“I Have No Friends.” What to Say When Your Daughter Tells You That

For the moms of fourth and fifth graders who heard it in the car this week

By Shayna Barksdale, LCSW-S

We just made it through Halloween. If you have a fourth or fifth grader, you may have also just made it through the group costume. The Wizard of Oz plan, where there were only four parts, and somehow your girl found out at the last minute that she wasn’t one of them.

And now it’s November. Friendsgiving. Holiday parties. Somebody’s mom is hosting a cookie decorating thing. And all of it gets planned in the group chat.

So it happens again. The chat goes quiet for her and loud for everyone else. Then there are pictures.

She gets in the car. She looks out the window. And somewhere around the second stoplight she says it.

“I have no friends. Nobody likes me.”

And your whole body goes cold. Because you remember. You remember the lunch table, the slumber party you found out about on Monday, the girl who was your best friend in September and somebody else’s by Thanksgiving.

If you typed “my daughter says she has no friends” into your phone after she went to bed, here’s the straight answer first: this is one of the most common things a girl says between third and sixth grade. It does not mean something is wrong with her. And it doesn’t mean you missed something.

It does mean she needs you. Just maybe not in the way your Mama Bear is telling you right now.

The best friend myth

Most of us grew up on the same story. You meet your best friend in kindergarten, you’re in each other’s weddings, and you’re still splitting nachos at sixty.

It’s a lovely story. For most people, it isn’t true. And when our girls believe it’s supposed to be true, every friendship change starts to feel like proof that something is wrong with them.

Adam Grant, the organizational psychologist, talked about this recently with Dr. Becky on her Good Inside podcast, in an episode called “Stop Asking Your Kid Who Their Best Friend Is.” His point is that “best friend” is a pretty modern idea. Most people have several close friends, not one. And expecting one person to be everything for you is a setup for disappointment.

In his new book, Vibe, he breaks friends into different types: the pals you have fun with, the allies who have your back, the companions you can tell anything, and the people you just know from somewhere. Most of us quietly expect one person to be all four. Almost nobody gets that, at any age.

In our office, we explain it with shoes.

You’ve got your comfy shoes. The ones you wear everywhere, the ones that already know the shape of your feet. Those are the friends you can text in your pajamas and be totally yourself with.

Then you’ve got your fancy shoes. You don’t wear them every day, but when there’s a party or a special occasion, they’re perfect. Those are the camp friends, the cousin you see at Thanksgiving, the girl from dance you only hang out with at dance. Not every day. Still real.

And then there are the shoes that pinch. They looked great in the store. Everybody else has them. But every time you put them on, they rub and you can’t wait to take them off. Some friendships feel like that too. If a friendship leaves her feeling worse about herself every single time, she’s allowed to stop wearing it.

Nobody has one pair of shoes for everything. And her feet are going to grow. The shoes that fit perfectly in third grade might pinch by fifth. That’s not anybody’s fault. It’s growing.

I talk about a version of this in Pink Chaos too, in the friendship myths chapter. There will be lonely stretches, even in elementary school. Feeling like you have no friends, even when you do, is normal. That’s true at nine, and if we’re being honest, it’s true at forty-five.

Why fourth and fifth grade shake everything up

Here’s the part I want every mom of a nine- or ten-year-old to hear: friendships change in fourth and fifth grade because girls change in fourth and fifth grade. That’s biology, not a character flaw.

Puberty is starting for a lot of girls right around now, and on wildly different schedules. One girl in the class is wearing a bra and thinking about crushes. Her friend since kindergarten still wants to play horses at recess. Neither one is wrong. They’re just not on the same page this year, and they can feel it.

Their brains are changing, too. The biggest remodel of the social brain peaks somewhere around 13 to 17, but it doesn’t start at 13. It starts warming up right about now. And before the outward signs of puberty show up, estrogen starts to rise. Estrogen is the hormone that turns up the volume on relationships. Suddenly who sat with whom, who’s mad at whom, and who’s in the group chat isn’t just interesting. It feels like everything.

So friends start to matter more. What other girls think starts to matter a lot more. And girls start sorting themselves by interests instead of by who sat near them in first grade.

So friend groups reshuffle. Somebody always gets shuffled out for a while. Some weeks, it’s your girl.

That doesn’t mean she lost her chance. It means she’s growing, and so is everyone around her. The friend she needs in sixth grade may be a girl she hasn’t really talked to yet.

So when she says “I have no friends,” she might mean:

• Her best friend sat with someone else today.
• There’s a group chat she isn’t in, and she just found out about a Friendsgiving from it.
• She was left out of the group costume and it still stings.
• She genuinely is between friend groups right now.
• She had a long day and that’s the biggest feeling she has words for.

You don’t have to know which one. You just have to guess out loud. Which brings us to the part that matters.

What to say: the bestie breakup script

This comes straight out of the “Keys to Unlocking Girl World” section at the end of the friendship chapter. It’s what we use on the pink couches at ATFG. You don’t have to do it perfectly. I’ve been a therapist for over thirty years and I still miss steps.

First, take a breath. Your first instinct is going to be to protect her and fix it. That’s normal. Just don’t lead with it.

