What To Do When Your Daughter Plays With A Friend That Worries You: Parenting Tips
Last Tuesday, I leaned against the chain link fence outside Lila’s third grade classroom, flipping through a grocery list on my phone, when I saw her barreling toward me, pigtails flying, one hand clamped around a crumpled sheet of unicorn stickers. “Mia gave these to me!” she yelled, shoving them in my face before I could even say hi. I smiled and tucked them into her backpack, but that familiar little twist tightened in my gut. Mia is the girl my daughter plays with almost every day at recess and after school, and for the last two months, I’ve been trying to figure out what, if anything, I should do about it.
I first noticed something felt off back in September, when Lila came home and asked if we could drop off our old toaster oven at Mia’s house. Her mom had had her power cut off for a week, she told me, and they couldn’t heat up frozen waffles. I didn’t mind dropping it off, but I started paying more attention. Lila started coming home with small “gifts” that I later found out were taken from the classroom supply bin. Once she asked if Mia could sleep over, then told me Mia hadn’t had a bath in three days because her family’s water heater was broken. Nothing dangerous, nothing abusive, just the kind of uneven, chaotic household that most of us with steady jobs and mortgages don’t deal with day to day.
The first time I got really nervous was the October playdate we hosted at our house. Lila and Mia were building a fort out of old queen sheets and laundry baskets in the basement, and I brought up a plate of sliced apples and peanut butter crackers. I paused at the top of the stairs to knock, and that’s when I heard Mia say, “If you don’t give me your pink sparkly scrunchie, I won’t be your best friend ever again.” I froze. That pink scrunchie was the one Lila got for her birthday from my mom, she’d worn it every day for a month straight. A second later I heard Lila mumble okay, and then the sound of the scrunchie changing hands. I didn’t go down right then. I left the crackers on the step and went back to the kitchen, my mind racing. I’d heard so many other parents talk about cutting off “bad influences” before they ruin your kid. Was this that moment?
I texted my sister, who’s a school counselor, that night, expecting her to tell me to gently encourage Lila to play with other kids. Instead she asked me a question: Is anyone getting physically hurt? I said no, not really. She said then don’t ban her. Banning the friend just makes your kid hide their friendship from you, and it takes away the one chance they get to practice figuring out tricky relationships on their own. Then she told me concrete steps to take, instead of the vague “just talk to her” advice I’d heard before.
First, don’t badmouth Mia. That’s harder than it sounds, because it’s easy to label her the pushy kid from the messy house. But if I say Mia is a bad friend, Lila will either stop telling me what’s going on, or feel guilty for liking her, which shuts down all communication. Second, ask specific questions instead of leading ones. Instead of “Is Mia being mean to you?” ask “How does your tummy feel when she says stuff like that?” Kids that age can’t always name complicated social emotions, but they can tell you when something feels off physically. Third, practice what to say together, don’t fix the conflict for her.
That night after Mia left, we were cleaning up the fort, folding the sheets, and I sat down next to her on the basement floor and said, “I heard what Mia said about the scrunchie earlier. How did that feel when she said that?” She picked at a loose thread on the sheet for a minute and said, “My tummy hurt. But I don’t want her to not be my friend. She’s the only one who likes to play mermaids as much as me.” I said, “That makes sense. It’s hard when someone says they won’t be your friend unless you give them something you love. What do you think you could say next time she does that?” We brainstormed a couple lines, then role played for five minutes while we folded. I was Mia, I said “Give me your colored pencil or I won’t play.” She first mumbled “Okay,” then tried again, louder: “This is my pencil I’m using right now. You can borrow it when I’m done. If you don’t want to play, that’s okay.” We practiced it three times, no big speech, just casual back and forth.
A week later, Lila came home from school, that pink scrunchie back on her wrist. She told me Mia asked for it again at recess, and Lila said the line we practiced. Mia crossed her arms and pouted for five minutes, then said fine, and they went back to playing mermaid tag. Lila said her tummy still felt a little funny after, but she also felt “sort of like a superhero.”
I still worry sometimes. Last week Mia asked Lila to hide a candy bar in her backpack from the lunch line, and Lila did it. We talked about that after, practiced what to say next time someone asks her to do something that feels wrong. I don’t think this friendship is perfect, and I’m ready to step in if it ever turns physically or emotionally harmful. But what I’ve learned is that every friendship our kids have, even the tricky ones, teaches them something. I can’t protect Lila from every uncomfortable interaction for the rest of her life. She’s going to meet pushy people, people with different boundaries, people who ask for too much, long after she leaves elementary school. If I take this friendship away now, I take away the chance to practice handling it when the stakes are still low, when I’m right here to help her practice.
Yesterday, Lila and Mia baked cookies together at our house. Mia left half her cookie on the plate, and Lila wrapped it up to send home with her. She told me Mia’s little brother never gets to eat chocolate chip cookies. I grabbed an extra unopened pack of cookies from the pantry to send along too. I still don’t know how this friendship will go. Some days it makes me nervous, some days it makes me proud of how much Lila’s growing. Right now, that’s enough.
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