Why can’t your daughter let go of her toxic best friend? In this episode, we explore the unique brain wiring that makes it difficult for girls to move on from unhealthy friendships. You’ll learn how to truly listen and support her without jumping into problem-solving mode, and uncover the secret to avoiding the emotional ‘hot potato’ game. Tune in to gain the tools that will guide your daughter through these emotional challenges with empathy and understanding.
For more information on girl’s emotions and friendships, read Dr. Jordan’s book, Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women: Guiding the Transformation of Adolescent Girls.
For more information on girl’s emotions and friendships, check out Dr. Jordan’s online parenting course, “Parenting girls: The challenges girls face today with their feelings and friends and what they need.”
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What Parents Can Do When You Hate Your Daughter’s Best Friend
I want you to know that I am talking to you. You, meaning any parent who’s sitting there reading, who’s had a daughter walk in the door after school, stomp around, slam the door, and start complaining and crabbing about her best friend being such a jerk. “She’s always saying this, and she’s always doing that, and she never this,” and they go off on this huge tangent.
I bet every one of you has heard that in some way, shape, or form, and your first impulse is to say, “You know what, I’ve never liked that girl. You’ve never liked her. She’s always been a problem. Why don’t you just move on? There are so many nice girls in your class,” and that is the exact wrong thing to do. I’m here to tell you in this episode why that is not the appropriate way to handle, or the best way to handle, that situation. I want you to understand why girls tend to want to hang on to their friendships, even when they’re not healthy. I want you to understand also what you can do as a parent to listen, empathize, and support so your daughters can figure out a way to handle their issues.
I also want to teach you, and this is going to be good. You’re going to like this. I’m going to teach you how to not play hot potato with your daughter’s emotions when it comes to their friendships. You’re going to like that one, so stick around for the rest of this whole episode to read that. I think when girls come home, and they’ve had a rough day with a friend, they’re doing what a lot of times girls also do in their journals or their diaries, they are exaggerating. “Nobody,” “She’s never,” “I hate her,” “Why does she always,” and they’re so angry, and they just need to get it out. What they’re saying isn’t necessarily always true. It’s their side. You haven’t heard from their friend, but most importantly, they’re just venting their emotions.
Venting Their Emotions
They’ve bottled them up all day. They can’t express those emotions in the hallways of school. They save it up, they walk in the door, and hopefully, you’re a safe person for them, and then they blah, they barf it all over us. Don’t always take it at face value, because, again, you’re only hearing a part of the story, and you’re hearing the worst case, the exaggerated version. I would just be a good sounding board for them. I’d be a good sounding board. Also, sometimes what happens is we may have heard a rumor about this girl in the past, that she acts a certain way, or she’s not a good girl, or she’s always in trouble, or she’s one of those racy kids.
This is especially for those of you who are reading who have a daughter who might be in middle school, seventh, eighth grade, when girls sometimes start to push the boundaries. You may have heard some rumors or some gossip about this girl, which makes you not like her even more. It’s hard then not to pile on and say, “Yeah, you know what, she’s always had some struggles at school, she’s always had a problem making friends, I don’t know why you even hang out with her.” It’s easy to go into mama bear and papa bear energy and try and fix and protect and solve their problem, and do not do that.
The female brain is wired differently than the male brain in some ways. One of the ways that we’re wired differently is how we handle stress. In the old days, we started talking in the 1950s about fight or flight. That’s when research was done. They found that most people, when they’re really stressed, will go into either fight or flight. For years, we said, “That’s how we all respond, fight or flight.”
The Female Brain
Someone several years ago, a woman researcher said, “I don’t always respond that way. A lot of the women I know don’t respond that way either.” She went back to those original studies. One of the things that she found was that all of the participants in the study were men. Yes, usually, men do respond to stress in that way with fight or flight, but women oftentimes don’t. What this researcher found, and I have found the same thing with the girls I work with, is when faced with stress, anxiety, or a stressful situation, a lot of times girls and women instead go into more of a tend and befriend mode. Instead of fighting off somebody or running away, they tend to like to connect. They like to connect with their friends when they’re stressed out. They want to talk about it. They want to form a sense of community because that is more supportive to them. It feels more supportive than fight or flight.
