How to Handle Teen Girl Friendship Drama: A Parent’s Guide to Healthy Relationships

Nov 26, 2024

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In this episode, Dr. Cam sits down with Dr. Fiona Ghiglione to dive into the complex world of teen girl friendships. They discuss the challenges of peer pressure, loneliness, and relational aggression, as well as how parents can help their daughters build healthy, lasting relationships. Dr. Ghiglione shares practical strategies for navigating friendship drama, understanding the "seasons" of friendships, and teaching girls to handle social struggles with confidence. The episode also explores the impact of social media on teen friendships and why parents should focus on empowerment over rescue.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE

Why teen girl friendships can be so challenging
How to help your daughter navigate friendship drama without taking over
The impact of relational aggression and social media on teen friendships
How to recognize the "seasons" of friendships and support your teen through them
Practical strategies to build your daughter’s confidence and resilience in friendships

5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR PARENTS OF TEENS

Teen friendships can be tough. Many girls struggle with peer pressure, loneliness, and relational aggression.
Middle school is peak friendship drama. Understanding these challenges helps parents guide their daughters effectively.
Friendships evolve over time. Teaching your teen about the different “seasons” of friendships can help them navigate change.
Create a safe space for open conversations. Encourage your daughter to express her feelings without immediately jumping in to fix problems.
Empower, don’t rescue. Equip your teen with tools to handle conflict, rather than solving issues for them.

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RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Free Resource: Download 10 Mindful Practices for Preteens PDF
Exclusive Offer: Get €20 off your first mentoring session by emailing Fiona directly at fiona@motheringgirls.com

EPISODE CHAPTERS

00:00 Navigating the Challenges of Teen Friendships
03:59 Understanding the Dynamics of Friendship Drama
09:59 The Seasons of Friendships: Navigating Mean Behavior
20:06 Supporting Our Daughters Through Friendship Struggles
27:59 Empowering Girls to Build Healthy Relationships

CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST: Dr. Fiona Ghiglione

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST: Dr. Cam Caswell

THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Cam (00:02)

Navigating friendships can be really challenging for our teen girls, right? As parents, it's tough to watch them struggle with feelings of loneliness, peer pressure, and the occasional friend drama or a lot of friend drama. All we want is for our daughters to feel happy, connected, and surrounded by friends who truly support them. I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Fiona Giglione, an assistant professor, educator, and the founder of Mothering Girls.

Fiona specializes in coaching girls on building friendships, boosting self-confidence, and navigating the complexities of social media too. In our conversation today, we're going to dive into some effective strategies to help empower our daughters to build meaningful friendships, handle toxic friendships, and boost their confidence as a friend. Welcome Dr. Fiona, how are you?

Fiona (00:50)

Very good. Thank you for inviting me today. It's wonderful to be here.

Dr. Cam (00:54)

Absolutely. So Dr. Fiona, first start with how did you, what inspired you to start mothering girls?

Fiona (01:02)

Well, my journey with mother and girls really started through my own experience raising my own girls. And there's one specific experience I had when my eldest daughter was nine and my youngest daughter was five. I was living in Singapore at the time and I just began noticing that the commentary and the way that people were interacting with our girls, my daughters and also their friends started changing quite radically. know, when they were five and six and they were running around in their frozen dresses, people's commentaries would be, aren't they wonderful? You know, I love her confidence and her spark or how wonderful is it to have girls? And I just found that when the girls started kind of edging towards the preteen years, so we kind of, eight, nine, sure, they had a bit more sass, you know.

