The truth about adolescent girls and friendships? From the moment your daughter forms a friend group, she’ll be worried about being included. Is there a plan this weekend? Who is going home together after school? Why are so-and-so together and we weren’t invited?
Inclusion is important for many reasons, and for a tween girl, it’s everything. The main reason is simply this: being left out hurts. It hurts her, it hurts to see her hurt, and it probably hurts your inner child, too.
But as our girls get older, they start to realize something important: being included is not the same thing as being considered. One of these can completely destroy her confidence. Here’s what I mean by that:
Your daughter gets added to a group chat where a weekend plan has been discussed, decided, and finalized. She enters the chat and immediately feels like an afterthought once she realizes that she wasn’t part of the original plan, she was simply included in it later - likely after said, “Wait, what about ….?”
There are way too many moms who only care if their daughters are included, even if it means they were, in fact, an afterthought, and trust me - you don’t want to be that mom.
So here’s what you need to teach her, and quite possibly, yourself as lack of consideration will begin to shape the future of her friendships…
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