If she's cranky, try one or more (but not all!) of these: What do you think is going on? How long has it been since you've eaten something? Did you sleep okay last night? Do you need some alone time?

If she's tired in the middle of the day: What's up with the dragging around, hon? Do you feel okay? How did you sleep last night? Do you think you might be doing too much?

If her appetite drops off at mealtime: I wonder what snacks you had earlier-do you remember? Why do you think you're not hungry right now?

As long as you don't shoot down her answers-"Why would you think that?"-or go after her for her unwise choices-"Well, see, no wonder you can't eat! What were you thinking, having that right before dinner?"-she's going to feel increasingly confident about assessing her physical needs and taking care of them. "How's that donut going to make you feel a half hour from now?" may pave the way for a lifetime of healthy choices.

Bridging the Gap.

Dear loving and caring God, who feeds us everything we need, thank you for my healthy, growing daughter, . I so want her always to be full of life, so please bridge the gap between the care I can give her and what she needs to know to someday take care of herself. And who knows, God, maybe even me. Amen.

PART 4.

Why Can't They Just Get Along?.

What It Looks Like.

She comes home crying again. It seems that the girl drama has reached global proportions. From what you can distinguish amid the tears and the unintelligible monologue and the stuff running out of her nose, it went down like this today: Her used-to-be-Best-Friend-until-last-Monday, who has been ignoring her for a week, has now formed an alliance with Popular Girl-the very one they both used to make fun of because Popular Girl thought she was all that. You know about Popular Girl. You've been hearing about her all year. How she got an iPhone-"An iPhone, Mom! Do you know how much those things cost?" You've told her you do. How she acted all flirty and mature (you're not sure how those two things coexist but you don't question her logic) when the D.A.R.E. officer was there and made him think she was all wonderful when she's SO not (a fact which apparently everyone knows except P.G. herself. And her P.G. friends. And, of course, the D.A.R.E. officer). How she rolls her eyes and curls her lip-"She has lip gloss on, like, all the time, Mom, in fifth grade!"-whenever Daughter tries to be nice and tell her she likes her outfit or something-"It's like how dare I even look at her? Whatever." She has been the course of much hilarious disgust for Daughter and her BFF, which has reassured you that she isn't interested in being like P.G. so she can be included in the inner circle. This is a good thing.

But now, ex-BFF and Popular Girl are whispering together everywhere, all the time, and when they see Daughter looking at them they laugh and turn away and act like she has H1N1 and they can't be around her. And when she finally did get ex-BFF alone today, she was told they weren't friends anymore, and that BFF doesn't remember now why they were ever BFFs in the first place. Bottom line: Daughter is never going back to that school, so can she please be homeschooled so she doesn't have to see any of them ever again?

Her tween world has been shattered, and for that matter, so has yours. As flashbacks from your own tween-years girlfriend crises rush into your mind, you can feel her pain. You have to do something to fix this, don't you? But what? Tell her this is just normal girl stuff and she'll get over it-like you...didn't? March to the school and demand instant peer mediation? Call ex-Best-Friend's mother and become her ex-Best Friend?

As you fold your arms around her heartbroken little self and lamely offer her a cookie, you decide that dealing with puberty was a cakewalk compared to this.

Been there? Then you know how painful it is to watch your daughter agonize in varying degrees over her relationships with other girls. This can in fact be the most challenging part of parenting a tween girl because it's the part of her life that you have the least control over. That's scary when you realize how those relationships will affect her for the rest of her life.

Think about it. You may not remember the name of your fourth grade teacher or in which year you learned fractions or Roman numerals, but you can probably name your BFF from that year-if not your whole circle of BFFs-and, maybe even more clearly, the name and face of the girl who was mean to you. I can definitely see myself running out onto the playground to giggle at the fence with Beth Anne O'Toole-and crying in the corner at the sleepover at Ruthie's house because that Linda girl with the red hair called me a "pill." As for the Roman numerals, I still can't get past XXIV.

Even if you can't remember the names or recall the faces, the messages you internalized influenced your later relationships. After your BFF totally betrayed you in sixth grade, you were either reluctant to trust a girlfriend with a secret thereafter, or you were determined to pick more trustworthy friends. Once you were kicked out of the circle at age twelve, you either made it a point after that to always be the kicker rather than the kickee, or you avoided tight-knit groups, or you selected friends with no history of booting people out of their lives. For good or for ill, what happens in Tweenland doesn't stay in Tweenland when it comes to BFFs, RMGs, PGs-all the players involved in the confusing realm of girl politics.

