<p>Great to hear, the GFG!</p>
<p>“This too shall pass” is a great model. I second the notion that I have found that many many of the things I thought were going to be a huge struggle for DD in college have turned out to be complete non-issues. Although she wasn’t too bad in senior year in terms of friend drama, I will say that she did less socializing and more volunteering that year. Honestly, I think if you aren’t into partying, senior year is more challenging as serious students are already thinking about apps and admissions and their “head is out of the game.” Parents of HS Class of 2013, take heart… their reduced investment may simply mean that they are ready for the next step.</p>
<p>“I’ve lived through hundreds of tragedies in my life, and a couple of them actually happened.” Mark Twain.</p>
<p>(I’m paraphrasing.)</p>
<p>Thanks for the “this too shall pass” reminder. Glad your kiddo is happy, now.</p>
<p>By the way, i have a relative who always said “This too shall pass, and something worse will come along!” I THINK he was joking…helps me to laugh and regain perspective!</p>
<p>I love these blast from the past resurrected threads that end in the information that all is well. As everyone says, the angst of our kids’ formative years will indeed pass, but it’s always nice to see the concrete evidence.</p>
<p>This was a great resurrected thread for me to stumble upon and very timely. I am currently in the midst of all this with my high school daughter. The funny thing is that even when they DO have a set group of friends the drama is still flying. I find that the girls are constantly positioning for power and competing over every little thing. They are not supportive of one another in the least. I said to my daughter recently, “with friends like this, who needs enemies?” High School, especially in the world she is operating in, is not for the faint of heart!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When was it ever? ;)</p>
<p>It seems like we had more fun back then, but I also recall a lot of drama. We laughed pretty hard at some of those things at our last high school reunion, and, yet, we aren’t all still friends, either. Senior year is fraught. And it is even more so nowadays, imho.</p>
<p>It’s a wonder they make it through, but they do.</p>
<p>Something odd has been happening to me in the last year - in a nutshell, my arch enemy (the one who’s group laughed at my klutziness in high school dance, humiliating me and enraging the teacher) has begun taking care of my mother with Alzheimers. She is absolutely superior, and couldn’t be any nicer. Makes me wonder if she was simply under peer pressure to be mean, and unable to resist. That combined with an absolute killer body that would make the boys fall over made her extremely unpopular. Now, I look at her with my Mom, and feel sad for her high school self. That kindness had to be inside her all along. New perspective…</p>
<p>I’m a high school junior and the same thing that happened to OP’s daughter is happening to me. It seems like this year in particular there has been a strong break between groups and people I used to casually hang out with now have very solid groups without me. In particular, there’s one group of people I used to all be friends with individually, that now all hang out together constantly (as in like almost ever day!) and Im locked out because I wasn’t able to hang out with them as much as they wanted during the early stages of the clique. Yes it hurts but it’s best to just not let it get to you. I have one best friend and that definetly helps a lot because without her I’d be way more upset with the whole situation. I’ve realized, everyone I’m still friend’s with, I’ve known since elementary school. And that’s upsetting too because it makes me feel like I’m unlikeable now since all my friends I’ve made in high school haven’t stuck around. I think of it as the natural progression of high school, and theres nothing I can do anyways. I guess it’ll make graduation easier at least.</p>
<p>Sorry not really sure why I wrote all this rambling but maybe it’ll give parents a good idea of the high schoolers perspective on this.</p>
<p>
Very possible. Getting extra attention from the boys may have been overly stressful too. I had a situation where the girl who tortured me in junior high apologized to me many years later when she was in high school. It clearly had been weighing on her. I can’t tell you how much better it made me feel, not just about her, but about the basic goodness of people in general.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think at the end of the day all you really need is 2 or 3 “good” friends to make it through high school. That is the number of friendships from high school that will probably survive throughout your lifetime anyway. I had a large clique in high school for the first 2 years. But as we got older and our interests became more defined, the serious students and the ones who could care less, parted ways. By the end of high school my female social circle was really myself and 3 other girls. We were fine. We dated, played our respective sports and did well in school. Still in contact today.</p>
<p>I think the more serious students do have a rougher time socially. They simply do not have the same amount of leisure time to devote to all that hanging out that seems to be necessary to stay active in a clique. It’s hard, but you will find kindred spirits. I think the healthiest thing a teenage girl can do is to surround herself with friends who fully support who she is. High school flies by, so I tell my children not to give a piece of themselves away for the sake of a short lived acceptance into a particular group.</p>