Ciara recently found out that one of her so-called friends hates her.
And then another “friend” said that she hated her too.
As a mother, I have had many feelings about this.
My first instinct was to find these girls, sit them down, and give them many reasons why they shouldn’t hate anyone, let alone my daughter who is fantastic.
But I realized that would just embarrass my daughter, and probably make those other girls hate her even more.
My next idea was to contact their mothers, and have a sit down meeting with everyone and hash this whole thing out (much like a meeting of the heads of the families in the Godfather).
But this is not a practical idea either.
The next idea that comes into my head is that maybe my daughter has done something that has created this kind of hate. Maybe she was mean to them, or perhaps rude in some way. I have seen some of the looks she gives me. If she were to look at the friends this way, then I could totally understand why this happened. But I can’t immediately jump to attack her and blame her for this. That would just destroy her. I did gently probe to see if she knows why they don’t like her, and she seems pretty clueless.
So then what options am I left with?
We talked about how her true friends won’t do this, that if they have a problem with something she has done, then they will (hopefully) seek her out to talk about it before just writing her off completely.
We talked about all the other friends she has. I told her that there is always going to be someone out there that doesn’t like her. There were girls who didn’t like me when I was her age, but it turned out to be so insignificant that I can’t even remember their names. I also told her that one day she would grow up and move away from all these people, and that only the truly important ones would stay in her life.
I am still amazed at how much this has hurt me. How dare some one not like my daughter! I try to tell myself the same things I told her, but the over-protective Tigress inside is raging and ready to defend and destroy.
And I know this is only the beginning. We have many more years of this ahead of us.
I need to pace myself.
Abibliophobic (and Proud) 