Being excluded, or cut off, by your friends is a fairly common experience for teenage girls, and occasionally for teen boys. This rejection can be extremely stressful for teenagers. Exclusion is such a challenge to the mental health of teenagers that we often find that it is still impacting the self esteem of many adult clients, years after they survived exclusion.

How can you help your teenager best survive this common, hurtful, traumatic, friendship event.  

Diversity the friendship base.

The reason that exclusion is a crushing emotional experience because it highlights feelings of abandonment and loneliness. Suddenly your teen has no friendship emotional “home”. If this home is now somewhere they are being ignored, we need to encourage them to move onto another environment where they can start to feel welcome again.

It is helpful to build a diverse group of friends – in school, and, out of school, in preparation for friendship breakdowns.

At the time of exclusion your teen does not need to stay within the environment where they are being ignored. Encourage them to go to their other friends at school or make new friends. Encourage them to tell others that they are being excluded. There is no shame in this condition. It is so common that many teens have experienced or witnessed episodes and empathise.

Exercise your family values

If you can, strongly support your teen at this time. This support can be as simple as spending more time together as a family when your child has been cast out of their friendship group. For example, pick them up from school and take them out for a fun dinner. Play cards or watch movies together. This reminds your teen that their family is their first and guaranteed source of support. Of course, time with friends is fun, but family is their solid, reliable resource in tough times.  

Be shameless.

Don’t be embarrassed if you are excluded by your friendship group. You may be in the wrong, or exclusion can happen for reasons you are completely unaware of. However, exclusion as group management tool is only powerful when it beats you down. So, try to not let it achieve this aim. If your friends decide to exclude you, it doesn’t mean that you are unlovable even if that is what your internal dialogue is telling you.  Remember, “Thoughts are not facts”.

Groups experience conflict. Exclusion is an immature response to difficulties. I would like to say that people grow out of it, but even some adults use exclusion in response to conflict in the workplace or with adult friends.

Call it by its name.

The problem with exclusion, especially when it conducted by girls, is that the exclusion is not clearly exercised as exclusion. Instead of admitting to excluding others, groups of individuals are suddenly “to busy” to meet up with your child after school. When we let others get away with such behaviour we are not confronting unacceptable and hurtful behaviour. Ask your teen to call it out. For example, rather than communicating to excluding friends’ messages euphemistically, such as, “I understand you are all very busy right now”, they can write “It seems you are choosing to exclude me from the group at this time”. Calling out this shameful behaviour, helps other teens consider accountability rather than hide behind excuses.
Sometimes members of a group will accept the exclusion of a group member for a few days, but when exclusion drags out, into weeks, teens have to face their own consciousness that this is a behaviour they are choosing to do, and that it is going on longer than they may have been comfortable with.

Seek support

Offer your child access to counselling at this time. A good counsellor will help them identify and separate their responsibilities from other people’s behaviour. The counsellor can help them identify the subtle rules of being a member of any group, and decide for themselves if they are willing to pay that price to maintain those friendships.

As painful as exclusion events are on teens these episodes are helpful to review key individual identify concepts such as what your teen stands for, what they believe they need from others, what they want to achieve in the future, and their values. We want our children to be forged into stronger versions of themselves through this unfortunate adversity.

The counsellor might work to help your child build the skills to help build a diversified group of friends, helping them avoid the negative impact of exclusion if it happens again in the future.

Consider forgiveness.

Teenagers can behave badly. They are not small adults, they are big children. Their moral and reflective skills are still in development.

When conflict occurs in a group, exclusion may be used as a method to excerpt control by certain members of the group. Not all members of the group may be actively committed to the decision to exclude. Exclusion often continues longer than some group members are comfortable with and eventually those members of the group may reach out to your teen again. Your teen will then need to decide if they forgive the excluders or not, to re-engage or cease contact for themselves. There can be merit in considering forgiveness.

If your teen does decide to forgive, remind them not to forget. The best defence against exclusion is a diversified friendship base. You may go back to being friends with those that excluded them, but we need to make sure that we have a broad range of friends to spend time with should your teen decide, they cannot forgive after all, or they are actually not willing to pay the subtle price of group inclusion, or be affected if those individuals attempt exclusion again.  

Wait it out.

Whilst there are some episodes when the friendship group completely breaks down, often exclusion doesn’t last very long – a week or so. Whilst you are being left out, it feels like forever. Make sure that you are looking after your teen, and they are looking after themselves, so that they can survive one or two bad weeks. If things last longer, consider involving the school or taking a different tactic.

Time-management

When friendships go wrong, suddenly your teen will find they have time that is unallocated. They intended to spend that time with their friends, but now they are at a loose end. Exclusion does not usually last long, so ask them if they would like to spend this new “spare” time? For example, perhaps they might like to take up a new hobby, or consider spending some time on much needed study instead of hanging out with friends. Just for a while.

Do not go quietly

In the early days of an exclusion, you will seek that your teen removes themselves from environments in which they are actively being ignored. That is a self-protection mechanism. But once they have spent some time building new friends, or receiving counselling, go back into the environments that they use to hang out with the excluding group, and start hanging out in these areas that the excluders feel dominant. Excluders like that you remove yourself. They do not have to face up to their own bad behaviour if you make yourself invisible. If you can handle it, go back into their space when you feel a bit stronger This makes the excluders continue to have to confront their own bad behaviour, which can become progressively more uncomfortable for them. Often those who were not fully committed to exclusion start to fall away from the expectation to exclude when they believe that enough time has passed. Be inconvenient. Be proud. Do not go quietly.  

Inform the school, or not.

Talk to your teenager about if you will contact the school about the case or not. Whilst many schools encourage teens to inform teachers if they are being excluded, sometimes complaining about exclusion can backfire on the complaint maker. So, it’s very difficult to decide to inform the school or not. My professional recommendation is to keep your child close, and to set a deadline with your child, when they school could be informed. This deadline could be a week or two. Often your teen will change their feelings about their excluders, and themselves during this decision time. Definitely consider support to help fortify your teen.

About the author: Angela Watkins is a counsellor and psychologist working with teens and adults on issues such as self- esteem, interpersonal relationships, anxiety, depression, and recovery from trauma. To contact Angela for a session email angelaw@reddoor.hk.