My daughter is 10 and I am trying to teach her to forgive, but to realize when someone is not really a friend. Ideally I would like her to be polite, but move on and spend her time with nicer people. I don't know how to convince her it is ok to stop being a friend to someone who is not a friend back. i am trying to explain healthy boundaries so she learns it. Last May I flat out said the mean girls at school were not coming over. I don't care if they are at church, the same activities, or the pool. I will be polite, but I am not going to be sucked in to their come here/go away games. She can tell me what I told her about it, but she is desperate for friends and lonely being an only child.
The particular girl is 9 and asks to come to our house weekly and has been over at least once weekly since summer. Sometimes when we go to a park or community event together, she will find a new kids to play with and totally blow my daughter off. If my daughter still goes around her, especially if we went together, the girl will get mean.
Her mom dropped her off at an event I would be volunteering at and I agreed to watch her. It happened last night and I talked to the girl and told her again that she needs to be a friend or not. and to knock the bad behavior off. her own mother and others see it and have corrected her. She lost most of her friends for this exact same behavior towards them. Her mom switched her school because at one point no one in the class would speak to her.
Sometimes we do things and her mom is with us as her mom and I are friends too. Her mom does things that are not ok with me and has lost a bunch of friends this year. People get sick of feeling stood up because a better offer came along, used, or gossiped about. There have been several times when I distanced myself from her because of the drama and she will come back in a few months saying let's try again. I have tried three times and am done. i have talked to the mom about the girls and us several times as things happened. She knows that I have ended other friendships or drifted away when i don't think it is worth it. I am the main caretaker of two disabled relatives and have my own health issues. I need to eliminate unnecessary stress. Also I am a mom to my child first.
My daughter says that is not Christian and our church teaches to forgive and stops at that point. Also, I have been encouraged to let my child choose her friends, but she chooses everybody and has no discernment. When I ask her why she thinks I would be unhappy with that friend, she tells me what the child does that is not nice.
Advice? A good sign is we were a finalist for a free trip. I asked my daughter if we win, what mom and girl should we ask? I would not let her pick this girl really because they would drive me batty. She did not say this girl. Also, she made a real true friend and spent 24 hours with her without one problem. I was a nervous wreck because it was her first sleepover but the mom says it was all giggles and no drama.
I agree with the premise that God also gave us a brain and expects us to use it. He also doesn't expect us to continue to put up with bad behavior and meanness from other people - that's not being good to ourselves. Your daughter needs to learn that there is a difference between forgiveness and tolderance, and being a doormat. Nobody needs to be a doormat.
When people tell me that I should just let them treat me any old way because I am a Christian (and yeah, I've had people say that to me, which just means that they want a free ride to act ugly without me calling them out over it), I am reminded of Christ throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. Turning the other cheek doesn't last forever. At a point that we choose, we can throw people out of our lives too, AND stand up for ourselves.
Explain that to her. Christ doesn't expect her to be a doormat. Give her examples of how you have taught her to be a good person by giving her consequences for things she is not supposed to do. Then show her how other people learn to treat people well, by having consequences for bad behavior. She is old enough to start understanding it. It takes a while - and indeed, I think we work on this our entire lives, Mama!
Good luck dealing with this!
Dawn
I am all about forgiveness and tolerance too...to a point. God wants us to be forgiving, tolerant people that care for each other, but here's the thing, sometimes the best way we can show others we care about them is to draw that line in the sand. Otherwise, all we are doing is enabling that behavior which sounds like what is happening here. The M. of this girl sounds like she tries to discipline her daughter, but if she is exhibiting the same behavior with her own friends her actions speak much louder than anything she could ever say.
Sometimes you have to pull rank as a parent and just end this relationship with these people. At least for now. Read the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud, it may help you understand how to instill better boundaries within your life without feeling guilty for making them. I think their may also be a Boundaries book written specifically for children as well. Good luck! What a wonderful thing that your daughter is so welcoming to all people, but it is imperative that you set a solid example for her so she can begin to differentiate healthy relationships from the bad ones.