What happens for girls a lot of times is they don’t want to lose a friend. Since the dawn of womankind and mankind 150,000-ish years ago, it was true, and our brains know this, that if we’re in a group and we say something wrong or do something, and we get kicked out of the group, then we don’t survive. We need to have a sense of belonging in the group because that was protective. You get kicked out of the group, you lost the group, you died, which is why a lot of times girls will avoid losing a friend so much, because it feels like a death when you lose a friend.
It feels that way. We might argue, “It’s not that big a deal,” but it feels that way to them. It feels the same way as it did 150,000 years ago. It feels like a death, if I can say it any clearer, which is why sometimes they will put up with all kinds of stuff from people, disrespect, and bad behavior. They want to try and fix, repair, and mend the relationship, not get rid of it. I’m not suggesting that that’s always a healthy thing.
Sometimes girls do need to move on, but I’m telling you, when they come in, that may be why they resist, because their initial inclination is to tend and befriend, not to cut off, even though in our minds, that would be the easiest, best way to go. Remember that their brain wiring is setting them up to act that way.
Listen
What I would do instead of going right into the fix-it mode, cut-them-off mode, or the “there-are-so-many-nice-girls-in-your-class, why do you hang out with her?” mode, which is easy for us to do, especially men, because when emotions come at us, men tend to go right into problem-solving. There’s a part of our brain called the temporal parietal junction that, when our emotions start to rise, activates and wants to fix problems.
That’s not what your daughter needs in those moments. She needs someone to sit down with her and say, “Tell me about what happened.” Just listen without interrupting, listen without judging, listen without telling her that’s not really true. I would just listen. The best kind of listening, as we’ve talked about before on the show, is to mirror. “I’m hearing you say. It sounds like your friend. Is that right? Okay. Tell me more about that. I don’t understand.”
You just allow your daughter to unfold her story, and she will layer herself in the story until, at the end, she feels like, “You heard me. You got it. You understand.” That is the most important gift you can give your daughter when she’s having a problem with a friend, just to listen. Once you’ve heard her out, and she feels like you really get it, then I would let her know, “I get it. I understand. It makes sense why you might feel that way.”
Once she feels heard, then you can shift into, “What do you want to do about it?” I know it’s hard for you sometimes to let go of friends. It’s hard for a lot of us to do that. “What are you going to do this time?” Let her think about it. Let her problem-solve with you. Let her brainstorm with you about what she wants. She probably doesn’t know what she wants yet. She might need to let go of some more emotion. She might need a little bit more time and space. She might need to do some journaling about her thoughts until she gets clear about, “This is what I want to do.”
Sometimes, it helps if you do some role-playing. If she decides, “I do want to set a boundary with her. I don’t want to lose her as a friend,” it might be she needs to set a boundary and say, “I’m done with you,” but you can role-play that and tell your daughter, “I’ll be your friend. You be you and show me how you would talk to her.” In my experience of doing role-playing with girls at summer camps and weekend retreats for 34 years, most of the time they come across as being way too wimpy. They’re not clear, the tone of voice, their body language. They need some feedback about how to come across in a way that’s kind but firm. Kind, firm, and clear so that what they’re communicating is communicated in the way that they want it to be communicated.
Do Not Play Hot Potato
Give her some practice if she’s willing to do that. When she goes and has a conversation with her friend, I think she’ll do a better job of letting her know what she wants and what she needs. Brainstorm, do some role-playing, and help her figure out what it is that she wants to do. What you don’t want to do, this is really interesting, what you don’t want to do is play hot potato with her emotions. Let me describe what this is like.
I bet many of you who are listening to this and looking at me on the screen, I bet many of you have done this. Your daughter comes in, and she word vomits, and she’s so angry, and she’s frustrated, “This girl, and she never, and she’s always, I hate her. I don’t want to ever see her again.” We’re trying to listen. We take on some of those emotions, then our daughter goes upstairs, and she’s like, “I feel better.”
