Friendship

My daughter Clancy is ten, gets along with pretty much anyone but rarely wants to be with someone else more than she wants to be by herself. Until about 6 months ago when she found a girl she really likes.

The object of her affection makes Clancy laugh and feel happy. They are in the same class, live close to one another and recently they spent 48 hours together without incident. This girl's world does not revolve around Clancy, but Clancy’s world does - did - revolve around her pal until last week when she realized that love is never a perfect balance. A necessary lesson.

Clancy’s pal spends summers away and has a whole other life during July and August with kids she has known since she was in diapers, kids she only sees in the summers, kids who know the lay of the land, the rules of the games, the hiding spots, the secret handshakes and all the other cool things that going with living on another planet every summer.

Our travels brought us near this place last week and Clancy popped in on her friend. It didn’t go quite as she had envisioned. Rather than surprise and glee at seeing Clancy, her buddy gave her a smile and a “hey” but didn't stop to chat, told her she was busy and kept walking. We have all been there. It’s what happens when your expectations high and we expect others to behave as we think we would if the tables were turned. 

She came back stunned and stung. There was nothing I could do to “fix” it that would not have made things worse. She had to feel it all and get over it in her own time, file it where she needed to.

She was fine in no time so when her pal texted her a few days later to get together she was happy to go. I asked her if she was going to tell her friend how things the other day had made her feel.

“Yes, if the right moment comes up.” she said

I said: “I think you should be sure to tell her Clancy, it’s important to tell friends what hurts us, what makes us happy. It helps them too. Everybody learns.”

She was quiet. It was the silence that comes while she decides if she can say what’s on her mind with impunity. I gave her the green light; “Say what you want kid, no hard feelings.”

“Mom, it feels like you want me to fix something that happened to you.”

God love her, rarely I am I the smarter the two of us in conversation.

“I don’t want you to fix my childhood, live out my dreams or be some version of me I wish I had become. But I didn’t make a ton of mistakes so that you wouldn’t at least try to learn from them. All I am saying is this - if you get used to telling people how you feel it will serve you well. There are ways to do it that are polite, not whiny and if you practice you'll get good at it. It will strengthen good relationships and weed out the crappy ones. In no time you will have mastered what I it took me nearly a half a century to learn I was allowed to do and am still trying to get good at.”

“Okay mom.”

So off she went. I picked her up hours later after what she described as being the “best night of her life”. She had talked with her pal, all was good. Ta da.

As their relationships become more complicated I have to remember to react to their problems the same way I did when they were little and fell down; the less drama in my reaction, the less drama they create. My credo then was: "No broken bones or blood? Carry on." and I need to behave the same way for what lies ahead.

Of course there will times to listen and give them a shoulder to cry on but for the most part: An "Oh were your pals busy with other things? We'll call next time before dropping by." will be the best reaction. 

As my friend Annie the Nanny says: Jesus is coming, look busy. (It refers to a t-shirt worn by Johnny English) By that she means this - when parents are busy being grown ups and kids are left to be kids we have little time for more than a perfunctory "It'll be okay kid." And that attitude helps children understand what it is to be resilient. The sooner we teach them that the better they will be at it later in life. 

They need to ....














For a great read, check out Annie's post about resiliency here

Little Girls and Their Friendships

Men don’t do friendship like women do. They have good friends sure, they may even have mortal enemies, but if they need to fill a chair at poker even a guy they don’t really like is welcome. They don’t need, let alone want, to talk to their friends every day and certainly as young guys they never felt some other guy might take their friend away. They sit side by side for hours and never exchange a word. 

Whatever jealousy they may feel to great depths when their women is being charmed by some guy, they don’t even notice if there best friend is spending more time with some other dude.

Women and girls go about friendship and love in a much different way. 

As a result it’s tough for men to counsel their wives and daughters about friendships. Just as it is hard for women to understand how the boys and men in their life can be friends with guys who don’t seem to be good pals.

My husband’s Montreal friends are a posse he has had since he was a kid. Once, one came through town and didn’t even call him. They hadn't seen one another in years. I was shocked. The guy was here two days. Donny didn’t care. “Yeah wouldn’t been nice to see him but I guess he was busy.”

He didn’t dwell on it, wonder what he might have done to piss the guy off so that he didn’t want to see him. He didn’t reevaluate the friendship and determine it no longer seemed balanced. He didn’t lose a moment over it.

When I became pregnant I took parenting classes, met women waiting at the doctor’s office, struck up conversations with other enormous women taking a break on a bench to rest their tired feet and my world of friends began to change. 

Of course I still had my old pals, women I was tight with, had know for years, who knew my secrets and I knew theirs.

But when the baby came, suddenly the only people with whom I could identify were the new moms. My old pals came and cooed and brought gifts, but they left, and in light of the fact I didn’t bathe, or wear clean clothes or talk about anything but my kid and sore nipples, they stayed away.

