Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Show the podcast for mothers and daughters who want to build stronger bonds, deepen their understanding and transform their relationships. I'm your host, Brittany Scott, licensed therapist and mother-daughter relationship coach. After years of working with hundreds of daughters. And mothers. I've developed strategies that help break generational patterns, heal wounds, and create the loving relationships you've always wanted. Each week I'll be sharing insights from real clients, expert interviews and practical tools you can use immediately to improve your mother-daughter dynamic. Whether you're struggling with communication breakdowns, navigating major life transitions, or simply wanna take your already good relationship to the next level. The show is for you. And yes, the transformation I guide my clients through can be yours too. I'll share more about how you can work with me. It's time to experience the relationship you both deserve. Are you ready? Let's dive in. to many clients about friendships and how maybe they struggle in it, or how they struggle to change their friendships as they're working on healing and as they're moving through their healing journey. And some friendships just no longer feel right or feel safe, and they're ready to move on. How do they do that? What does this mean? and also what does it mean to maybe be struggling in friendships And What has caused the struggle in adulthood? Where did the struggle of friendships start? Because usually it didn't start as an adult, it started as a child. So that's what we're gonna get into today. I have been. Scripting a lot of the episodes and spending more time working on them to have the right words to say to you and not get lost in going on tangents. So I hope you'll stick with me here. This episode is not scripted at all. I'm just talking to you because this was on my heart. So I hope this episode resonates with you because there is no script that I am reading from that I previously wrote. I turn on the camera and I am gonna talk about friendships. So we're gonna talk about how girls. Struggle in relationships, how girls bully inside of relationships and what makes being in relationships with girls hard, especially in adolescent years as girls are coming of age. So bullying between girls and bullying between boys is very different. Girls bully covertly. Boys usually bully overtly. It's outward, it's loud, it's. In everybody's face, they can see who's being bullied and they can see how boys are bullying. So schools can step in with boys a lot easier than they can with girls because girls are covert. Girls bully relationally inside of friendship groups, and it can be very silent, but insidious and painful for the girl experiencing it. But it's often hard to explain because she's explaining things about people. She's calling friends. If you are a girl that was bullied, I do hope that this episode shows you that you're not alone. And if you are a mom of a young girl, now stick with me to the end because I'm gonna have something for you. But also you should know that these things are very much still happening. So before I get into fully talking about. The points that I have for this episode, I want to share about my own daughter. She's four. She is in preschool at a daycare, so not at an elementary school yet, still in a daycare setting, but it's a preschool class, and there is another little girl in the class who is mean relationally. So my daughter will come home and tell us that. Do I say her name or change her name? I change her name to Mary. She will come home and say that Mary said I can't go to her birthday party. Mary said that I couldn't play with them today. Mary said that I wasn't allowed to play with a certain toy, so she took it. Mary said. Mary said, I believe this is how relational bullying starts. One child. One girl. Wants connection. She wants recognition, she wants power. And the way girls learn to get that is by being in control of what's happening inside of the friend group and. Being the leader. Now, she's starting on the path of relational bullying. She's getting to decide who does what, when and how. And she's very loud about it. And I have to at home, teach my daughter what a real friend is, how real friends make us feel, That we don't have to accept this kind of friendship. This is not a person that is your friend or needs to be your friend. You have other friends, and we talk about what that means and what friends feel like. But at four, she's already experiencing what it feels like to be left out, to be told that you can't be a part of the group for that day because then she comes back in the next day or two days and they're all friends again. And so it's very hard for. Teachers and parents to notice what is happening if one daughters don't speak up because the friend group still remains a friend group, like my daughter is still playing with this little girl. It just depends on the day on if this girl allows her to or not. So this is kind of what we're gonna talk about in this episode. I just wanted to share that some of this can start really early. In the book, best Friends, worst Enemies, understanding the Social Lives of Children. Michael Thompson and his colleagues point out that every child wants three things out of life. Connection, recognition, and power. The desire for connection propels children into friendship while the need for recognition and power ignites competition, and then of course, conflict. When I bring up relational bullying, I want to describe some ways this can look, it is how I described with my daughter. you can't play with us today. My daughter's four. probably doesn't look like that in middle school anymore, but it's the looks they give each other. It's passing notes and spreading rumors about one of the friends or one of the girls in the group. It's suddenly there's a lunch table spot no longer available, even though they all were sitting together. It's secret keeping. It's, keeping one girl out of the loop with everything. Doing something as a group and making sure that that one person is not invited, but also that they know they're not invited. As I'm going through this and finishing up this episode, I want you to know that I am referencing a book called Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons. And I believe there should