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Navigating relationships

Parenting: just when you've figured out how to do it (somewhat) it's time to start afresh with a new thing.

Well the new thing with the 5.5 year old is navigating relationships. A few weeks ago, at forest school, one of her friends refused to play with her because N was with another friend: "You're her friend now, so I'm not your friend any more!" - N was distraught. She came to me crying that her friend didn't love her any more, and she couldn't understand why!

They're all at that same age of course, and are all trying to figure out how friendships work.

There have been other incidents, sometimes even merely perceived slights setting N off in a spin - yesterday at a friend's house, the friend's dad asked N not to eat food in the lounge and the next thing we knew she was curled up into a corner, crying that he didn't like her!

It's a tough one for me to handle well. On the one hand I want to affirm her feelings, which are very real to her, but on the other hand she sometimes seems to be overly dramatic, as if fishing for a reaction... and I don't want to feed this overreaction with too much of a response every time.


Of course, she gives as well as she gets: I've heard her tell her brother that she wouldn't be his sister any more if he didn't do what she wanted (he seems completely unbothered by the threat), even the dog was told he would no longer be her dog! So I think what she's getting her head around is that all relationships aren't constant, some start and then finish.

It's an interesting phase, if baffling for me to know how to respond in each situation!

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