But the commentary, just, was very aware of what people were saying and how it was changing. It was, it was kind of becoming more, you know, wait until she's in the teen years or, you know, girls are really emotional and, know, and I was hearing from boy moms saying, you know, I'm glad, glad I don't have boys, you know. And as a research psychologist, I suppose, like I,

I couldn't stop thinking about this. couldn't stop and wonder two questions in particular I had in my head. Like the first one was, what is this doing to our girls? Like our girls were hearing this, know, mom's talk in this way. And I'm thinking, what messages are they receiving from this? You know, about what it is to be a girl heading into these years, like you know what are the teen years going to be like, but also just their emotions, you know, is it safe to, you know, explore my emotions, say my emotions or not? Anyway, that was the first question. And then the second question that kept on my mind was, if we take this fear based approach, if we're really going into these years afraid and thinking they're going to be the worst, what's that doing to our relationship with our girls? I mean, we know about what happens in the prefrontal cortex or in our brains in general, when we are under, you know, a fear response, we close off, we change the way that we change what we're paying attention to. We change, you know, how we're feeling about each other and we're we're less curious. So I guess I just started leaning into this. started researching a little bit more and thinking about it a bit more and thinking we need a different way. We definitely needed a different narrative, but I wanted to be able to maybe fill the gap a little bit and help parents do it a bit differently and help, you know, kind of empower the girls. Yeah.

Dr. Cam (03:50)

I love that. that's one thing too, Dr. Fiona, that I will talk about too, is that when we go into the teen years with this preconceived notion of what those teen years are going to be like, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we approach it already without understanding, we approach it with assumption, and it goes way south very quickly. So I love that you are out there correcting that assumption, changing that story so we don't approach it from that perspective and we give our girls a chance. That's amazing. So let's, today we really want to talk about friendships because I know this particularly is difficult for teen, tween and teen girls, especially middle school. Middle school is like friendship hell. Let's just put it real, right? This is where all the friendship drama comes. There's a lot of friendship, like emotional bullying.

Fiona (04:31)

Yeah, absolutely. 100%.

Dr. Cam (04:58)

My daughter personally went through a lot of drama and teen. She's 18. She's still traumatized by the experience of friendships and going bad. So first explain to us, why do friendships become so difficult at this age for girls?

Fiona (05:05)

If we look at the research, there are a few things that we're seeing, okay. We're seeing, and some of them are quite concerning trends, I would have to say. We're seeing increases in relational aggression. We're seeing increases in a kind of narcissism, self-centeredness, increases in loneliness, and decreases in empathy, okay. So, when you put this all together and you put it in alongside the rise of technology, it makes for a very curious picture as to like, what is going on with our girls? And girls in general, like, they place a lot of emphasis on friendships. It's very important for them. And I think that there's all of that happening, but then there's also, when I'm talking to girls directly, girls want closer friendships. They want less drama. It's not like they want, you know, they're creating this because it's fun. So there's these two things happening in parallel. They want closer friendship, they want support, they want help, and they also want a good relationship with parents as well.

It's hard to unpack exactly why this is happening. think technology is playing a big factor in it, in the way that it's changing relationships and the way that we communicate. But yeah, I guess alongside the challenges that we're facing, we also have girls who are willing to do it differently if they have the guidance and the support.

Dr. Cam (06:56)

At this age too, the relationships become a lot more complex, right? It's no longer like, you like this toy and I like this toy, so we must be friends. The dynamics become much deeper and kids are trying to figure out. And as you mentioned, the need to belong becomes extremely important at this age. So making friends, basically kids look at them, their value based on do other people like me? And so when people, when they're struggling to make friends, they're getting this message, I'm not that likable. And so they kind of get deeper. But then there's also the kids. So we've got self-esteem issues there, but then we've got the kids, particularly the girls that are mean. Where does this meanness come from and this need to kind of gang up on other girls or to emotionally shut them out sometimes. Where does that come from?

