Friendship Roller-coaster

It is 8 AM on a Monday morning at an Elementary School in the Seattle area.  A dozen blue “I’d like to talk to the School Counselor” notes have collected under my door as I don’t work during the latter part of the week.  One of these notes catches my eye right away.  It is written in black pen, furiously written, so there are holes in parts of it and big black stars.  On the front it says: Becky (name has been changed to protect confidentiality), room 20, grade four.  Becky has circled friendship and sad and angry on my list of topics.  On the back it says, “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.  I NEED TO TALK TO YOU NOW.”  Emergency is underlined.  Now is underlined.  There is a sad face with tears dripping down.  It seems as if a terrible tragedy has befallen Becky, and I make note that I will touch base with her as early as possible.

8:35 the doors open and the students pour in.  I stand outside my office, so I can greet them.  Becky walks by my door and I motion her discreetly to the side.  I say hello and tell her that we can meet during first recess.  She looks perplexed for a minute and then says breezily, “Oh, that.  We’re friends now.”

This is a typical day in the life of an elementary School Counselor.  My students ride on the friendship roller-coaster, experiencing tragic, self-esteem-busting lows and confidence-building highs — sometimes all in the course of a day.

Although I have told them a million times, “I can’t solve your problems for you.  I can only give you the tools to solve them yourselves,” the girls think I am magic.  I can help the girls (and boys for that matter) solve 90% of their friendship problems within five minutes.  How do I do this?

The truth is, I’m not magic.  I just know a thing or two about girls and how these conflicts work.  Here are some of my tried and true tips:

I try to meet with just two students at once — more than that creates an added pressure for girls to take sides, interrupt, etc.  A one-on-one confrontation is much more honest and focused on what’s really going on than a big group encounter.  The trick is to figure out intuitively who needs to be there.

The media often focus on the Queen Bee, the girl who is the underground instigator of problems, the Mean Girl.  While I have run into my fair share of Queen Bees, I find that, more often than not, the roles in the early elementary grades are not that clearly defined.  Sometimes the Queen Bee changes, sometimes there is no clear Queen Bee.  If the problem involves an obviously manipulative Queen Bee or a clear case of harassment/bullying, I treat the problem differently, sometimes involving the principal or parents.  The majority of problems that I see, though, are roller-coaster ups and downs that can be easily resolved.  Part of my bag of tricks is figuring out where along the continuum a particular conflict falls.

Girls need a chance to share their feelings with an adult to guide them along.  I have seen visibly irate girls relax within minutes when they get a chance to talk about the problem.  (On the playground, this is harder because other friends take sides, muddying the waters.)  By guiding them along, we are teaching them valuable problem-solving skills that they can use in the future.  There is no need to analyze and dissect the problem for hours — both girls need to share their feelings and what they’d like to happen.

Sometimes they make up right then and there, on the spot.  Other times, they are unable to.  I think this has something to do with “saving face.”  If a problem seems temporarily un-resolvable, I make an agreement with the girls to spend three recesses apart from each other.  Nine out of ten times, they make up sometime that day and tell me proudly in the hallway that they don’t need my plan anymore because, well, “we’re friends.”

My mantra is that we cannot make girls be friends with other girls, but being mean is not an option.  In some cases, when girls decide to disconnect, we can be a coach and a guide to make this painful transition smoother for all.

Another favorite, I ask the girls what they liked about each other back when they were friends.  “She’s nice, she’s funny, I really trust her.”  The other girl lights up.  She says the same thing back.  The problem defuses right away.

Finally, I make an effort to change the language of hate.  To me, hate does not adequately describe the friendship roller-coaster.  Instead, I use the words Connect, Disconnect, and Reconnect. It’s a lot better to be temporarily disconnected from your friend than to be HATED by someone.

It seems imperative to me that girls learn problem-solving skills early on and well into their teenage years.  I think these skills need to be constantly reinforced in a variety of ways from classroom guidance, to school-wide programs, to assemblies, to mother/daughter nights, to programs directed at parents.

It is in this way that our daughters and students can minimize the tragic highs and lows of the roller-coaster, or, better yet, step off altogether.



Peggy Rubens-Ellis is an Elementary School Counselor and runs programs, assemblies, and workshops for girls, mothers/daughters, and teachers. She is available to custom design a program for your community that decreases incidents of harassment between girls. Peggy can be reached at info@creative-crossings.com or via her website www.creative-crossings.com