How to navigate girl friendships

Being friends with different groups can be complicated. Here's how to help your daughter manage friendships.

by: The GreatSchools Editorial Team

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s Robin Stern gives tips on how to talk to your daughter about friendships.

Learn more:

Watch a fifth grader talk about her friendship dilemmas in Girl friendships: Through a child’s eyes.
Robin Stern offers advice on talking to your daughter when she feels like her friends are not being nice.
One mom’s anxiety about her daughter’s friendships turns her into a spy. Read her story.
Debunking the myth of the BFF explains what your daughter needs to know about friendships and her part in them.

Video transcript:

“I think it’s really important to encourage your daughter to think for herself. In a situation where there are several groups of friends, there might be a lot of tension that she’s experiencing, or a lot of tension she comes to you with, or anxiety – or feeling like she doesn’t know where to be. Uncertainty, because people are pulling on her, in a lot of different directions, and offering the space to sit with her and help her think through what does she think about that? When somebody’s saying “Well you can’t do anything but be with me” or “No, you have to be here with me”. What are her thoughts about that? What are her feelings? Windows to having more conversations. Also, offering your own observations about your own life, and what you’ve seen among people in the world, that you can have more than one friend, that you can belong to more than one group. That there are wonderful things about knowing people in different groups. And asking her to talk to you, about what are those positive things she gets from each one of those friends.”

About the author

The GreatSchools Editorial Team

GreatSchools.org is a national nonprofit with a mission to help every child obtain a high-quality education that values their unique abilities, identities, and aspirations. We believe in the power of research-backed, actionable information to empower parents, family members, and educators to help make this happen. For 25 years, the GreatSchools Editorial Team has been working to make the latest, most important, and most actionable research in education, learning, and child development accessible and actionable for parents through articles, videos, podcasts, hands-on learning resources, email and text messaging programs, and more. Our team consists of journalists, researchers, academics, former teachers and education leaders — most of whom are also dedicated parents and family members — who not only research, fact check, and write or produce this information, but who use it in our daily lives as well. We welcome your feedback at editorial@greatschools.org.