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Post being replied to

Thanks by shawno3

I am definitely prone to overthinking. In fact, I think it's the third time just on this board (and I don't post all that frequently) that it's been suggested. That said, in this case my initial reaction was simple and exactly as you suggest: we should tell G11 that she can't hang out with this girl.

When I suggested that to my wife, she looked at me like I suggested setting off explosives in our kitchen. I don't think she expects rebellion from our daughter but more the "you're ruining my life" kind of reaction. And we might very well, at least temporarily, put a serious damper on G11's social life if we were to take the direct approach.

If each friendship existed in isolation, I would nevertheless persist with the direct approach. But it's my daughter, this girl, and then the girl who is my daughter's best friend (who, I mentioned before, we really like) who are the "three amigos" at the center of a group of about 7-8 girls. It would be tactically impossible to keep G11 away from the girl in question without negatively impacting G11's relationship with G11's best friend and the wider group. That (and my wife's reluctance) is the primary driver of my second guessing.

The good news is that my wife has an alternative plan, which centers on two facts: (1) this girl just moved into our town during last school year and still cheers for the team in the town she moved from; and (2) she and her mother live in her mother's sister's house in our town. The resulting plan is to cross our fingers and toes and wish really hard that these two indicators of transientness mean that this girl will move back to her original town ASAP.