question
My 7yo daughter has a friend that she's been friends with since she was 3. We're now close to the family and have a group of friends that we all spend a lot of time with. While I love the girl's parents, the little girl can be quite challenging and frankly disrespectful to her own parents as well as others. My daughter has often had conflicts with her over the years, and we've always guided them to "work it out'“.
However, now things have escalated a bit. On about 3 occasions, this little girl has managed to get about 6-7 other little kids from the group we hang out with to exclude her, shutting her out of rooms, and making fun of her. It's horrible to watch and always ends in tears. I'm not saying my daughter does not provoke her at times, but this "group" retribution I definitely don't like. At this point, I don't think the mom is going to be able to change much (after speaking with her), and I'm thinking the best thing to do is create some distance. It's sad as we will be missing out on some fun, but I don't think it's good to continue to expose her to this scenario.
Do you think this is the right approach?
How can I help my daughter in case this happens in the future?
What can I teach her?
BTW, she does not have these issues at school or with other kids. Thanks in advance for your great guidance.
answer
Can you build some space from this group? sure
Should you make it a habit of avoiding difficult social scenarios for your daughter moving forward?
No, I would not recommend that.
The number one task for the 5-10 year old is to learn how to manage social rules and social norms. Part of learning to do this is to learn how to manage situations where someone is not treating them with kindness.
How do we do that?
Most of the time in this age group, at the moment, we watch them and take note on how they manage the interaction. Stay out of it, don't intervene.
If they solve it, we leave them alone.
If they come to us we help them.
But definitely in the car or at bedtime, after the playdate we walk them through what we saw and we are curious about the choices we saw them make . Finally, we work together to figure out what they can do the next time. Every time we do this with them they learn from the mistakes of the interactions.
If you ask more questions than give answers the safer she will feel to make decisions in the moment when she is in the group settings.