Daughter lost her friend.

Post Reply New Topic

My daughter, who is autistic, and who has always had problems with making friends, had last year become friends with the neighbor girl living in the apartment above us. After awhile, this neighbor girl began to become less friendly, while playing with another neighborhood girl who is something of a bully. As I said, my daughter has problems making friends, and so she would often become emotionally explosive when she'd see them together. Then just today, the girl upstairs sent this bully girl over with a message that she didn't want to be my daughter's friend anymore. Needless to say, my daughter cried. And both my wife and I felt both anger, as well as despair for our little girl. We've tried to help her make friends in the past, but with little success. I'm at a loss at what to do, especially since we had been on friendly terms with this neighbor girl's parents.

You can't make people be friends. It's going to be very awkward. I'd just keep my distance away from the parents and stay neutral because they may not even know this happened and you don't really want enemies living over the top of you - they can make your life hell.. You don't want your daughter around girls like that - they're not real friends. She'll be hurting for awhile. Maybe take her to somewhere she likes to go on a family trip to take her mind off things. Or a toy (I don't know her age) she's been wanting.

I went through something similar at an age similar to your daughter. I was in grade 5. I had what I would consider a best friend at school, and I hung out with her all the time. We got along pretty good, but the rest of the group of friends that she hung out with didn't much like me. I'm still to this day not quite sure if she herself didn't like me or that if she had succumbed to peer pressure so that she could be friends with the other friends in her life, but there were a couple of signs that she was pressured with me around, and then one day she called me up and said that she didn't want to be my friend anymore. I was devastated, I remember it all very clearly, all the negative things.

At her age, for me, it was definitely not "cool" to be playing with barbies still. At a birthday party I ended up going to there was a lot of talk about which boys the girls liked, and which part of their anatomy they liked, and I didn't join in because I was too uncomfortable and I didn't really want to and I was kind of excluded.

I had good relationships with my cousins whom I saw in the summer for a couple weeks, and I got along with my sister, and I made friends with video games and at the time I had God to make me feel better. I ended up having a good friendship still with one of those friends who was in that group for a few years after that, but only outside of school because she got into the cool crowd and I was not in that crowd. I didn't -want- to be in that crowd, they teased me, why would I want to be friends with them? We'd walk home together a lot of the time.

All I can say is that friendships are hard, but it's not bad if she finds kids or adults not her own age to hang out with. I'm glad she has other friends still.

I never told my parents about all this I don't think. I tried to not tell my parents too much.

Would it be possible to get her a kitten or a puppy?Many apartments that say no pets will allow them if you get a note from a doctor.They allow that here,if the doctor writes that the pet helps with depression,anxiety or other such issues they will allow it.
Many times I came home from school upset by bullies and it really helped to have an animal to cuddle with.Any child will be cheered up by the antics of a kitten or puppy,a playmate that's always there.
I'm sorry to hear about this,kids can be so cruel.The girl sounds like a "fair weather friend."
Pets are good for so many reasons,unconditional love,they teach a child empathy and responsibility.