My oldest daughter just turned 11 and we are in full on tween mode over here and it can be a bit of a roller coaster.

This is such a pivotal time in a girl’s life. It’s well known that girls start puberty a couple years before boys and that in the years before full puberty starts, their hormones begin ramping up in preparation. This can cause mood swings, and it is documented that it’s a time females begin to experience more negative emotions compared to their male counterparts, much of it can be in the form of anxiety. There’s biological reasons for this that I won’t get too into the weeds on but it’s purpose is theorized as an adaptive mechanism to help women protect their young children and babies.

So take a bunch of girls going through that change at slightly different times and add to it the fact that developmentally they are starting to pull away from their parents influences (not completely, parents still have the most influence on their kids at this point) and move more towards their peers and you have the “hot mess” of pre teen drama.

Ideally, your daughter is from a mentally healthy starting point going in, with parents who have modeled what healthy relationships look like, but that’s definitely not always the case and it won’t be the case for some of their peers.

This is when kids can fall into some unhealthy or even downright toxic friendships. And I’m not even blaming the person. These are still just kids and if they’ve learned some unhealthy behaviors or haven’t had unconditional love or have had chaos or…or…or the list goes on and on.

This is why I think it’s important for parents to monitor their kids social media or texts if they have phones. My 11 year old uses facebook messenger which is not perfect by any means but I like that I get to see in real time every message that is sent to her, and I can get on there immediately and see what she’s sending. And there have been times when I’ve seen something come through and I’m able to tell her that she needs to stop responding and take a break so that things can cool down.

To complicate things MORE, the part of the brain that help’s control our reactions is not fully developed until age 25!! So when their emotions get really high, they really have a very hard time NOT reacting in a highly emotional state. That’s why I love the movie Inside Out, it really illustrates what’s happening in the brain when our emotions take the drivers seat.

As adults, we should have the ability when we feel ourselves getting really angry to step away, take a deep breath, go for a walk, etc to try to get our emotions out of the drivers seat and think clearly before we respond. Toxic people won’t like that, by the way. They will usually try to keep you in the heightened emotional state because they can exploit it for their benefit and use your emotional reactions to point out how “crazy, angry, emotional, unstable” you are.

The fact that many of our kid’s interactions with friends is happening online rather than face to face further complicates these things. You can’t read tone over text, and many times people will say things through text or online that they would never say to the person’s face.

So this is where my experience with my dad has helped me to better prepare my kids for difficult relationships they will encounter. I’ve learned so much about healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships and wish I would have known so much of this when I was younger and navigating these things through trial and error and great heartbreak. But at least I can help my kids. I can model healthy relationships to them and talk to them honestly about these things.

So first of all, I’ve taught kids from a very young age some basic truths for their own protection.

No one should ever threaten or bribe them or ask them to keep a bad secret.

It’s pretty obvious about the secret keeping and why we want to teach them that it’s never ok when someone asks you to keep a bad secret, even if they are an adult. Even an adult they know and trust.

Threatening, I explained is someone telling you, “if you don’t do (whatever it is they want from you), then I won’t be your friend anymore, won’t let you come to my party, won’t give you what you want, will tell the whole school you…, will tell someone what you said about her, will tell on you, etc.” I’ve told my kids that this is threatening and it’s not what a good friend would do.

Bribery then would be someone offering to give you something in return for you giving them something you don’t want to give. It could be their friendship, a status, etc.

When they were little, we practiced different scenarios so that they could get used to telling people no and feeling good about it.

But healthy relationships should mostly feel good to be in. While all relationships can go through conflict from time to time (and the closer the relationship, the greater chance for conflict to arise) but in general, the relationship should make you feel happy to be around that person. But also, you should feel happy about that relationship when you’re not physically with the person too. And if you start to notice you’re NOT mostly happy either being with or away from this person, that’s a red flag you should watch out for.

So I’ll give an example of something I noticed with my daughter and one of her best friends. She’s had this friend for years. Conflicts came up occasionally but for the most part, they enjoyed each other’s company’s and it was a good relationship.

Things changed quite dramatically in the last year. Her friend started not coming around as much, which in turn made my daughter want to see her even more. I started to watch my daughter’s demeanor totally change when this girl wouldn’t play with her and also didn’t seem to care too much about it or about my daughter’s feelings.