Fiona (07:54)

I just wanted to stop for a second and just say it is such a difficult thing to watch your child go through this. And heartbreaking almost to have girls come home and say things like, you know, I was alone on the playground today or, you know, my friends created a WhatsApp group and they left me, so just being able to hear this is so, so hard for us as parents to know how to help. And we are shocked as to like why girls are so mean. And it can, you know, obviously be amplified by the fact that, you know, if we've had meanness when we were younger, you know, that can be even more difficult for us. So, but I'm a very big believer that friendships in middle school and high school are also an amazing training ground for relationships in life. Okay. And we know that in life, there are plenty of mean people and there are plenty of people who do mean things, right? And so one of the ways that I try to explain it to the families that I work with is that friendships have different seasons. And if we are to help our girls understand why people doing these different things, understand the behaviors that might come up. And also know how to deal with them. We need to have specific nuanced tools for different parts of different seasons that they're gonna go through and they're gonna face. And mean behavior is one of those. You can understand like mean behavior is winter. Winter is where there's storms and serious challenges and so we need to be able to really give girls tools to be able to deal with mean behavior. And so, know, mean behavior is relational aggression. We know that girls do that a lot more than boys leaving, you know, leaving other girls out gossip, you know, and bullying, you know, bullying falls under this winter category of like really toxic behavior of, you know, on purpose power differential repetitive kind of behaviours.

Dr. Cam (10:19)

One of the things I see is that bullying almost comes from the same place of the needing to belong because it is a way when you join forces with other people to make this other person the scapegoat, you're connecting with them. So it's an unhealthy way to connect because someone gets, but the underlying need is exactly the same, which is why it's very hard to stop that because they're getting their needs filled by connecting with somebody. So I love this idea of the different weathers and talking to our kids about our friendships are going to go through different seasons. Help us understand how to help our kids, especially when, let's talk about the different seasons. So we're going through a season where all of a sudden it feels like your friends are turning against you. You're like, they were my friend.

Fiona (10:51)

100%.

Dr. Cam (11:13)

Now someone else came into the dynamic and is taking them away or they're saying mean things to me. How do we help our girls address that? That's a hard one for parents too because we're like, I just want to fix it.

Fiona (11:26)

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think the first thing to really delve into is to inquire, right? We need to spend some serious time with our girls inquiring, okay, tell me what did that look like? What was it like at lunchtime? What did you do? What did your friends do? And trying to unpack instead, rather than jumping in and judging and, that's it, I'm gonna, mama bear I'm going to fix this problem for you. We want to inquire first. We want to get a good picture of what's going on, you know, and in part of that picture, we also want to understand like what's going on for our daughter as well, you know. And then of course, you know, we want to empathise with her and really help her understand that if she's feeling left out and she, you know, she's feeling sad, like that is a normal reaction to that kind of behaviour. You know, I would feel that way and sitting with that for a while, you know, so that she has that kind of, she has that person that really is helping her process it in a different way, right? But I think a lot of like, it depends on how toxic, what the toxicity is, right? I mean, I think there's two ways that I teach girls that they can deal with toxic behavior. First one is like a quick comeback, you know, having those things that we can say to other girls who are doing things on purpose, you know, quick comeback like, Whoa, that was harsh. Being able to get out of the situation if they need and giving themselves permission to be able to leave. And obviously if things are extreme, girls, and this is part of educating around winter is that those red flags, if you see those red flags, this is time where you need help. You need to get someone to come in and help you with these things.

When we're looking at some of the other seasons like, know, friendship conflicts, there is a difference between friendship conflicts. Yeah. And they need to, if they understand what autumn is and they understand what winter is, you know, friendship conflicts will happen because we're complex human beings and we like, we will have different interests and we will have different opinions. And, know, these things come up a lot in with girls, right? You know, one wants to play this one wants to play that or you know, misinterpretation of things that they've said at school. And so it is also really important for our girls to be able to learn to kind of step away and think about that. Like, you know, take five is a teacher, a lot of the girls that I work with just take five, leave the situation if you can think about this, if it's not an urgent situation, if it's not a dangerous situation, everything can wait five minutes or overnight even before you respond. And to really be able to like, you know, to think about what did you want? What did she want? You know, what is going on here? Like what is the conflict about and trying to help girls unpack that, you know? Yeah. And I think the interesting thing is that like, you know, they're confused. That's where the relationship with us comes in. Right? Like we need to be building foundations early in the preteens that our girls feel comfortable coming to us. They feel like it's a safe space. They're not going to be judged, that they're not going to be burdened with solutions from us, that they can come and they can process these things and find solutions in the vicinity of like us.

