Not so fickle friendships

I had a meeting with Caroline's teacher this afternoon (See post below). During the meeting her teacher pointed out something that she found interesting about Caroline that she hadn't seen in girls that age while she's been teaching.

Apparently, Caroline will play with the other girls in her class but she's only "friends" with some of them. The standard trend of girls her age is to be friends on minute and not the next. It's a whimsical concept to them and changes constantly from day to day. However, Caroline has been friends with the girls since the beginning of school.

One observation that her teacher made of Caroline is spot on. She has a distinct sense of what's right and wrong, and she's not really keen on doing wrong things to other people (especially those younger than her). There are a couple of girls in Caroline's class who were the leaders of the pack last year. Whatever they said went and the girls did. This year however, often times Caroline wouldn't do it. She'd say no, and either do what she wanted and played with other girls (or boys) or would play by herself. After a little bit when the other girls realized that nothing bad would happen to them if they went against the "wishes" of the other girl, more girls started saying no. This, apparently, was a good lesson for the "leader" to learn.

The other observation about Caroline that was made is also spot on. Caroline is friends with girls (and boys for that matter) who are nice to her and to other people. She doesn't have a lot of friends, but she does have a few. Not everyone is her friend, and she's okay with that. I mentioned to Caroline's teacher that there were a couple of girls who she'd mentioned that she wasn't friends with. She'd even gone as far as not go to their birthday parties because they were mean. Caroline's teacher said she probably knew exactly who those girls were.

Caroline, it turns out, started out friends with all of the girls in her class at the beginning of the year. However, during the course of the year, she'd stopped being friends with the girls because they were either mean to someone in her class or in the younger class. She didn't like this, so she stopped being their friend. Now, some of them started being nice to other people (and Caroline as well), so Caroline became friends with them. However, there were a couple of girls who started being mean again, or suggesting that the girls be mean to other people. Upon doing this a second time, Caroline stopped being friends with them period.

I thought this was a good characteristic to have a such a young age. It sounds a lot like my mom and older sister. They've done extremely well with that characteristic, so it bodes well for Caroline.