My daughter got stuck in this cycle where the friend would pull away and my daughter would be very distraught. She wondered what she had done or why this friend who was over just about every day was suddenly always busy with other friends or just didn’t feel like playing anymore. Then suddenly the friend would appear again, they would play together and my daughter felt like it was old times again and felt really good, only to have the friend pull away again.

It creates this addictive cycle because my daughter gets a dose of dopamine when this friend is around that makes her feel good, then she feels upset, sad, rejected when the friend pulls away, then she gets the dopamine hit again and it keeps her coming back for more. She doesn’t even realize it’s happening.

Sadly, I understand this cycle all too well. Like I said, I wish I had known these things when I was growing up. I spent a LOT of time in cycles like this myself, until at some point the bad feeling’s finally overrule any good feelings associated when the person gives you the time of day again. And then afterwards, when you do a postmortem on the relationship, you wonder what exactly it was about the person you found so appealing in the first place. And the answer is nothing. You were simply just chasing the dopamine. It’s very much an addiction. Science has proved, people can become addicted to love. It’s not always romantic love either, friendships, especially for females can become caught up in these unhealthy addiction patterns.

So I talked to my daughter about what it is that she likes so much about this friend. We talked about what makes someone a good friend. Does this friend possess those qualities? Ultimately, she realized this person was not really acting like a good friend to her anymore. And she still had fun with her when they were together, but the way she disregarded her was becoming really hard for my daughter to handle. And eventually it was creating resentment in my daughter for this other person.

I know this other girl well, and I honestly don’t think she’s trying to hurt my daughter. She’s got some things going on in her life that are very hard to deal with. It’s not her fault. I care deeply for her and always will. Yet it doesn’t mean that my daughter should have to be treated like a doormat.

I tried helping her talk to the girl. How to express her feelings to this friend in a respectful way when she was not emotionally charged. But this girl was clearly not in a place to hear her and it went terribly bad. So my daughter took a break for a few days and then she and the other girl talked to each other and both apologized but things didn’t really change after that.

So I had to get honest with my daughter. Her friend has shown what kind of friend she can be, and while my daughter may want her to change, she’s not going to. Things are probably never going to go back to the way they were. So my daughter has a choice to make. She can accept that this girl is going to continue to reject her regularly and get herself into a place where it’s not going to bother her and just be content with the times they play together and enjoy those for what they are. Or she can decide that she wants something more than her friend can give and move on from the relationship. I told her I support her either way.

I went through this with my dad. I finally got to this point where I realized he was not going to change. He was showing me who he was and I needed to believe him. Just because I wanted him to be the dad I wanted him to be was not going to make it so. And further, I realized it was not something lacking in me that made him treat me the way he did, but rather something lacking in him. And it’s a painful truth but also freeing. I ultimately decided I couldn’t be in a relationship with someone who treated me the way he did anymore. Other times I’ve made the other choice. Some relationships you can keep at an arm’s length and have a good time when you see the person but you don’t hope for the person to care about you the way you would ideally like.

Neither choice is an easy one. Letting go of relationships that have become unhealthy is hard. Staying in a relationship that’s one sided or where the other person just can’t care about you the way you want is also hard. Over time though, it gets easier and easier to just expect that person to be who they are and you find their actions no longer hurt you or have any bearing on your emotions. These relationships by definition cannot be close relationships. They become sort of superficial. That’s not always a bad thing either. We can very much enjoy the company and have fun with friends at this level, not expecting anything more.

And, putting some relationships on the superficial level allows you to really invest in the healthy relationships more.

My daughter is still trying to navigate how she wants this relationship to go. In the meantime, I’ve encouraged her to invest in the relationships she has that are healthy. Where the other person wants to spend time with you just as much as you want to spend time with them. Where they care about your feelings and wellbeing.

I’ve also encouraged her to find healthy ways to cope with the stresses she’s been experiencing. I’ve seen her confidence soar. I’ve seen her growing in these other relationships and having fun.

When girls are this age, social issues can really become an issue they fixate upon and they are unable to enjoy the world around them when they’re so upset. Helping them to find ways to deal with their feelings can help them to see that even though this issue is upsetting, it doesn’t have to rule their lives.

And while she may wish for her friend to change, she can’t change her but she can pray for her. Teaching her to pray for those that hurt her is a great way to show love and teach her compassion.