Dr. Cam (14:51)

I think the big thing I see too is when we're going through this, and I like the quick comebacks. I saw an interview with Christine Chenoweth the other day and she learned to just say, I'm going to pray for you. When people said nasty things, she would just reply, well, I will pray for you. And it just kind of threw people off because it was like, But I think also understanding how we can help support our kids, having that connection with them so that they learn not to create this as part of their identity as I'm not a good friend or I'm not likable and change it to I'm a good friend, I'm likable, they're not the right person for me. How do we help them distinguish that so they don't create this low self-esteem because they can't keep some of these toxic friendships?

Fiona (15:45)

I think that's where, it's so important for us as parents to keep budding new connections, like, and give them as many friendship experiences as possible. Because if you think about it, like if that's the only experience of relating, right. And that's, and it's negative and that's all they're getting, then of course it's easy to see that you're the generalization that you're going to be making is that there's something wrong with me. Now, if you've got plenty of different friendship groups and in some of those groups they celebrate you and they lift you up and they think you're amazing and then in other groups not so much. Then you can start to generalise, okay hold on, wait, but if I'm okay there then it couldn't be me because you've got these other experiences and I feel like sometimes it goes wrong because we put so much emphasis on this one best friend or this group of friends. And our girls, you know, don't have that diversity of experience. mean, it's also good for them to just learn how to relate to different people, right? In different settings and have that experience as well. And it's doing great things for their brain as well.

Dr. Cam (17:07)

It's very important to do that. know, I mean, like I said, my daughter had so much trauma in a certain friendship group in middle school, but what she came out of was, how do I recognize a good friend from a not good friend? And so her friendships now are incredible. It's a small group and it's people that support her for her. And so she was able to come through that getting a very important skill and I think it's helping our kids learn that. One thing I think parents come from though and we fear a little bit is when we see our kids struggling with friendships, that taps into our fear. Like, how is my kid not going to be liked? What do I need to do? And we start focusing very hard on making them more likable to people. Like, how do I fix my kid to be more likable? I've seen this, you know, a lot. Well, their behavior needs to change. Is that okay? Should we be doing that or what message is that sending to our kids?

Fiona (18:14)

Yeah, I tried really hard to stray away from the whole likeability, you know, concept. But what I do talk to girls a lot about is, you know, and this happens, what I find is girls are often very lonely, even if they're in friendship, sometimes they feel this loneliness, right? And so I ask them when, because they want more connection. So when do you feel the most connected? And when do you feel the least connected? what's happening and we unpack that a little bit. So instead of focusing on, on likability, focusing on quality, the quality of the relationship of like, of what does it give her? How does she feel, you know, and helping her, it's almost, it's a little bit of like of an experiment really. It's like helping her think about this on a regular basis means that, you know, sometimes my daughter will come home and she said today, mom, I had a great friendship day because you know, my friend, you know, said something nice to me or whatever. And I'd say, well, you know, that sounds like you really felt like you were connected in that moment. And over time we unpack like those. And so she'll look for that more, you know, if she feels more connected when she's talking about something that she really loves with a friend, you know, or they're doing something specific together, then you, can look for more of those kinds of moments. And that's where you see your girls light up and have that spark, you know, in friendships. and then she'll stay away from the red flag, the things that don't connect her. there's a whole, we could have a whole talk on like technology and friendships. But friendship, there's so much to unpack about connections online. And I talked to my daughter about how did you feel when you were talking to your friends online? How do you feel when you're at face-to-face doing things face-to-face? There's a really different feeling that you get when you're speaking in these different apps or whatever versus having real life connections. So I think it's important to focus on that for the girls.

