How Tween Girls Can Spot True Friendship (and Navigate the Hard Parts)

By Kimberly Inskeep

 

Start with an Affirmation:

“Good friends care about your heart — not just your popularity or your usefulness in the moment.

Follow up with a Question: 

“What did that make you think about yourself?”  

The soccer game is over, and she notices her friend walking ahead with someone else … laughing, leaning in, giving only the slightest look back.

And instantly, the questions rise:
Did I do something wrong?
Are we still friends?
Was it real?

Middle school can feel beautiful, confusing, and full of changing paths. It’s where, through real friendship, she learns what love feels like outside the walls of home.

And we moms know exactly what that means, even in our own lives. Brené Brown speaks to us, even at our age, making a distinction that feels especially tender here: "True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are. Fitting in does.” And for our daughters, friendship is often the first place they experience that pressure:

Be less!
Be more!
Be cooler.
Be different…
and THEN …  you can stay.

The tween years are especially vulnerable for this. And if friendship isn’t navigated with health and clarity here, the teen years can eat her alive.

Friendship is just so hard in middle school. That’s a fact.  Their intuition is developing and so they become highly attuned to subtle signals. Friendships become more intense. Social status begins to matter more. Conflict often becomes indirect, not overt.

But most importantly, identity is forming;  rejection feels so very personal.  And this can be treacherous, especially if no one is guiding her through these moments.  At this age, friendship isn’t just companionship. It can feel like survival.  Psychologists who study girls in these years have been saying this for decades, including Lisa Damour, Rachel Simmons, and Rosalind Wiseman. Their work reminds us that girls are practicing and preparing for adulthood through their friendships; what relational aggression can look like and how it lands; and how early social structures emerge and embed in our girls.

So as mothers, one of the greatest gifts we can offer is not control,  but a compass.

Signs of True Friendship: Five Questions to Guide Your Tween Girl

Here are some questions you can use to equip her to make healthy friendship choices.

1. Can you be yourself with her?

Your daughter shouldn’t feel like she’s performing.
She shouldn’t feel like she has to shrink.
She shouldn’t feel like she has to pretend.
She should be able to easily breathe.
True belonging never demands self-erasure. 

2. Is she happy for your happiness?

A true friend celebrates her wins without competing. Joy isn’t something she withholds.

3. Does she leave room for repair?

Friendships include misunderstandings. Healthy friendships include repair. The Gottman Institute teaches that in strong relationships, repair matters more than perfection.
A true friend comes back.
She talks.
She tries again.

4. Do you feel fear of loss from her?  

Your daughter shouldn’t feel scared of losing her if she says no.
Friendship isn’t a test she has to keep passing.
Love does not threaten. 

5. Do you feel calm and at peace after time with her?   

A true friend leaves her feeling more grounded, not more anxious.

“Safe friends feel like lanterns… not storms”  --Madeleine Hewitt; Foxtale Forest

 

When Friendship Changes: Four Reminders for Your Tween Girl

Sometimes friendships don’t end with a fight. They end with a fade. And that can be just as devastating. No matter how much you know that the friend just wasn’t true, you must acknowledge and embrace your girl’s grief over the relationship’s end.

Lisa Damour reminds us that friendships shift as girls grow. And Damour also makes a key point ,for our daughters and for us: Some relationships simply cannot hold the weight of who she is becoming. The goal isn’t to protect her from every heartbreak.  It’s to help her recognize what real friendship feels like. While she may not understand this, you do.  So hug her tightly as your heart holds these truths.  

• Some friends are for a season. Some are for the long trail.
• We are not unlovable because a friendship is hard. We are growing.
• True friends don’t ask us to disappear in order to stay.
• They make space for us to become our truest selves.

At Finding Foxtale, we believe friendship is one of the first places girls learn how to belong, how to become themselves, and how to love themselves and each other.