Rejection, Exclusion, Teasing — What to do When Friends Aren't Kind

Respectful Parenting: Janet Lansbury Unruffled

JLML Press

Kids & Family, Parenting

4.7 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We all want our kids to enjoy thriving friendships, to feel appreciated by supportive peers. But that's not always case, and it can be heartbreaking to see the hurt, disappointment, and confusion our child feels when — for whatever reason —friends aren't treating them as they should. How do we support our kids' to navigate this? How much should we intervene? And what might intervening look like? Janet has an empowering perspective that she hopes will help, and she explains how it might apply in the cases of 4 different families who have recently reached out to her about their kids' challenging interactions with peers.

Janet's "No Bad Kids Master Course" is available at NoBadKidsCourse.com.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Unruffled ad-free right now.
0:05.0	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:11.9	Hi, this is Janet Lansfury.
0:14.1	Welcome to Unruffled.
0:15.7	Today I'm going to be talking about a subject that can be pretty painful for us.
0:21.8	When our child has friends that aren't treating them right, maybe other children are
0:28.3	excluding them, rejecting them, saying unkind things, playing little emotional games with
0:36.0	them.
0:37.3	Most of us know that we don't want to intervene too much.
0:41.7	It's not the way to make friendships bloom.
0:44.3	Play works best when it belongs to the children.
0:47.5	So what can we do?
0:49.2	How can we empower our children in these situations?
0:53.6	What do they need from us? And how can we help them to be
0:57.7	effective with their friends? I have several notes that I received around this topic. So that's what
1:05.4	made me want to talk about this today. And interestingly, they're all about daughters. And they're all around five years old. So I always
1:14.6	find that interesting when I get these waves of notes that are all on one theme. It seems like a sign that
1:22.2	I'm supposed to be trying to talk about that. So that's what I'm going to do today. Here's the first note. Hi, Janet. Your work
1:30.5	has been such a lifeline for me. I found your work when my daughter was three months old and now she's
1:35.4	five and a half. She has a friend who she plays with at school and in the neighborhood. It's always been
1:41.2	great, but lately there's been more and more relational aggression from this friend to my child.
1:46.8	I know this behavior is common and typical, and I remember the same dynamic amongst me and my cousins as a child,
	...

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