God Bless,
A.
Forgiveness is largely about you being able to move on. It doesn't mean you keep accepting being hurt. Sometimes you can say, "I respect you as a human being and I forgive you what you did, but I will no longer accept x from you and we are no longer friends."
My SS is a very forgiving person and forgave his friend who stole Yugio cards from him and sold them. Later he realized that the boy was not his friend and he couldn't be friends with someone he didn't trust. We laid out groundrules since SS insisted on keeping the friendship for a while (like no, the kid could not play here and steal OUR stuff) and SS figured it out on his own.
You said she's made a true friend....do you think that she accepted this other girl's behavior because she felt she had no good friends? I would encourage her to spend more time with kids you like.
I also think YOU can show her how you handle the M.'s behavior. You can stand up for yourself without being rude, and even if the M. thinks you are (you'd be messing up her free babysitting), show your daughter by example how friendship works.
10-12 is a horrible time for girls. Try also not to get too overly involved in who is friends with who today. It will vary on the afternoon.
If I won a trip, I would take my child's input, but I would not take a child I didn't like or couldn't trust. Period. I've taken the kids' friends on vacations and 1. a bad kid can ruin your trip (I can tolerate one of SD's friends but she will NEVER go on vacation with us again. She was bossy, whiney and rude) and 2. you are taking physical responsibility for this child and that should not be taken lightly. If child gets a broken leg on a hike, you don't want the parents to sue you.
I also believe that God gave us a brain and expects us to use.it. The Bible says to pray for our enemies... so that assumes that not everyone is our friend, right? There is a difference between forgiving someone and being polite and letting them walk all over you. The pattern you descirbe tells me that this is a problem with the girl and her mother, and not your daughter. You don't have to make a big deal out of choosing to opt out of a close relataionship with them. Just be too busy to have them over, and if she comes to a function where you are volunteerng and asks you to watch her daughter again, say that you are too busy with your duties to commit to that. She may need professional help to learn social skills, and that is something for the professionals to handle. Sometimes chidlren do not have the wisdom that comes with maturity of choosing friends wisely. Your daughter may need to look at her friend's behavior and ask herself if it is "Christian" to act like that. She will likely come up with the answer that it is not. So she needs to distance herself from that and pray for the girl to learn a different way of acting.
i LOVE this quote:
"Forgiveness means giving up all hope... for a better past."
You can't change the past. Being angry, bitter, resentful about the past gets us nowhere. It hurts US. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't learn from past mistakes. Should have hope, and put energy toward, a better future.
And here's another quote to go along with;
"The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes expecting different results."
To ME, forgiving someone doesn't mean what they did was okay and it doesn't mean forgetting. It means that they are no longer renting space in my head. I don't have to be angry about the past, but I certainly don't have to repeat it.
you can forgive, but not open yourself up to being hurt over and over again. it's great that she forgives. she can be polite and treat this girl in a christian like manner. but when the conversation goes beyond small talk, i.e. inviting for playdates, making any kinds of plans together, then the conversation needs to stop. a simple "no thank you" is fine. it's not unchristian to avoid being hurt. there's being forgiving, and there's being a martyr. in the case of the free trip, i would not have let her choose that mother and daughter.
i am glad you added the comments about the mother having issues too, because at first i thought you were going to say that the mother corrects her and she's a good friend of yours and you just can't see where it's coming from ;) looks like it's pretty obvious where it comes from. no amount of "oh stop honey" in public is going to redirect when her whole life she's been taught something else in private.
just like that mother is modeling incorrect and damaging behavior that her daughter is learning - you can model correct and strong behavior for yours. that is why i would end all plans with them. your daughter should see you standing up for her AND yourself. good luck!
I think you should let your daughter do things her way. It's sweet and healthy that your daughter is concerned with being a true Christian. She sounds like she has her act together. Let her figure out how to deal with her friends, unless she specifically asks you for advice, at which time you can tell her to be polite and move on, if that's the appropriate answer.
Unless I misunderstood your post, your daughter doesn't seem to be overly affected by this child's behavior.
