Why It’s Normal for Your Kid’s Friendships to Change
Understanding how kids grow through friendship, from childhood to young adulthood, and how we grow alongside them.
We love stories about lifelong friendships, whether in books or movies, and imagine that’s how it should be for us or our kids: effortless, unconditional, forever. But that’s usually idealized fiction. In real life, friendships are shaped by conflict, change, hurt feelings, hard conversations, forgiveness, and the willingness to stay connected when things get messy. Sometimes friendships are new connections, built from what we’ve learned through past experiences, with a clearer sense of where we belong and what feels right.
Our kids are just beginning to understand what friendships really mean, and they have a lot to try out and experience. It starts with the basics: who they sit with at lunch, who invites them to a birthday party, who's in their class, who lives on their street, who shares their cabin at camp, or who’s assigned as their college roommate. It all feels easy at first, until someone feels left out, jealous, competitive, or misunderstood, or when a best friend moves away and loneliness sets in.
This process is how kids learn what they need. That closeness doesn’t mean sameness, that loyalty doesn’t mean losing themselves, and that conflict or distance doesn't always mean the end of connection. They are practicing how to navigate difference, disappointment, and hurt without giving up on each other or themselves.
When we talk to our kids about friendship, it’s easy to focus only on kindness and inclusion: be everyone’s friend, don’t let anyone feel left out! But we also need to normalize the realities: the misunderstandings, the hurt feelings, the Instagram posts that create FOMO, and the weekends when one group of friends is chosen over another.
These are the moments when friendship feels hard and uncertain, when kids start to recognize that relationships aren't always simple. They begin to experience the paradoxes, the differences in emotional intelligence and expectations, the power struggles, and the pull of social climbing.
We love to judge all of these things with surface-level explanations: It’s just some reckless boys, or mean girls, or they’re jealous of you, or they’re bad people and you’re good people. It’s also tempting to jump in with quick solutions: Invite everyone! Be nice! Stand up to the bully! Walk away! Don’t care about those kids! But all of these things oversimplify the complexity of people and the reality of our kids’ daily experiences.
School dynamics are complicated. Our kids return to the same hallways, the same classrooms, the same sports teams, and later, in college, it might be the same dorm, the same Greek system, the same club. They’re literally showing up to the same faces and spaces, every day. Blowing up a friendship or walking away from a group isn’t as simple as it sounds from the outside.
It’s easy to comment on our kids’ situations from a distance, thinking there is an absolute right and wrong answer, but they are the ones living inside the bubble, trying to navigate social dynamics with fewer options for retreat. They have to learn to live within a system we have already completed. We get to choose our surroundings, but they still have to survive within theirs.
Here are a few things to consider as you try to be the best possible guide through their friendship journeys:
Build Trust Before the Hard Moments Come
Everything in Restoring Our Girls is about making meaningful conversations a norm in the home, so when our kids are struggling, it feels natural to ask questions, listen, and be a support system. If we only try to go deep during the hard times, kids feel more “cringey” (as they tell me) about opening up. If real conversations aren’t already part of the family culture, then when things go south for our kids, they end up feeling too vulnerable or it feels too strange to share their feelings.
To gently shift this, we just need to listen well and ask everyday questions about everyday things:
How was the drive today? Are the trees blooming?
What book are you reading? Do you think I’d like it?
Did you see that TikTok? Do you think that’s true?
I had a cool experience today — I’m excited to tell you what happened!
You know what I heard? They’re opening a new restaurant downtown. Should we go?
It’s SO basic, but we can build real conversations out of the small moments that make up ordinary life. What makes it meaningful isn’t the content; it’s your attention and focus. It’s your curiosity and care. It’s your desire to share and pay attention.
They Learn From What You Do
We can talk all day about healthy friendships, but what really sticks is what we model. Are we showing them what it means to be a good friend? Do they hear us talk about integrity and responsibility not just in theory, but in how we treat people? Do they see us keep in touch with friends, show up for the people we love, send birthday cards, check in when someone is hurting, make time for connection even when life feels busy?