Overnight my world was made up entirely of people I did not know six months before and may never have met had we not shared the same new shocking and overwhelming lifestyle of fatigue, fear and filth (not the kids but our clothes/hair/house).

I met a great girl in a fatty swimming class and we became fast friends. When the babies were born about a week apart we stayed tight and then a third women came onto the scene she stole my friend away.

I was 41 and I behaved like a child. I missed her, called her all weepy and emotional and though I have no memory of what it was really all about or what I said I know it was very important at the time.

And that’s how it is for most girls and lots of women. So when a dad or a brother says “Oh don’t worry, you’ll make new friends.” it doesn't help because we don’t make them that easily.

It’s not just about the fact that you feel a friendship slipping away it’s that you know how hard it is going to be to find it again. The time and effort that goes into finding another pal is so daunting that we’ll act like a moron to keep the ones we’ve got  - behaviour more likely to push people away. Just ask old boyfriends.

My daughter’s best and only real pal is away this weekend. We were at the park last night and her brother was playing with strangers who had a ball. That's all he needed to get right in there.

Clancy said “I miss my friend. I really need to get some more."

We lay in the grass and while I showed her how to pull new grass and eat the delicate, delicious little white end she explained what it was she wanted in a friend. She said being with this particular girl was so easy, just felt right. I knew exactly what she meant. I also understood when she said she didn’t have that feeling with anyone else and didn’t really like making small talk much, she’d rather be alone. But, one the other hand, she explained, I don’t like feeling lonely and missing one person so much.

It’s a “girl” conundrum and she’s going to have to work it out for herself but I worry for her and I feel her pain. When she thought recently she may have lost this girl she sat in the bath and cried, it was all I could do not to get in there with her and bawl too.

I had secretly hoped for a ball-busting shallow beauty who would be doing any and all heartbreaking, getting through life leaving broken hearts in her wake rather than trying to glue her own back together. It's not going to be like that though, this one wears hers on her sleeve. 

I remember my mother’s worry when she had to comfort my broken heart as a young girl. I’d come in crying after a break up (one in particular that took place while Meatloaf’s "Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad" was playing in the background) and I know she hid all the sharp knives when I said I didn’t want to live anymore.

I got through it, and many more heartbreaks, and everyone one of them helped to to better spot my Prince when he came along. It also honed a radar that can help me find a true gal pal in a room full of women.

Much as it is hard for her father to know what to say in these instances, it’s even harder for me not to tell her some things, she must work it out on her own.

Our Daughters

Originally Posted April 3, 2012

A friend’s 12 year daughter couldn’t make a recent party with peers as she had other plans. What did she miss? Pizza and cake and a few laughs right? 
Sadly ... no. One of the more precocious girls at the party decided to hold an impromptu fellatio workshop for the other gals. She had the boys stand up for a demonstration while her female students watched. One of the boys reportedly felt a bit embarrassed so all he got was manual manipulation. The other boys were willing participants in the oral version.


There is a rumour going around that junior and high school girls are soaking tampons in vodka and inserting them up inside themselves to get an undetectable buzz on. No boozy breath and a grand old time as the liquor is supposedly absorbed directly into the bloodstream. This rumour was accompanied by the notion boys are doing the same but inserting it in their arse.
So many things make this suspect not the least of which is the impossibility that a soaked, flaccid tampon could be inserted into anything ... but nonetheless the rumour is out there so the kids know about it and some will give it a go.


There was a story in the paper yesterday about the growing number of teen girls committing suicide and that on closer inspection some of these horrible deaths can be attributed to the "choking game", in which children strangle themselves to cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain and induce a euphoric high. Some accidentally die while playing this "game" alone in search of something made to sound fantastic on an internet post.


Bullied on Facebook, Twitter Teased, sexualized, ostracized ....What do we tell our daughters? 
“It” all seems to start so much earlier now. 


Children are exposed to so much so early and it's all without context. Their vocabulary includes words at 6 I didn’t hear until I was in my teens. And by that I don’t just mean the euphemisms and epithets I mean words like “stress” and “anxiety” and “fat”. Their experiential repertoire already includes incidents steeped in disappointment, betrayal and meanness ... it’s all too soon, too early. It’s a byproduct of so many things and the genie ain’t going back in the bottle so it is up to us to find the tools - and most importantly, the language - to help our daughters navigate these murky and turbulent waters that are lapping up at childhood’s magical shores earlier and earlier all the time. 

Much as the net can be a feeding ground for misinformation it is of course a great place to find the antidote. Here are two great sites to visit and below that a story from a mom about her daughter's journey from being bullied to finding self-confidence.

Site: Miss Representation

Site: Girl Power