She may even go to school the next day, or even before school, she may call her friend, and they work it out, or she goes to school the next day, and they talk, and they say, “I’m so sorry, I was just kidding. I know I was bad,” and then they hug, they make up, and so they’re good. But we’re left holding the bag of hate, anger, and frustration. We’re left holding the hot potato. It’s hard then for us because we always have that in the back of our minds.
Anytime our daughter brings up that girl’s name, when we see her at the pickup line at school, or when we see her at functions, we’re still holding on to this stuff that our daughter has let go of. If she dumps it on you and you listen, I would listen. I would be a container for that. Once your daughter walks off, I would let go of that stuff yourself. Maybe you need to journal. Maybe you need to talk to someone, just get it out and say, “Okay, I don’t want to carry this because she’s probably already solved the problem. I want to let go of this. I don’t want to hold that against that kid or keep all that anger inside of myself.”
Your daughter is wired to tend and befriend. If your initial inclination is just to cut her off, then I would rethink that because that’s not her first inclination. I would listen. I would ask her what she wants to do. I would empathize. I would maybe even share a story from your past when you had a problem with a friend that was similar.
Let her know how hard it was for you to deal with that problem. Let her know what you did to handle it, and then brainstorm with her, maybe even doing some role-playing, to help her figure out what she wants to do and practice setting a boundary and articulating to her friend what she wants. For sure, let go of the hot potato so you’re not left with all this stuff. It’s not easy to do what I’m describing because our daughters will bring a lot of emotion. Plus, this is the last piece I want to give you. Sometimes, they will trigger an old memory of ours.
It’s not just your daughter’s stuff that’s going on that causes you to feel a little frustrated. All of a sudden, you may have had a problem with a friend back in grade school, middle school, high school, or even as an adult. All those old emotions get triggered, especially if you did not resolve that issue. You’ve been holding on to your hot potato for years, and so when our daughter brings her stuff, it triggers ours. It’s important you don’t add your emotions from your experience to theirs.
It's important you don't add your emotions from your experience to your daughters’. Share on XThey have more than enough to deal with, which is their friend, their emotions, and what they want to do, much less having to deal with mom or dad’s emotions and mom and dad’s stories. It’s okay to tell the stories. It’s for the purpose of saying, “I get it. I understand. I’ve been there.” I think that can be important. Don’t add your emotions and your baggage, if you will, to their plate, which oftentimes is already overfull.
What can you do if your daughter comes in and she’s upset and she hates her friend, and she’s also upset and wants to move on? Let your daughter have her space, her life. Listen, empathize, and remind yourself that her first tendency is probably going to be to tend and befriend, and you can support that. There may come a time when it becomes more abusive, and then your daughter might need some help. I see a lot of girls in my counseling practice who need somebody to talk to because they’re trying to make sense of what’s going on. That sometimes can be helpful, someone other than mom and dad, but you can also try and be that person who helps them to get through, “What do I really want?”
If you do that, what ends up happening, no matter what happens to the friendship, is your daughter has another building block of trust with you. They know you see them. They know you understand and you’re there for them. I want you to remain an influence in your daughter’s life through the teen years and forever. When you can handle a situation like this in the way I’ve been talking about, I think you’re making it much easier for them to feel safe and comfortable bouncing things off of you and talking to you about things that are really important.
If you think this was a valuable conversation, then listen to this one with your daughter. I think she would probably have a lot to say. She might tell you that sometimes you do what I suggest a lot of parents do at first, and then you can have a discussion about how you don’t want to do that anymore. If you start to get too critical or involved, tell your daughter, “You have my permission to set a boundary with me and just say, ‘Mom, I want you to just listen,’ or ‘Dad, please don’t go into problem-solving. I just want to be heard.’” Give them permission to do that. I think that would be helpful for you as a reminder to not play hot potato, not to solve it for them, and to let this be a learning experience for your daughter.
I’ll be back here with you with a brand-new topic, a new episode. Go to the website www.DrTimJordan.com for more information about all the retreats and summer camps I run because those are really valuable places for girls to learn skills to handle their relationships. They’re all struggling at different times, so they all need some help. They need some reinforcement. They need support, and they need tools. Thanks so much for stopping by. I’ll see you back here.
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