I've placed this as the last section in our book because everything else we've talked about comes into play in this arena. And that's good news. Because of the other three major things going on at home-the move toward authenticity, the emergence into beauty, the acceptance of body changes-your tween daughter is better equipped to handle what goes on "out there," wherever she spends time with other girls her age. Without you there to watch over her and tell her what to do next. Matter of fact, she wouldn't have you there if you paid her. This is her turf, and well it should be.

Having said that, let me assure you that you are not completely out of this loop of friends, cliques, and really mean chicks. As always, you have a profound influence. So let's go in and find out just what that is.

9.

The Gospel According to Friends

Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them."

Matthew 22:37-40 "There are two things that are important to me that my mom doesn't understand and I wish she would-and that's skinny jeans and friends."

age 12 Standing on an intermediate school playground during recess is an education in itself.

The tween boys bolt out of the building already yelling-about what, no one knows-and immediately become involved in some activity that involves throwing something, climbing on something, jumping from something, or concocting something. Punching each other for no apparent reason will also be part of that. If they stop moving and start talking, it's either to plan the next throwing-climb-ing-jumping-concocting-punching thing, or to agree on how to get the most squealing out of the girls with their throwing-climbing-jumping, etc. I love tween boys. They can be so wonderfully predictable. Seriously. If a disagreement arises, they solve it with a shove or a shout, and five minutes later (if it even takes that long) they're back to throwing-climbing-jumping as if nothing ever happened.

And then you have the tween girls.

A trifle more sedate than the boys at this age, they stroll out of the building, sometimes arm in arm, already chattering-about what, everyone knows because they do it nonstop, whether you want to hear it or not-and immediately busy themselves with getting into groups. One group settles against the fence. Another gathers around the playground equipment that nobody actually plays on anymore because that would not be cool. Still another hangs out by the water fountain, because the boys all end up needing a drink of water at some point after all that throwing-climbing-jumping-concocting-and-punching, and even though they're absurd little creeps, there's something fascinating about them. A few girls don't seem to have a group, but rather than band together and form their own, they wander wistfully at the fringes of the others, some quite obviously longing to be invited in, others pretending, just as obviously, that they don't care that they're alone.

Once the groups have been established, some activities might begin. That group gets up a game of jump rope or practices cheers. That one sits in a circle and does...something that periodically makes them erupt into shrieks. And that group by the water fountain spends the period rolling eyes and flipping hair and hoping some boy will reveal something about the boy world that they can write notes to each other about for the rest of the day.

When the bell rings, they all return to class, boys and girls, to practice long division and use vocabulary words in a sentence. But one of the most important parts of their education has already taken place out there among the swings and the slides.

The boys are learning how to stand out, prove themselves, become independent, and still be okay in the group-because who are you going to throw-climb-jump-concoct-and-punch with if you don't have friends?

And the girls? The girls are learning to connect, give and take, care and be cared for-because how will you know who you are and how to behave if you don't have friends? Close friends. Best friends.

If you're raising a tween daughter, this is no surprise to you. What may be news is how difficult it can be to understand it even though you were a girl once. A look at the big tween friendship picture may help you remember why friendships are, in her mind, a matter of life or no life.

Getting Clear.

As I see it there are four things you need to know about the tween friendship realm.

1. Why friends are so important to tween girls.

The first reason, surprisingly, is hormonal. I'm not joking. Elium and Elium are once again my reliable sources: Although our daughters will develop their own unique expressions, estrogen and progesterone influence females to create, to be aware of the whole, to communicate, and to be in relationship.1 Your daughter may be an introvert, content with just a few friends she doesn't even want to be with 24/7, but let one of them move away and see what happens. The need to connect in a deep way is as natural to the tween years as puberty itself.

As your daughter has grown from babyhood, her circle of people to relate to has grown wider, and now it's also growing deeper. She is at the center of that circle, which doesn't mean she's self-centered or has to run the entire show (though some certainly do!). She simply feels safe when her "significant others" are around her. To become separate and autonomous is not where her natural psychological development is taking her.2 By nature of her gender, her personality is defined and toned and brought into focus in her relationships, in how she connects with people, especially other girls her own age. The interactions she has with them now are more complex than they were when everybody played on the swings together and then went home. She's learning who she is, as we saw in section one, and she has to discover how that works when she's out in her world, where all the other girls are trying to do that too. This is her first step, her first circle, and if the response is positive, she's assured that the self she's discovering is okay. No wonder she clings to her circle of friends like it's a life preserver. It is.