How do we handle conflict? Do we avoid it, gossip about it, blow up, shut down, or stay connected through it? Do they see us own our mistakes, apologize without making excuses, and work through misunderstandings instead of pretending they didn’t happen? Every time we respond with care, stay kind even when we're frustrated, or repair a rupture, we're showing them how to do the same.
Understand the Pull of Social Climbing
Kids experiment with social circles, it’s part of building their identity. Sometimes it means trying out new friend groups or reaching for status. Sometimes it means realizing that status can come at the cost of kindness, authenticity, or even their own sense of peace.
This is normal. It doesn’t mean your kid is a terrible person if they’re doing it, or that something’s wrong with them if it’s happening to them. It means they’re testing, or being tested, about who they are, what they value, and how they want to move through the world. They are learning, through experience, what it feels like to belong and what it feels like to betray themselves for belonging.
Talk about it. Stay curious. Your kid will get left out, and sometimes your kid will leave others out. Talk about what they’re learning as they go through it, and try not to be overly worried, or they’ll start to think they should be more worried — or that they’re worrying you.
Be a listener. You can help them reality-test by gently pointing out when harm is being caused or when their behavior seems out of step with how they usually show up. But in my personal and professional experience, they usually already know. They’ve thought it through and are trying something new. They have a plan, or at least a way they’re making sense of it. Let them tell you, and ask how their plan is evolving.
They might explain that at first, the sense of importance felt exhilarating, but over time, it became exhausting and now feels a bit performative, like they’re playing a role that doesn’t quite fit. This experience will help them later, when they find a more grounded sense of importance through a creative pursuit, club, sport, or anything that taps into their real strengths and values. Over time, they’ll start to recognize the difference between social capital that feels earned and aligned with who they are, and the kind that feels false and based on who they think they’re supposed to be.
They’re Practicing, and So Are We
When I was writing my book, one thing so many girls told me they wished their parents understood was, "Let me tell you about me, instead of you telling me about me." So when something hard happens with your kid’s friends, don’t tell them what’s happening, and don’t jump in with your stories about how the exact same thing happened to you (it may have been similar, but it’s definitely not the same). Stay curious and ask: What do you think happened? What bothered you the most? How are you feeling about this? What did this show you about yourself or about them?
Help them pay attention to the patterns. One bad day doesn’t define a friendship, and one good day doesn’t erase a pattern of feeling unseen or unsafe. As they say, Some friendships are for a reason, some for a season, and a few for a lifetime. Every connection is meaningful and teaches them something, even the ones that don’t last long.
In the song Cardigan, Taylor Swift sings "A friend to all is a friend to none," an idea originally attributed to Aristotle about betrayal and feeling discarded by someone who wanted to be liked by everyone rather than staying true to themselves. The lyric recognizes that if someone is busy keeping everyone happy, they probably aren’t offering real loyalty to anyone. This has been a profound lyric to discuss with young girls and even my college students, and their insights and stories have been fascinating.
What they are considering or figuring out is that they don’t need to twist themselves into different versions to fit into every group, they don’t have to hustle for approval, and being a good friend doesn’t mean being available to everyone at all times. But the hard reality is that sometimes it takes performing, trying to fit in, and hustling to actually learn this. It has to be lived to be understood. The exhaustion, the confusion, and the disconnection that come from chasing acceptance have to be felt before real connection and contentment can be recognized.
If you have time, go back and read all of this with only yourself in mind and consider your own relationships. Where can you relate to your kids? What have you learned over time? Who are your good friends? How do you show up as a friend? What are your friend traumas and how did they shape you?
These are the questions of our lives, and it’s always a work in progress. It’s about understanding the weight and importance of friendships, relating to what our kids are telling us, and staying steady and less judgmental as we walk beside them. Sometimes the best guidance is simply saying to your kid—or to yourself: “I trust you. I trust what you're learning and your ability to keep growing through it.”
p.s. A Gen X shout-out to my favorite song about friendship and change. It was on a mixtape my sorority pledge mom gave me when I was desperately missing my friends back home, and it meant just as much when I had to say goodbye to my college friends who had become my whole life. Every move and change brings it to mind. I can’t listen to it without crying, so I usually don’t, but I’ll share it with you.