When your child is excluded, stepping in to mediate actually closes the door
When your child is excluded from their friend group, the instinct to reconcile or confront the other parents usually backfires. What matters is handling your own anger first, then asking what your child wants to do about it.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
Exclusion is chemical, not personal: once a foursome locks in, anyone becomes the excluded one
Every middle-schooler is like an atom trying to fit into a ‘compound’—a friend group. Once four kids form a stable group, they will exclude the outsider even if they are individually warm with her during lunch, weekends, or class. The group's stability depends on staying exactly four. Adding anyone shifts the chemistry. This reframe helps an excluded kid see exclusion as mechanical, not a personal attack.
— LisaExcluding her is not personal attack; it is kids choosing which tribe to join
This stage is what Michelle calls ‘bellying up to the buffet’—suddenly, kids realize their choice of friends signals who they are to everyone else. Some kids are still in a butter-noodles-and-chicken-nuggets phase, and that is fine. But other kids think ‘pepperoni pizza is cooler,’ so they cluster around emerging tastes and broadcast ‘I'm more mature, more cool.’ It is not a coordinated attack on anyone. It is every kid answering ‘who am I’ by choosing who to stand next to.
— MichelleThose hot-and-cold friends are confused about their own feelings, not being fake
The most puzzling detail in the letter: the girls who exclude her at school invite her over on weekends to play with American Girl dolls. That is not hypocrisy—those girls genuinely like her and genuinely want to be cool at school at the same time. Michelle quotes her cousin: if you cannot read how someone feels about you, they probably cannot read it themselves either. That inner conflict is closer to the truth than any moral scorecard.
— MichelleStepping in to negotiate closes the door that might have opened by itself
Michelle warns against jumping in with ‘you grew up together, you should work this out’-style pressure. It almost always backfires. By high school, these girls might naturally find their way back, drawn by new shared interests—if a parent has not torched the ground first. Lisa adds: kids experience 40 dimensions of social complexity; they perceive 20; adults understand maybe 2. Steering their friendships from a 2-dimensional view is like a blind person directing traffic.
— MichelleThink of the clique like your friend's ex: taking sides now risks awkwardness later
Lisa offers a tool for managing your own anger: think of the hot-and-cold girls as your friend's ex-boyfriend. You can hold your friend's pain, but if you pile on—‘I never liked him anyway’—you have just signaled that her feelings never mattered to you. And if they get back together, you are awkward. Same logic: these 13-year-olds are probably not villains, and they could easily become friends again in six months. Your job is restraint, not taking sides.
— LisaWhen your child asks what is wrong with her, do not rush to fix it
When your child breaks down asking ‘am I the problem,’ do not panic-solve with ice cream, a new friend, or trash-talking the other girls. That teaches her to outsource pain instead of feeling through it. Better: ask ‘what would help?’ and let her answer—step back from Snapchat, stay home and watch a movie, go find other people. The message is ‘this sucks and you can handle it and I am here’—not ‘this is too big for you.’
— MichelleYour adult friendship and your child's peer world are two separate systems
The harder case: the girls in the clique are the children of your friends. Both guests agree—do not end your adult friendship because of kid drama, but also do not force your child to attend family events to patch up your friendship. Keep them on parallel tracks. Lisa admits she deliberately does not befriend her kids' friends' parents. But she warns: if your only friendships run through your kids, that is not fair to them. Adults need their own world.
— LisaThe painful middle years are where resilient adults learn to land on their feet
Michelle closes with her sharpest line: what looks like a curse now may look like a blessing later. She has watched adults look back and realize that 13 to 15—the years they felt invisible and unwanted—taught them how to make friends from scratch and build real interests. Kids who never taste rejection, who never have a friendship break, hit adulthood more fragile. The pain is the practice ground. Resilience is not given; it is built.
— MichelleIn their own words · checked verbatim
they're looking to join a compound, and they can't seem to join a compound where every atom in it seems to like them.
Lisa0:00
these kids are doing what I call bellying up to the buffet.
Michelle10:24
if you can't tell how people feel about you, it's because they probably can't figure out how they feel about you.
Michelle13:30
things are happening in 40 dimensions. Children are perceiving 20 dimensions. We perceive two.
Lisa15:32
Think about these 13 year old girls who seem so evil as the guy that your friend just broke up with, who is probably not a bad guy, may not have been a bad guy at all, and who actually may come back in the picture.
Lisa15:32
this stinks, and it is within the capacity of things that I know you can handle. And I'm here to help you handle.
Lisa18:40
what feels like a curse right now can end up being a real blessing.
Michelle25:54
Figures
| Age of girl in letter | 13, heading into eighth grade | 2:03 |
| Size of clique excluding her | 8 to 9 girls | 2:03 |
Glossary
- free-floating atom
- A child without a stable friend group that fully accepts her
- bellying up to the buffet
- The moment when early-teens realize their choice of friends signals who they are to the world
How to listen
Parents of middle and high school kids, especially if your child is currently being excluded and you happen to be friends with the other parent.
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