be required reading for any woman, any girl, but specifically mothers who are raising girls. We should all read this book and we should all be aware how girls feel. a group of. Girls, in middle school were asked what is the difference between the way that girls and guys are mean? And this is a summary of what the girls said. Girls can turn on you for anything. Girls whisper, they glare at you. Girls are secretive. They destroy you from the inside. Girls are manipulative. There's an aspect of evil in girls that there isn't in boys. Girls target you where they know you're weakest. Girls do a lot behind each other's backs. Girls plan and premeditate. With guys, you know where you stand. I feel a lot safer with guys. So if we're talking about how women struggle in friendships and maybe also how some girls struggle in friendships, we have to know where it's starting. And if this is how girls are feeling in the eighth grade, it's no reason why adults who struggled in school with friends. Are struggling as adult with friends, because if you couldn't trust young girls, why would you trust adults? Your assumption would be that they're just more insidious than they were before that if you were hurt, then you'll just be hurt. Now, why put yourself through that pain again when you already know what it feels like? You wanna know what crushes girls the most? Being alone, having no friends, being the odd girl out. that's why a lot of girls remain inside of these friend groups and struggle in them. Because they'd much rather have half a friend than no friend at all. They'd much rather belong to a group, even if the group is painful, than have no group to belong to at all girls. They try to avoid being alone at all cost, and sometimes the cost is their self-esteem, their mental health, the way they view themselves in others and. What are parents and teachers doing about it? A lot of times it's not even noticed. It's not seen. It's hard to spot because all of this is happening inside of a friend group. It's not like boys. Boys are overt, it's in plain sight. Girls are not doing this in plain sight. Girls are doing this very sneakily behind people's backs, very hushed and quiet, very secretive, but it carries so much weight and it's very painful. Okay, so now that we understand a bit of relational aggression and what relational bullying between girls looks like, what have adults attempted to do about it? I think adults move into the age old question of have you talked to her about it? Have you let her know that it's bothering you? Have you. Asked her why she's doing this to you. So getting the girls to resolve their conflict between themselves and what usually ends up happening is that the girl who's being hurt gets hurt further. She is lied to by saying none of that is actually happening. You're making things up. Somehow things turned to her being the one with the issue or her being the one at fault. Well, you did this, so I did that. It's really your fault that I had to do this to you. The girl who's already the victim ends up being the victim again by attempting to manage this all on her own. The adults who are making any kind of attempt to fix this aren't necessarily wrong, but they don't fully understand what this means and what's actually happening between girls, and that asking those questions is not actually going to be helpful. They're not going to resolve these things on their own. I'm not even sure the girls would know how to resolve them on their own. So girls who were experienced relational bullying as children, it only makes sense that they would grow up to struggle inside of friendships, feel anxious inside of them, have anxiety with making new people worry about how other people are thinking of them, or perceiving them or viewing them in their behaviors. Being worried that people might still be talking about them behind their back or what that interaction meant, and just struggling to create deep and meaningful friendships like it only makes sense. You are cautious, you are trying to protect yourself. You are anxious and worried and scared. Of course, you struggle in friendships because your brain remembers friendships hurting. It remembers friendships not being safe or not feeling good. So when you go to create friendships as an adult, the trigger that you know what's being triggered is the memory of your childhood, the memory of struggling with friendships, struggling with other girls, struggling to be accepted, and to actually have friends that did not go back and forth with being your friend, or did not use your friendship as a tool to hurt you. Of course that part of you is being triggered. I felt like this part of girls and girlhood and like friendships was important to talk about and bring up because women who struggle in friendships don't all have mother wounds. You can struggle in friendships and not have experienced the mother wound. And so I wanted to make sure that this was also discussed, that sometimes struggling in friendships is because of what you experienced as a child how friendships went for you during childhood, and this part of girlhood and girl friendships, the relational bullying, relational aggression. It happens more often than is ever discussed or talked about, and I didn't wanna move on from the friendship discussion saying that maybe one of the only reasons why you struggle in friendships is because you have a mother wound. I think there's more to this story than that. That's just one piece of it. This relational aggression between girls is another part of the story of why women struggle in friendships, and why it can be so hard to trust other women and girls. because of the relational aggression and using friendship as a tool to hurt someone else this is very real. Girls are experiencing it as early as elementary school, and it may be part of the story for you and why you struggle with friendships If you're a mom listening to this and you have a daughter who is school aged, let's talk about how you support your daughter. If you. Learn or find out, or hopefully that she just expresses to you that this is happening for her. Now that you have this information and know that this is very real and also can go read the book Odd Girl Out for Yourself, I want to help guide you a little bit in, what you will do first. your first reaction is going to be support. You're not gonna jump