• Talk to your daughter about friendships and conflicts. Let her know that conflict and changes in friendships are normal. Explain that conflicts do not mean a friendship is over. Tell her that friendships sometimes end naturally. Don’t let her or yourself mistakenly interpret all rejection as relational aggression.

• Listen to your daughter. Name and validate her feelings, especially the “messy” ones such as jealousy and anger.

• Help your daughter to see others’ perspectives and motivations. Suggest possible reasons for other girls’ behavior, but don’t explain away cruelty.

• Tell your daughter about your own experiences with friendships and conflicts and how you dealt with them.

• Model appropriate ways to express anger and resolve conflicts, including conflicts between you and her.

• Teach your daughter to be assertive, to speak up and express her feelings in all relationships, starting with family relationships. But prepare her for the sometimes unpleasant consequences of being assertive.

• Encourage and role play with your daughter how to talk directly to a friend about a problem.

• Distinguish for your daughter the difference between being “nice” and being a doormat. Make sure she does not feel compelled to stay in friendships that are routinely hurtful and one-sided just to “be nice.”

• Realize that forbidding your daughter to be friends with someone may backfire.

• Respect your daughter’s right to make mistakes. She cannot always be protected from hurt feelings. Resist the impulse to solve all of her problems for her.

• Avoid games, toys, TV/movies and web sites that reinforce gender-stereotyped messages about girls’ behavior and help your daughter think critically about these messages.

• Discourage your daughter from getting involved as messengers or as allies, or from being a messenger.

• Explain to your daughter why it is best for her to stay out of others’ conflicts unless she is standing up for a victim of relational aggression. But prepare her for the consequences of getting involved.

•Never confront the other child, and be wary of confronting the child’s parent.

• Monitor phone calls, e-mails, instant messages and text messages, and sleepovers!

• Provide many opportunities for your daughter to be involved with girls from different groups so has a wide base for friendships.

• Make sure your child has a chance to develop her skills and talents so her self-esteem is not tied solely to who her friends are or what clique she’s in.

• Do not own your daughter’s conflicts or react more intensely to events that she is. These disproportionate responses confuse children. “Check your baggage.” *Rosalind Wiseman

• Notify the school if your daughter is a victim of relational aggression at school.

• Seek counseling support if you are concerned about your daughter’s well-being.

• Seek counseling support if you suspect your daughter is a perpetrator of relational aggression.

Ó2007 by Catherine Mallam 

All Rights Reserved