Are my FRIENDS NOT going to be friends FOREVER?

Some hurdles of growing up can be truly heart-breaking and painful especially in the tender and confusing pre-teen and teen years. Children are struggling with changes in their bodies, hormones and brain, and to add to all these changes any upheavals in their peer groups can be truly devastating.

However, changing values, changing focus, changing priorities, changing interests as children grow into developing their individual identities can create a change in your child’s social groups. You might as a parent have already dealt with or might deal with a bucket of tears when one day your child comes homes declaring that her/his best friend is no longer a friend or he/she is no longer a part of the group and has been abandoned.

This can be an emotionally draining time in your child’s life because friends and peer groups are very important to them as these groups are what helps them create their own identities and when such ‘break ups’ occur it can mean a blow to their own identity. Your child can feel lost and extremely lonely.

 As a parent you can feel at a loss on how to handle this, and this is why a mother of a 12 year old girl called me to ask: How as a parent can I help my daughter who is having problems with her ‘group’?

Please click on the photo below to watch the video and hear what I shared:

To be...or not to be friends?

We all have had friends as early as we can remember. When we were young, we had playmates who would find our hiding spot and share crisps with us. The ones who sat next us in the class would then be invited to our birthday parties. And eventually be named our 'best friend'. 

 

 As we got older, our schools might have changed or place moved. We got new friends there. Some nice and some not so nice. The hormonal teenage years would throw us together where guys and makeup were concerned. Go to the movies together. Then colleges and universities have us make other friends. And so it goes on. 

The number of best friends that we might have gone through may be numerous. But have you ever had reunions with your older 'best friends'? It's so easy to find people through networking these days. The world has definitely shrunk to a size of Facebook in that sense. Look them up and voila!, they are staring back at you through there pimped up profile picture. 

Right back at my question then. When you meet up with your older friends, does it seem awkward? Do you feel like you just don't know why you were friends with her in the first place? Or does it feel like you just continued on from where you left off? Best buds forever and ever?

I recently met a good friend who I just couldn't go a minute without sharing every life detail with. We were really good friends. But we lost touch when she moved away and things kinda cooled down. I would miss her terribly. There were times when I couldn't find one person who I could share my heart out with. So I ended up going to her. Eventually we drifted apart. 

Then she came back few days ago. We met up. And I felt like I don't even know her. All through the time we caught up, I kept thinking as to why we became best friends in the first place? I felt like she was too immature, too creepy. And it just made me immensely sad.

But I realized that as people grow and surroundings change, so do our mentalities and views. The people that we were at the same frequency with a long time back, would have opposite views now. That's why people grow, drift and come back. 

After all we are just humans. :)