Middle school woes
Mom to a 12 almost 13 year old daughter who is really struggling with maintaining solid friendships in middle school. Any advice navigating this is appreciated. Any other parents dealing with this?
To simplify: since elementary school my daughter has primarily ran in the same friend group where the majority of her friends are more so acquaintances, with maybe one solid friend here and there. The last couple of years though, this friend group has become very mean girlish and if my daughter falls out with one girl the whole group starts to ostracize her. I’ve prayed for her to make at least one solid friend she can lean on and do stuff with outside of school but that is becoming more unrealistic. She communicates to me that she’s often alone in group activities at school and has sat alone at lunch multiple times. I encourage her to make new friends and she complains that it’s hard because everyone already has their “group”. I can tell she is hurting and lonely but she shuts down when we try to think of solutions. Hate to see my baby struggling because by her age I did have a solid group of friends in and outside of school. Shes in sports and other activities but again no solid friendships and that worries me.
How can I help her?