My daughter has been badly mistreated lately by some of her
friends. They weren’t necessarily being
malicious, just thoughtless, immature, and stupid. They had no idea how rotten they were. Even now, after many explanations from her,
they still don’t get what they did wrong.
She has decided that they will just never get it and has let
it go. She understands them better
now (actually, she understood them before – she said she really should have
seen this coming), and she has a wall of protection up. They’re friends again, kind of, but it’s not
quite the same. And she’s content with
that.
I’m not. Frankly, I’m
concerned about these girls. When I look
at the thoughts and beliefs that ultimately must have
prompted this behavior from them, I see fertile ground for much greater
wrongs. I see a self-absorption and
attitude toward relationships that, unchecked, will lead them to greater abuse or make
them vulnerable to being abused themselves.
And the fact that they can’t even see the wrong when it’s pointed out to
them worries me even more.
My daughter is convinced they will never understand. I insist that they MUST understand. And I don’t know which of us is the
wiser. I could certainly be
over-reacting – a mother bear with a wounded cub tends to do that.
My other daughter has been having friend issues, too. (Actually, I’ve been wondering if God isn’t
allowing all this to make the girls more ready to move when it’s time.) It’s very distressing to me. Teenage girls need good friends so
badly. I was bemoaning it all in the car
driving the eldest to school this morning.
“Well, if good friends were easy to find, they wouldn’t be worth
so much,” she shrugged.
I stared at her, thinking that was pretty profound for a
16-year-old at 7:45am on a Monday morning.
“Did you just think of that yourself?”
She wrinkled her forehead.
“I dunno . . . I may have read it somewhere . . . “
Reading’s good, too. I’ll
take that. (Even though she probably
read it on Facebook, which doesn’t really count…)
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