Your daughter comes home from school and reports that she has “zero friends.”  “Everyone has dropped me,” she explains.  “They make it clear they don’t want to eat lunch with me and now I have no one.”  

The next morning, she has a stomach ache and says she’s too sick to go to school. Soon after, she starts campaigning to move schools.  She says a new school will be a fresh start and people will be nicer.  In fact, she says she knows for a “fact” that the girls at XYZ school are nicer.  

You are confused.  At the beginning of the year, she was so happy and appeared to have several close friends.  She never complained about going to school. She spent, what seemed like, endless hours on her phone messaging with her friends.  What happened? Why have these friends suddenly turned?  And, what do you do?  

You begin to wonder, should I force her to work things out at her current school?  I don’t want high school to be a miserable experience but if she stays, she will learn an important lesson and build resilience.  On the other hand, she’s already dealt with so much “girl drama,” maybe I should give her a fresh start….  But what if she is the cause of these friend problems?  

Parenting a teenage girl who is going through a social rejection is one of the hardest and most confusing experiences, for both you and your teen.  

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Social rejection leads girls into a spiral of self-doubt:

What’s wrong with me? 

Why don’t they like me?  

Then, limiting beliefs start to form, causing feelings of insecurity and inadequacy:  

I’ll never fit in.  

I’m not good enough.  

It’s no surprise that when your daughter is consumed with these kinds of thoughts and feelings, her confidence takes a hit and so does her mood.  She will start avoiding social interactions and complaining that she wants things to be different.

As a parent, it’s hard to know what to do.  Do you encourage your daughter to push through? Do you support a significant change?  What do you do if it is your daughter who is actually causing the social rejection? 

Your response will depend on your daughter and her situation.  In some cases, the solution may well be to take an extreme step and change schools.  In other cases, it’s better to encourage your daughter to push through.  Whichever path you take, your daughter needs you to help her understand how to handle the emotional tidal wave that accompanies friend losses and change.  She needs your support to build the skills of emotional regulation, courage, and resilience. 

Emotional regulation

Your teen learns how to manage her emotions by watching you.  When she’s going through a challenge, your reactions matter.  Try to meet your daughter’s upset with calm and compassion and  offer suggestions to help her process her feelings.  She may benefit from getting outside, journaling, or talking with a life coach. 

In my coaching practice I help my teen clients gain a positive perspective of the difficulties they are experiencing. They learn strategies for overcoming challenges and moving forward with clarity and confidence.   

Courage

It’s common for girls to shy away from speaking up.  They worry that saying something will cause more drama or create more misunderstanding.  If they need to take accountability for something they did, there can be even more resistance.  

You can help your daughter tap into her social courage by talking through how she can respond to girls who have rejected her.  Brainstorm what she can say and practice.  When it comes to owning up to a mistake, remind her that it’s normal to feel some shame and fear, but taking responsibility is the first step to repairing and rebuilding a friendship. 

When I coach girls in this area, I help them organize their thoughts and determine what message is most important to express.  Sometimes this process helps them realize that the best response is no response and it’s time to move on.  In other cases, they come up with a clear message to express how they feel and what they need or right a wrong and ask for forgiveness.  In either case, they feel more empowered and encouraged! 

Resilience

Resilience is the skill that helps your daughter rebound from a heartbreaking friend experience.  An important component of resilience is perspective. When going through a friend challenge, you can help your daughter gain perspective by asking her: 

What is this situation showing you about the other person? About friendships? About yourself? 

You can also help her identify steps she can take to change a painful situation and move forward. 

Two of my favorite questions to ask my teen clients are: 

What’s most important to you now? 

What do you really want?  

These questions will help your daughter get focused on the future, rather than the stressful friend situation.  Her answers can spark hope and optimism, which ease emotional pain so she can better handle the friend challenge. 

Emotional regulation, courage, and resilience are three essential life skills that will help your daughter overcome social rejection, friendship difficulties, and many other common teen challenges. But in order to support the development of these skills, it’s important to maintain a close, connected relationship.  Through parent coaching, you will learn a new parenting approach that your teen will respond to, plus parenting strategies that foster a strong, trusting relationship.  

To learn more about parent coaching or teen life coaching, schedule a free Discovery Session.