She's doing more than just "hanging out" with her friends. She's learning some major life skills from them, and they from her. How to get along with people. What kind of people she wants to have in her life. How she responds to and handles conflict. How to trust and be trusted. To be honest. To show respect. To share and be supportive. She, of course, wouldn't put it that way. For her, you have BFFs so you can: giggle together until you can't breathe.

have a whole conversation from opposite sides of the room without saying a word.

finish each other's sentences.

speak your own language.

tell things you wouldn't share with anybody else.

stand up for each other when the world is mean.

be absolutely yourself when you're together.3 Just writing that makes me want to stop and call one of my own BFFs for a latte.

2. What's normal in a tween friend relationship

Everything on the above list is normal. Anything that brings happiness and a healthy connection is normal. Having that absolutely every minute of the friendship is not normal. These are people we're talking about-very young people-so issues and conflicts are bound to arise. The challenge for you as a mom is to know which disruptions are to be expected and which are a sign that something unhealthy is going on.

This is how I introduce that concept to tween girls themselves: "Certain stuff happens in most groups of friends. Raise your hand if you've ever experienced these: A girl gets left out.

You used to be friends with a girl, but it just sort of ended and it was okay.

Sometimes you fight and break up and then start being friends again.

Somebody's feelings get hurt even though nobody meant for it to happen (like maybe name-calling for fun went too far).

You get irritated with each other.

A girl doesn't fit in so she finds another group and that's okay.

You know you have to break off a friendship for good (like if your old friend got into stuff that wasn't right)."4 There's never been a girl in a workshop room who hasn't raised her hand at least once. The admissions are made with knowing nods and even the significant exchange of glances with their BFFs, because, as is almost always the case, the normal funkiness of occasional jealousy and hurt feelings and minor annoyances is quickly repaired or fades with the moment. Sometimes friendships even end with a minimum of distress as girls develop new interests, wind up in different classes, or simply drift apart. If the circumstances require little more from you than a sympathetic ear and some microwave popcorn, they were the normal, to-be-expected stuff of tween friendships.

One of the biggest concerns I hear from mothers about all this is: "How do I know her little circle of friends isn't a clique? I remember how mean those little snotty groups could be when I was her age." Judging from the way the nostrils flare when they're asking me that, I'm convinced they do remember, and their concern is well-founded. To discern whether that's what's going on in your tween's girl group, take a look at the difference between a clique and a peer group.

A peer group is a gaggle of three to probably five girls who are together because they share common interests, beyond what everybody's wearing and how much their dads make, and who are open to new friends who find those same things delightful. There are no requirements for belonging except a willingness to be authentic and accept everybody else's uniqueness too. In the Sophie's World series of fiction books I wrote for tweens, those girls are called the Corn Flakes; others may see them as corny and flakey, but they are all about keeping the power they have to be themselves.

A clique is a knot of three or four-seldom more at this age-who are together because the leader decided they would be. This is the same leader who also decides who gets in and who goes out. Those who are kicked out or who never get in are excluded from all activities of the clique. Those who want to get in must meet certain requirements, which are usually based on where they live, what they wear, and what they own. Those who are already in have to work hard to stay there, because membership status is subject to change at the whim of the leader. Individuality is not encouraged; a member bases her worth on her acceptance by the clique. While there are closed groups on the fringes of tween society, most cliques at this age are the Popular Girls. (It may expand to include boys in late middle school.) In Sophie's World, these are the Corn Pops, a group which shrinks out of existence over the course of twelve books under the positive influence of the Flakes-in the hope that readers can duplicate that in the nonfictional world. Lest we Christian moms "When I was in elementary school my best friend was in a different class than I was so I never saw her. Instead I was kind of part of a clique, which was really mean to one girl in particular. I would come home upset all the time about what was happening because I knew it was going on but I didn't stop it. It was extremely stressful.

My mom was the smart one. She told me to get out of the situation and that those girls were catty but I couldn't comprehend not being one of the popular girls. When I finally got to middle school I think I understood. I wish I had listened to my mom back then. I would have saved myself a lot of trouble."

age 14 become too smug, cliques are common in Christian schools and large intermediate Sunday school programs. The potential for stirring up hate and discontent is high in any tween venue, a subject we'll talk about in chapter 10.

With that in mind, all it takes is listening (while pretending not to be listening) to the conversations your daughter has with her friends to determine whether her circle is a clique or a peer group. If you want to probe a little further, you can have her take the "That Is SO Me" quiz on pages 28-29 of Girl Politics.