Dr. Cam (20:16)

There's so many pieces to this. Can we do a quick kind of step by step? Your daughter comes home, she's really upset, she's having friend drama, her friends are being mean. What do parents do in that moment?

Fiona (20:37)

I think the first thing to do is to go get a tea and to take her to a spot that she feels comfortable in and to just give her time to talk about it. No advice, no, you know, we can ask questions, but just let her talk and get it out and be a safe space for that. you know, I feel like it's really important for her to express all of that emotion and get it all out, but I think sometimes there's a point at which you can, there can be co-rumination, right? Like you're talking about it so much that you're not, there's, there's, not going anywhere. So I think at some stage it's good to kind of pivot to what would you like to do about this? You know, what can we, what's in your control? What, let's think about some things that you could do. Some things you can say, do you need extra support? You know, let's make a plan kind of thing together.

Dr. Cam (21:34)

Nothing in that was, let's fix this, let's go yell at the other parents, let's go make sure that you get to be friends. Like there's no pressure to have to have friends. And I think that's one of the things I see a lot, that parents get so worried if their kids are struggling with friends, that it becomes more about how do I get my kid to have friends rather than how do I help my kid just feel okay as they are right now. And once they feel confident, making friends is a lot easier, but feeling the pressure to make friends when you're not feeling good about yourself just makes you feel worse about yourself. So I love that it's just, just let them talk, validate what they're feeling, let them go through it. And then what's in your control. that's spot on perfect. I love it.

Fiona (22:12)

100%. What is really interesting with the, you know, what you were saying about jumping in and calling friends, you know, the parents of the friends which happened, you know, we want to do, but what can happen, and it's happened with me many times with my girls, is that that same friend, you know, can move into a different season with our daughters and they become best friends, you know, and they work it out on their own or, know, and so this little girl that like, you know, was doing all these main things and then she's coming over to my house and spending like afternoons at my house and I see a totally different side to her. So I feel like if we jump in too soon, she misses the learning that comes from it, but also you never know what's gonna happen with these friendships and these girls, like they're just learning.

Dr. Cam (23:11)

It is such a good point. Like, we can't take sides. We can't beat up the other girl because you're right, they may become friends and then that's all. But we also don't want to sit there and just take our kid's side. Like, we don't want to make sure we take the other kid's side too and be like, well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And take the kid's perspective that is being mean to our kid or is pushing them away because then our kid doesn't feel like we're on their side. No sides are taken. We're just listening.

Very important, yeah. I think we get tempted to talk about, and I've even done this, like kind of put the other person down going, well, they don't deserve you as a friend, but that is not a good move either. Tempting.

Fiona (23:54)

Yeah, it's really complex. you know, and there are a lot of ands. I talked to the girls about this as well. you know, what are you feeling? And what is she feeling? And sometimes it's even what are you feeling? And she will say sad and angry and kind of, you know, like there's so much complexity. It just goes on and on. And so I think it's important to see that it is more than just what she's feeling. It's what other girl's feeling it's what the context is you know so there's a lot of ends there to be able to explore as well with her yeah.

Dr. Cam (24:25)

That's a great way to do it because it is important for them to look at the other side because it's easy to just get stuck. But we can do it the way you're saying it is a way to do it without taking sides. It's just helping them dig a little bit deeper. So what have we missed? I wanted to ask you. So what happens if your kid, your daughter is the one being mean to somebody else? How do we address that?