1. Notice. Say what you see, nothing more.

“I noticed your face changed when you looked at your phone.”
“You seem a little down today.”

2. Validate, and go ahead and guess. You don’t need her to explain herself first. Most girls can’t, especially at the second stoplight. Name the feeling you think is under there, and give it a few reasons. In Emotion-Focused Family Therapy we call these the three becauses.

“Oh, sweetie. It makes so much sense that you’d feel lonely right now, because everybody’s making Friendsgiving plans, because the costume thing still stings, and because it’s been a really long week.”

It’s okay to guess wrong. If you miss, she’ll correct you. “No, it’s not that, it’s that Ava…” And now she’s talking, which was the whole point.

Here’s why guessing beats asking. When her feelings are running high, a string of questions feels like the Spanish Inquisition. What happened? Who said that? What did you say back? Why didn’t you sit with someone else? She came to you hurting and now she’s on the witness stand.

And skip “why” altogether. “Why do you think they left you out?” “Why didn’t you say something?” To a tween or teen girl, “why” sounds like “what did you do wrong?” Her guard goes up automatically, and the conversation is over before it starts.

A guess doesn’t ask her to defend anything. It just tells her you’re trying to understand.

Validating doesn’t mean agreeing that she has no friends. It means agreeing that the feeling makes sense.

And here’s one of my favorite questions, which I hear from more and more parents:

“Do you want to vent, or do you want advice?”

It’s brilliant, and it saves you from solving a problem she didn’t ask you to solve.

3. Then, and only then, problem-solve.

• What do you want to do about this?
• What part of this can you control?
• What could you do for yourself that might help?
• How can I support you? Do you want space, or can I just sit here with you?

Or try Dr. Lisa Damour’s question, which always gets at least a half smile: “Is there anything I can do that would not make this worse?”

4. If she’s really upset, offer three options.

“I have some ideas. You could go snuggle the dog, you could text another friend and see what they’re up to, or we could go get a snack and watch your show.”

Three is the magic number. One sounds like an order. Ten sounds like a lecture.

The “what ifs” for a text that didn’t come back

A lot of fourth and fifth grade friendship drama now happens on a tablet or a borrowed phone. And the worst moment is the message that doesn’t get answered.

Her brain plays the negative “what ifs” on a loop. What if she doesn’t like me anymore? What if they think I’m weird? What if she’s mad at me?

Teach her to play the other ones, too:

• What if her mom took her phone?
• What if she’s at soccer?
• What if she’s having a bad day and needs some alone time?

You’re not talking her out of the feeling. You’re showing her there’s more than one story. That’s a skill she’ll use for the rest of her life.

Don’t be her bestie. Help her find one.

This is the other friendship myth I want every mom of a nine-year-old to hear.

When she’s lonely, it’s so tempting to become the friend. Movie nights, shopping, “you don’t need them, you’ve got me.” And some of that is lovely. But this isn’t Gilmore Girls. Your job is to be the soft place she lands, not the replacement for the friends she needs to make.

What helps more is showing her what good friendship looks like. Let her see you call a friend when you’re having a rough week. Let her see you make plans, show up, and say “I’m sorry” when you mess up. She learns friendship mostly by watching you.

And give her places to practice. Not more pressure, more reps.

When it’s more than a rough patch

Most of this is ordinary and passes. Some of it doesn’t. It’s worth talking to someone if:

• It’s been weeks, not days, and it’s not getting better.
• She doesn’t want to go to school, or she’s getting stomachaches on school mornings.
• She’s being targeted, not just left out. Mean messages, being made fun of, kids ganging up.
• She’s pulling away from you too, not just from friends.
• She says something about herself that scares you. Trust that feeling.

We see girls 8 to 25 right here in South Austin, and we work with the parents too.

A place to practice: Glow Girl Friendsgiving

This is exactly why we’re doing a Friendsgiving workshop for fourth and fifth grade girls.

The skills in this post are practice skills. You don’t learn how to walk into a room, start a conversation, or handle a friend who’s acting weird by reading about it. You learn it by doing it with other girls who get it, with a grown-up nearby who can help when it gets awkward.

Glow Girl Friendsgiving
Sunday, November 15 · 4:30 to 5:45 pm
The ATFG Lounge, 8701 Menchaca Rd.
For girls in 4th and 5th grade · $50
Led by me, Shayna Barksdale, LCSW-S, and our BSW intern Allie

One afternoon, a small group, and a lot of practice at the thing that feels hardest right now. Bring her even if she has plenty of friends. Especially if she says she has none.

Save her spot →

One more thing

The bestie breakup script, the “what ifs,” and the friendship myths all come from Chapter 7 of Pink Chaos: Navigating the Mother-Daughter Relationship with Your Tween. Every chapter ends with the actual words to say, so you’re never stuck holding a good idea in the car with no idea how to start.

And for the record: she will have friends. Probably different ones than she has now. That’s not a loss. That’s fourth grade.

🩷 Aunt Pinky

Free download: our Stress & Girls handouts, one for parents and one for your girl. No email required.

Austin Therapy for Girls · 8701 Menchaca Rd · 512-981-LCSW