Today M came home from school and said, “Today, Ellie and I had a fight! We weren’t friends any more because we had an argument. And she said, we couldn’t have playdates any more. Then I said, I don’t want to have playdates because she isnt’ my friend. But then we were friends again, so we played together some more.”
Isn’t 3.5 too young to start that kind of girl-fighting? I figured we had a couple years before we hit the break up / make up friendship game. I think we are hitting pre-pre-adolescence too soon.
It’s not quite the same thing, but if it helps my 4 year old nephew, who started Head Start this fall, has a “girlfriend” who he got into an argument with because she wanted to do stuff with him and he told her that he needed some “alone time.”
I hear that it starts around that age. All of my friends with daughters started the “mean girls” thing in preschool. It chills my soul, yes it does. Boys are easier that way. Boys just run in a pack and they all stay friends. With girls, seems like if there’s two it’s ok but if there’s three, somebody’s left out. Ugh.
My daughter just turned four and has had a girl-fight or two with the neighbor kid. She’s a little older, but I was thinking this wouldn’t happen for a while yet, too!
It is amazing isn’t it? My son came home asking for money to take a girl out on a date? HE’S IN KINDERGARTEN….I had to explain that first of all Kindergarten is WAY to young to date and second, in this house, if you want to take a girl out first you ask her father’s permission……it was the “second point” that turned him around! They grow up too fast-
Alas, no, it’s typical.
It also seems to have (for most kids) absolutely no consequence. I used to completely freak out about the whole “so-and-so isn’t my friend anymore” announcements, or the “I have a new best friend, so-and-so isn’t my best friend anymore” decisions — because those are HUGE social shifts in my memory — but it all seemed to switch by the next week. And none of my kids seemed the least bit fazed to be on the receiving end (although: I have to think there are sensitive kids who Are Not Happy, even at age 3, to endure this stuff).
The first month of kindergarten, the girls were obsessed with their “new best friends.” But — I finally realized, it was entirely dependent on who sat next to them on the carpet each day.
This does seem to be one of those “right brain development/relational” issues that girls do before boys. Wilder has friends, and he talks about friends, but it’s not the same dynamic, I don’t think.
Unless I perceive differences out of my own expectations for gender difference….
Anyway, my final word: normal. Not that big a deal. Likely to shift by next week anyway. Good luck.
To put it another way: by junior high, or even second grade, this is definitely a “mean girl” thing. But for preschooler girls, I think it just doesn’t have the same emotional weight, because they’re all still very much in the narcissitic phase of psychological development.
I remember having a fight like that with my best friend when I was in Kindergarten and she was in 1st grade. (I remember because I made up a *very* witty insult based on rhyming with her name-NOT) We were still best friends until she moved in 6th grade.
I think it is great that they worked it out — I think kids today are just better tooled in communication than we/I were!
I think it is pretty typical for the preschool age. It isn’t so serious, at least with most girls. I remember I hated this pahase–if I said I didn’t like you I generally meant it and assumed the reverse. And my daughter seems to take it all too seriously as well. She lives and dies by who sat by her and who worked with her. But the other girls don’t take it so seriously. We’re working on my daughter’s “buck up” skills.
It will probably make it easier on you if M isn’t upset or crying about it. Good luck.