s very valid. We can help her process that by not getting involved and risking giving more power to that little girl’s behaviour. This is the part where it feels like this parent’s getting a little too involved: “I just don’t know how to handle this, how to help them work it out. I’ve asked the mom if we can agree that the kids must answer each other even if the answer is no, instead of just ignoring, icing out, leaving. But should we as parents address the ultimatums or just identify, ‘It sounds like you want to do X, but you want to do Y. What are some ideas that would work for both of you?’”
So that part even sounds very neutral and like it’s not imposing any point of view, but it is giving children the message, I’m not comfortable with this being left open-ended. I want this to be resolved. Or the friend deciding she’s not going to talk anymore. All this silly immature behaviour, right? I would recommend stepping way back and just being there to support your child. If she says, “Oh, she did this and that and that,” I would just say, “Yes, I saw that” and “That hurt your feelings,” if it did. But doing all we can to not project and to not make a decision about how they should behave with each other.
The thing about giving power to things is kids get stuck there. They get stuck in that feeling of power and they don’t know how to get out of it. They almost can’t get out of it sometimes. We can help her and we can help that girl by dialing back the power that we’re giving to this. Letting go of it a lot more, just being there for our child, one step behind her, interested in what she’s feeling and what she thinks of the situation. Whether she wants to see this friend again, maybe she doesn’t.
And having this other conversation with her about the power that this girl is trying to have over her, it seems like, by playing these games with her. We can help our child see that for what it is, and then trust her to make the choice to try to learn about that with her and be in it or not. But either way, letting her know that you see this as kind of, maybe you’re not going to use these words, but just immature, silly stuff that she’s getting attention for doing. And that your daughter doesn’t have to be involved in that if she doesn’t want to. Or maybe she does, which is a strong choice for her to make.
I think one of the fears that we have is that another child is going to rob our child of their spirit, but that’s not what happens when we can trust them and stay behind them in this. What happens is they learn a lot about other children and how to relate to them and what they like and what matters and what they’re willing to put up with. They get to choose.
I really hope some of this helps. Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.
And if you haven’t already, please check out my self-paced course for parents HERE!