into. trying to solve the problem, or maybe belittle the problem and just say, you know, this is just something that happened. Your first step is gonna be support your daughter, hug her, let her cry. Make sure that your home is a sanctuary and is safe for her. And home. Feels good coming back to because she's supported there and she's loved there, and it's unconditional. And she gets to tell you about her day without any judgment or without you needing to do anything about it. And then the second thing, is that you're gonna ask questions about information like fact finding. So who is the girl doing this? Who's the classmate? What's the friend's name? what's happening? And I put friends in quotes because these are not real friends. what's their name? What's happening if they're still in one class, like this is elementary school, If this is middle school where they're switching class, it's learning when are they interacting with this person? Maybe there's a way to move them out of the class. They can, Switch classes not be in the same class as their bully. If this works out for you and your family, there may be an option to switch schools completely. They get a fresh start. They get to go to a new school where no one knows them. They get to try again at making real friends. This might seem disruptive, but this can be a huge step forward in helping your daughter to heal and. Find real friends. Changing schools may not be feasible for you, but if it is, that could be a good option. Another option could be getting your daughter into maybe an afterschool program or some other group or club where she can make friends outside of school where she can be a part of another group that would help her feel like she belongs and is supported. And does not have to center around the friends that she has at school. That could be so refreshing and healing to experience friendships that feel safe and loving and supporting, because then when she's at school, it may lessen the relational bullying that she is experiencing there. And by lesson, I mean it may change how she responds to it or how it affects her because these are not her only friends. Now she has another group where she's fully supported and belongs, and school is just one place in her life. It's not her only place to make friends, and it's not her only place to belong. So adding in something else where She can be herself and be loved, could also be so healing and so supportive. So as a parent, your job is. Not to try to necessarily stop the bullying, but how do you remove your daughter from this experience? What needs to happen to help her feel better? Maybe she needs to switch seats, so the teacher needs to quietly be aware and her seat is moved and she can sit next to somebody else. Maybe it's changing her schedule so that her classes look different and she can begin to make friends with other people switching schools if it's. Feasible or the problem is that large or finding groups outside of school where your daughter can feel loved and be supported. If you resonated with this episode in any way, and you struggle in relationships with women as an adult, and maybe you're being triggered by the memories of your childhood, I want you to practice reminding yourself that you are no longer in danger. What you experienced as a child may not be what happens today, but you have to at least try in order to learn and figure it out. You are not a child anymore. You're an adult now, and you'll be able to spot relational aggression much quicker and walk away before any pain or harm is to come to you. You are not in danger today. You're not a child who's still learning. You are now an adult who can spot when somebody's being relationally aggressive and when somebody's not safe to be in a friendship with. So give it a shot. see what happens when you show up as yourself completely and try to make friends. By being supportive and trusting of other women, I wonder what the outcome will be. Not everybody is gonna end up being a long-term. deeper friend, a best friend, some people may just be more surface level acquaintance type friends, but also I think we have to remember that we are allowed to have friendship buckets. Not everybody gets best friend status. Not everybody gets the call of you crying and needing support. Some people just are friends that are around when we're having a good time, and some people are friends that are around. for all of life has to offer, but you're not in danger today. And I think that's part of what you need to remind your brain of when you're being triggered, what you may have experienced in childhood. Okay. Those are my thoughts today. I felt like this needed to be said, and I needed to share this for any girls or women out there who are struggling. maybe this was a part of their story and you need to be seen and maybe held through this so that way you can remind yourself your brain that you're not in danger today. And that friendships don't have to look like what they did when you were a child. This exact episode is something I've been helping a recent client through, and I thought if it was resonating with her, then it might resonate with others. And since I was already talking about friendships last week, I feel like this needed to be a continuation before I moved on. Thank you for sticking with me today and not scripting out this episode and just talking to you. That's all for today's episode of the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show. Thanks so much for spending this time with me. I hope you picked up some valuable insights that you can start using right away in your own relationship to create deeper connection and understanding. If something from today's episode resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with the mother or daughter in your life who needs to hear this message. And while you're at it, please consider leaving a rating. And review so we can reach more families and transform the way mothers and daughters relate to each other. For those ready to take the next step, you can visit my website to learn more about my private coaching programs and my program designed specifically for mother-daughter pairs. Whether you're dealing with communication challenges, life transitions, or just wanna strengthen an already good relationship, I'm here to help. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next one.