Fiona (24:54)

Well, I think that that can be very difficult because sometimes we don't see that. And so where do we get the information from? So if it's something that, you know, a parent, a teacher has observed, I think then then we have some good data to be able to go to and say, look, this is this seems to be what's happening. Tell me about this. Like what happened? And I think we always need to give our girls the opportunity to be able to speak for themselves because it's very easy to misinterpret. And also where's the learning in it, right? We want our girls to be able to not feel judged and shamed about the whole thing, but we wanna understand like, you know, what was going on so that we can then help prevent it in the future. So always starting obviously with just asking her about it. And I think it's the same kind of process. It's you've got to want it. You want to sit with the other emotions. Maybe she was feeling angry, you know, and then, and you know, talking about what she did and how effective that was in getting what she wanted. and then being able to unpack, like, what would you do differently? You know? but you know, sometimes if I guess, if it's repetitive, you want to get some professional help to be able to get help her kind of break that habit and dig a bit deeper as to what's going on..

Dr. Cam (26:13)

It's so what you were saying is so important. It's about getting to the why of why they're doing it rather than the assumption of, my gosh, my kid is becoming a bully and bad kid. And now I'm going to be just show them my disappointment in that behavior and try to punish them because they need to stop that behavior. And we're not addressing what's actually going on underneath. So we could be actually piling more on the very thing that's making them feel like they need to bully and making it worse rather than making it better. So I love that we're giving them the benefit of the doubt and understanding what is this coping mechanism or what is the purpose of doing this? What are they getting from it? Because it may be a sense of belonging, right?

Fiona (26:45)

Absolutely. And I think, but I also think that, you know, these kinds of behaviors sometimes come, these impulsive behaviors come from a sense of not being able to regulate your emotion, right? Like you can feel really scary, especially to an eight or a nine year old, to have this huge angry emotion to something that's happened to them, right? And they don't know where to take that, what to do with that. And that's why I think I'm such a big advocate for, know, mindfulness in terms of being able to give them the tools to be able to bring their nervous system back into a parasympathetic kind of state so that they then have the capacity to be able to think clearly in these situations. But yeah, it's tough.

Dr. Cam (27:39)

That's really important. So of all that we've talked about, what is the big action item or takeaway that parents need to have from this to help their daughters navigate their tricky friendships?

Fiona (27:59)

Look, I think that don't underestimate how important you are as a parent, like, and how much role overall you're going to play in being able to guide them to, have healthy relationships, not just friendships, but relationships down the track. Like we are coaching them through this. are like, we are a secure base and we don't want to join the storm. want to like, just, we want them to come to us and ground them and help them learn something really valuable from that. Right.

So all of these things are important teaching moments. And I think that like we shouldn't underestimate just how important we are and how much the girls want us to come to us to be able to talk to us about these things. So we need to be really be showing them from early that it is safe, it's okay. And that we are here to kind of, know, give them the tools that they need, suppose. Yeah.

Dr. Cam (28:53)

Don't join the storm. That's awesome. That's exactly it. Don't join the storm. Be the center. Be the part that helps outside. Calm the storm. Let them be the calming space for them to calm their storm. Love that. Amazing. Dr. Fiona, where can people find you?

Fiona (28:56)

Don't join the storm. You can find me on Instagram at motheringgirls and I think, will you share my website? Yeah.

Dr. Cam (29:20)

I will put all the links in the show notes for sure. Thank you.

Fiona (29:23)

Yeah, and I have a friendship journal that kind of guides girls through the different stages of friendship. So it has some tools, has some tips, and lots of fillable pages so that they can reflect on their own friendships along the way.

Dr. Cam (29:28)

That's fantastic. I will definitely include that link too. It sounds like a really great tool. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Fiona. Appreciate it.

Fiona (29:48)

You're welcome. Thank you for having me. It's been wonderful.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Parenting Teens with Dr. Cam Podcast is your go-to resource for navigating the challenges of raising teenagers. Hosted by Dr. Cam Caswell, an adolescent psychologist and certified parenting coach, this podcast offers practical parenting strategies, expert advice, and real-world insights to help you build a stronger relationship with your teen and support their emotional growth. Whether you're struggling with teenage behavior or looking to improve communication, each episode provides actionable tips to make parenting teens easier and more rewarding.

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