However, just because the girls all talk alike or seem to be sharing a brain doesn't mean their group is an exclusive club. "Group think" is common among tweens and is not always unhealthy. All having the same taste in music, the same opinion of boys, the same slang vocabulary is part of the fun of belonging. But when a girl accepts that whatever the group considers acceptable is what she has to do to stay in, "group think" is a concern.

3. What the challenges are

Because tween girls are still socially immature in the grand scheme of things, though not necessarily for their age, they're bound to make a lot of mistakes, particularly since their relationships are so intense and carry so much significance. The time-honored female tradition of gossip, exclusion, and verbal manipulation shows no sign of dying out among tweens (and that's with their friends!). When it gets ugly, verbal aggression is still the weapon of choice among girls. That actually makes sense since in utero, the jawbone of the female fetus develops and begins to move before the jawbone of the male. I mean, how fun is that!

However, just because the nasty stuff commonly happens doesn't mean it's acceptable or should be allowed to go on as part of "girls just doing their girl thing." Girls doing this kind of thing become women who do this kind of thing: mean-spirited, behind-the-back gossip lies and rumors confidences betrayed control of one person over the friendship stifling of honest feelings jealousy harsh, hurtful teasing exclusion and shunning possessiveness constant drama And we call boys absurd little creeps!

None of that happens because tween girls are evil in their souls. Slitted eyes and curled upper lips notwithstanding, they aren't inherently mean. There is always a reason why they sometimes treat their friends like bitter opponents, or allow themselves to be treated that way. Some possibilities include: "My friend was being extremely selfish and mean and just dumping me and going off with her other friends. If my mom and me could have mother-daughter time just to talk about it, that would help."

age 11 They're struggling to maintain connection while still developing an individual self.5 ("Will they still like me if they know who I am?") They don't understand give-and-take yet, so they either always give to others at the expense of their own needs, or equate being loved with always being given their way. ("If I don't give in she'll dump me." "If she's really my friend, she'll do what I want.") They're not sure exactly how to ask directly for what they want from the relationship so they manipulate. ("If I give her the silent treatment she'll stop talking to that other girl and ask me what's wrong.") They're afraid if they're too nice someone will take advantage, so they protect themselves. ("If I let her have her way this time she's gonna walk all over me next time.") They need constant reassurance that the BFF is still the BFF, and they don't know how to get that except to require proof. ("I'll tell her she can't be friends with me if she's friends with her. If she's really my friend, she'll pick me. Especially since I have a swimming pool at my house. And Wii. And DDR.") It's hard enough when all of that goes on within a friendship. But at least there is a friendship. An even bigger heartbreak for a tween girl-and her mom-is when the friendship breaks up, or there aren't any friends in the picture at all. She's just moved to a new school or a different class where she knows no one. Her old friends have made new ones. Or she just never has been able to connect well with people. The loneliness and the emptiness and the fear make it hard to go to school, where all the "friend slots" have been filled and she doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. Quite frankly, the thought of being there now stirs up the anxiety in my stomach.

4. When to be concerned

There are certain situations that should raise more than an eyebrow. They require your attention if not your involvement or intervention. We'll talk about what action you can take in the pages ahead. Take note if: She only hangs out with boys. Boys make great friends for tween girls, but if she isn't making any connections with girls her age too, it's worth looking into.

All her friends are much older than she is, say by more than two years. An older girl or two in her life who she can look up to like a big sister will enrich her life, as long as you see them as good role models. But if the only girls she spends time with are out of her age group, she'll have to act older to keep up, and she'll miss important steps in her development. "My mom was a great help in encouraging me to write to my friends when we moved, and a great comforter when I didn't receive letters back. When I got the letters I had sent to them back in the mail, she helped me remember that, hey, maybe I can't communicate with them anymore, but I can still send long-distance love that doesn't need stamp, stationery, or envelope. I still love them and pray for them and hope we'll meet again someday. Without Mom, I'm not sure I would've done that."

age 12 She spends all her time alone. It isn't healthy for a boy to be a complete loner, but it borders on pathological for a girl to play that role. She may say it's by choice, but you probably shouldn't believe it. Something is keeping her from seeking out the company of her same-age peers, and that needs to be followed up on.

She shows signs of depression: change in appetite and sleep habits, drop in grades, loss of interest in activities she generally enjoys, anger, or withdrawal. That sounds a little bit like the effects of puberty, but over two weeks, without any lift in mood or symptoms, it means something more than crazy hormones is going on. While there are other situational causes for childhood depression, troubled relationships are at the top of the list.