Any advice on steering a child (G11) away from a friend?

We have a growing issue with one of G11's closest friends (who is a big part of, if not the leader of, G11’s core friend group). I’ve provided some background below but my main question for all of you is this: have you ever had a conversation with one of your children to explain that you don’t want them to hang out with a particular child and why? How did you go about it, how did it go, and any advice you can share?

We have been doing things like encouraging alternative (i.e. substitute) friendships outside of her core friend group but those will take longer to bear fruit than we are willing to wait to create some distance in this friendship. Any advice from anybody who has gone through something similar would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Background:

- G11 has her strengths and weaknesses. High achiever (particularly school and sports) but headstrong and thinks she’s better than she is at most things, which I’m being open about because I think it’s her main challenge socially. She also has a silly/dorky element of her personality which we find endearing but is likely an obstacle to closer friendships with some of the other girls who are good athletes. She’s therefore not popular enough that she can be cavalier about jettisoning friends (and possibly her core friend group in the process). If we were to simply dictate that she can’t hang around with this girl, it is possible G11 gets ostracized from her main friend group which includes her best friend (who we like very much). There are some friendships outside of her core friend group but it’s a big drop off as of now.
- We’re working with her on her headstrong nature and overconfidence but we have not told her that we think it’s a social obstacle for her – it’s been discussed mostly in the context of feedback from her teachers. It’s a delicate balancing act because she has extraordinary self-efficacy which we very much want to maintain while paring back some of the over-confidence.
- Let’s just assume for the sake of this discussion that the girl we want to steer G11 away from warrants such action. We feel bad for her because she is from a pretty shitty situation. And she hasn’t yet done anything truly egregious or dangerous. But she exhibits all kinds of attention-seeking, self-centered, impolite, etc. behaviors that we do not want to be an influence on our daughter.

Why overthink it?

Why is every parent's first inclination to tiptoe around the truth? If you raised her right, she already knows the other kid has issues.

Here’s the conversation to have: ‘hey daughter, your friend is an impolite jerk. You know it, and I know it, and I’m sick of it. Don’t hang out with her.’ Just leave it at that, and usually that is enough to allow her to softly sort it out by herself.

It’s just a crappy and difficult age for girls, and there is no way around it. We also do the travel sports thing and know very well the cliques that develop, and we have both bad kids and bad parents on the team.

Will the kid rebel against your authority? Maybe, but if she does, it’s best to catch that tendency early anyway.

Thanks

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.

What if she recognizes that the other kids has issues

But also understands that she has a rough life and wants to be there as support and help?

I agree with talking to her openly, but I would come at it from the perspective of let's try to be a positive influence in her life. Telling her she can't hang out with someone is just going to make her be less open with her parents, at a time when that is really not healthy.

Bingo *

I agree. Don’t overthink it, point out what u don’t like

about the girl’s behavior, but be sympathetic to her given her circumstances. Covers all the bases.

This is where we've ended up

With the added caveat that our daughter is not going to be allowed to go over to this girl's house.

The girl has told my wife in the past "My mom is done with me." My wife got a real-world example this morning. This girl had a "play date" (in both senses of the term) with the son of one of our neighbors. That neighbor told my wife this morning that the day that the girl came over there was complete radio silence from the mom. The girl told our neighbor that "my mom never answers if the call/text is from me." Finally the neighbor called the mom's cell phone at 9pm (keep in mind the neighbor was expecting a couple of hour play date). The mom says "I'm in [local town] watching a movie so I can't get there. Can you just drop her off at my house?" We can only wonder if/when the mom would actually have begin to care where her daughter was.

Isn't middle school kind of characterized by

"attention-seeking, self-centered, impolite behaviors"? I would wager these influences are going to show up outside of this particular friend. I wouldn't try to insulate your child from these things, but rather instill in her the ability to deal with them or discard them.

The problem may take care of itself. The friends my G20 had in middle school changed throughout middle school and didn't continue into high school. So this may not be the problem you necessarily think it is.

Finally, whenever we saw one of our kid's friends making a poor decision, we would talk about it with our kids. We have never forbidden our kids to spend time with some other kid, and have been fortunate that our kids were able to recognized trouble when they saw it and they on their own sort of shut down friend relationships. I suspect a part of why they were able to do that is the relationship that they had to us and our ability to sort of talk through all kinds of things. We also just may have gotten lucky.

All of which is to say, talk to your kid about it. I would be reticent to just prohibit her from spending time with this other kid. The other thing you can do is try to set up times where she can reinforce her relationship with her best friend (going to dinner, etc.)

Good luck.

Turn it around.

Why not be the positive influence on the other girl that you think she needs? Have her over for sleepovers, dinner, movie night, game night, whatever. Have other girls there, too, that your daughter is friends with. Help build a social network for her. And just keep an eye on your daughter to see if she starts showing negative influences from the other girl. It might not work, but you can at least try it for a few weeks or months.
You probably shouldn't dictate who your daughter is friends with, unless there is a serious problem that demands immediate action (like drug use, abuse, or criminal activity). This doesn't sound like that.

Had her over for a sleepover with another girl Monday night

[My kids didn't have school on election day]

Her behavior during that sleepover was actually part of the impetus for our increased sense of urgency. She exhibits a level of self-absorption I have only ever seen in one other person - my brother, and his was driven by drug addiction. This was after she came to our house last week on Halloween night with a half dozen other girls to trick-or-treat and watch a scary movie. She trick-or-treated in her own neighborhood first and told me when I picked the girls up that she had emptied all of the candy bowls left in her neighborhood into her sack (it's one thing to do it; it's another to think it a good idea to volunteer it to a friend's parent).

My wife's nature is to try to help this girl whereas I'm reluctant to take it upon ourselves to actively teach somebody's else's* kid our version of manners and right-from-wrong. And having her around while we simply model the right behaviors is too long of a row to hoe.

That said, I agree with your last two sentences, hence my conundrum.

* Her parents are both in the picture and, to the best of our knowledge, not drug addicts, abusers, etc. Just, apparently, shitty parents. She lives with her mom in her aunt's house. Her dad also lives in our town. But, as an example, this girl has volunteered to my wife "My Mom is done with me."

This is the correct answer. Take it from someone

whose parents try to "steer" me away from someone. Still pisses me off to this day. Unless she's a danger, don't do it.

Tough one. Are you friends with other of her sports parents?

Maybe invite the families over to help any budding friendships with the kids?

We had a similar situation with our oldest daughter (now 23)--she was a little older. 13 I think. Whenever we saw some questionable behavior by her "friend" we talked to her about it. "How did you feel when X did that?" "Is that something a good friend would do?" Stuff like that.

The "head strong" part sounds like our youngest (now 19). We had to use a lot of reverse psychology with her. If we suggested she go in one direction, she would go in the other. The good part about her being head strong was that it was hard for her questionable friends to influence her in a bad way. She did what was right (most of the time). Maybe key on that part of your daughter's personality--praise the good decisions.