âten-ageâ FRIENDSHIPS At ten, we know how girls are pigeonholing themselves into what they think they should be. Whether they see themselves as academic or not, whether they are interested in boys, puberty is a reality, friendship fights are underway, and the influence of social media is impacting. With heightened pressure from what they see in the media, in movies and on TV, our girls are leaving childhood behind well before they hit their teens. Not surprisingly, emotions can be heightened and relationships can be fraught. So many parents struggle to understand the pressures our girls are under and how to deal with their emotional volatility. Aisha just wants one good friend at school, someone to sit with and talk to at lunch. âI find it hard to make friends because I am so worried about if they like me or not,â she says. Francesca is equally anxious. âIâm hard to talk to,â she says. Mei can identify. For her, finding and keeping friends is the toughest part about being ten. âSome of them turn out to be using you,â she says. âReal friends are hard to discover.â These concerns can often be exacerbated when girls move from their primary school to a middle or senior school at around this age. âI find it hard to meet anyone because I am new and everyone has known each other for a long time,â says Ruby. âI feel like I donât fit in.â Aanyaâs concern is slightly different. âItâs easy to make friends but hard to find the perfect friend for life,â she says. Lily doesnât want to stand out. âI like to stick in a big group at my school, and at home I never go out and play with others because of my anxiety.â
Why is friendship so difficult to navigate at ten? Why do so many of our girls not know how to make friends, or keep friends? Why do they want to find that best friend for life, at ten, and change so much of who they are, simply to fit in? How do we teach them not to exclude 40
others, and to value kindness and forgiveness when one of their peers makes a mistake? And why is there so much drama â with girls and not boys â around friendship? Those questions didnât begin as mine, and if there was a single issue that sat above others, where both girls and their parents struggled, this is it. âWhy do some girls become so unkind and nasty?â one mother asks. Another has a story to tell: âLast year my daughter learnt the hard way that if you behave badly towards a friend and hurt their feelings then they may just walk away from the friendship instead of finding ways of forgiveness. The other parents told their daughter to walk away because âa good friend wouldnât behave that wayâ and that there would be no forgiveness for the mistake my daughter made. I found there is a lot of information available about walking away but not much about forgiveness and how it can play a role in healing friendships for our girls.â A third mother says, âAll she wants is to be loved, and I believe itâs why she gets so frustrated and upset, because it doesnât come easily to her and she assumes reasons, like she has hairier legs or isnât pretty.â And this from a fourth mother: âShe is very worried and concerned about what others think, but I also think she is fairly intolerant of things herself and she is slow to forgive and forget.â From a fifth mother: âShe loves the idea of having friends but struggles to cross over from âbeing friendlyâ to actually being real friends.â The problem for girls is not in recognising the attributes of a good friend but in cultivating and keeping friendships.
The girls themselves put kindness as the number one characteristic they want in a ten-year-old buddy. That is to be celebrated. So too is the fact that they put âbeing funnyâ strongly in second place. Together, those two qualities were
